Stu MacFarlane Joins YP.com!

About 12 years ago, I took the 10 from Venice to the 110 to Pasadena and met with this guy at Idealab who had some crazy idea about sharing recommendations for local businesses with his neighbors via the Web. For some reason I bought the pitch and the next thing you know we’ve got 100,000 local reviews, we’re doing a syndication deal with Google Local, we launch one of the first pay-per-call ad programs, we spend way too much time on Sand Hill Road, we relocate the company up to Silicon Valley and along the way I pick up an interest in this weird thing people are calling SEO.

After CitySearch acquired InsiderPages in 2006, Stu went the VC route but couldn’t resist the lure of the start-up and became CEO of iChange which got acquired by Herbalife where Stu ran the company’s Web efforts.

Now he’s joined YP.com as EVP of Consumer Platforms. It’s great to have Stu back in the “Local” game. I am looking forward to seeing how he applies his last decade of experience to YP. And truthfully, I was getting tired of seeing all you other guys at the conferences.

Here’s Stu’s official perp shot:

If you see Stu at the BIAKelsey conference in December be sure ask to see his #LIB…