Yelp, the geosocial app and website which gained popularity from its user-based restaurant reviews, have decided to go public. After declining another round of funding, they’re considering an IPO.

Last year Jeremy Stoppelman, Chief Executive Officer, said that the company likely wouldn’t go public for several years. It declined buyout offers from both Google and Yahoo for about $500 million.

Despite investors’ interest, Stoppelman recently told the Wall Street Journal that an IPO is back on the table for the 7-year-old startup. Though he hasn’t announced exactly when and admits the process hasn’t even officially started, the company is looking to hire a Chief Financial Officer who has experience with public companies and can guide them through the process.

In an age where investors are more than willing to fund tech startups, it’s a bold move to go public. In January they received $25 million in Series E funding from Elevation Partners, but Stoppelman believes staying private isn’t their best option. “We could raise another private round and push it off, but I don’t see any reason to do that,” he says. “Our existing model feels like a stable platform.”

Yelp is throwing itself into risky financial waters. Location-based apps like Foursquare have adopted a similar user-based review model making them tougher competition. Yelp generates most of its revenue from advertising through local business, and has yet to fully utilize the daily deals that have made sites like LivingSocial and Groupon so popular. Still, Yelp claims to have 50 million visitors a month between both of its platforms.

It will be interesting see if Yelp can hold up to it’s competitors once it becomes a public company, but for now they’ve still got a lot of planning to do.