FourSquare: What Has Become Of You

English: Dennis Crowley in Foursquare's New York office, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

English: Naveen Selvadurai, co-founder of the social networking site Foursquare, delivering a briefing on "How Companies and Small Business are Using Social Media and Mobile Platforms to Bolster Business". (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I just read about FourSquare yesterday after a long gap. It popped up somewhere because it seems to have had a major haircut. Dennis The Person was not exactly known for haircuts. It is having to raise money at a seriously lower valuation, and it is even seeking to sell itself. It did not have to be this way. At one point it refused to be sold at a billion. I believe Yahoo came knocking.

Location is almost as central to the mobile lifestyle as the search box was to the web when it emerged. At some point I guess FourSquare stopped growing. Granted location has become much more crowded. But there is something to be said of the first mover advantage.

Location is multi-dimensional. FourSquare has hardly gone into the more interesting dimensions. Hardly.

I never have doubted Dennis Crowley was by and large the dominant person behind the idea. He is more the guy who discovered the location space. Naveen was a sidekick. And I have actually spent more in person time with Dennis than Naveen (primarily one long dinner). I have spent more in person time with Crowley's now wife than Naveen. She and I both moved to NYC from the same state! Believe it or not. I guess the Indian thing can be stretched a little too much. One thing that struck me a few years after I moved to NYC was, I was not meeting swarms of Indians I expected to meet. I guess I was going to events strictly following my interests, as opposed to going to Indian evens, and so I was only meeting a few here and there.

Dennis is this charismatic, visionary guy. The cheerleader who gets the big picture. The glue who keeps the team together. The face that the media can hang onto. As in, he does not mind attention. He does not crave it, but he does not mind it. He has that down to earth thing down. Almost like a suave politician.

FourSquare was supposed to put New York City on the map. The tech map.

I am on record at this blog saying Naveen parting ways with FourSquare was a mistake. Not because he was equal to Dennis in contribution, I never thought that. But it's a DNA thing. Sometimes later round VCs can mess up a bit. You don't mess something up just because it's delicate. DNA is delicate. Don't put your fork to it.

You can argue it's the market, it's not Dennis, it's not FourSquare. But the market always swings. Always. We all know that.

FourSquare needs to add a layer to the location space. And rejuvenate itself. I don't know why, but I believe I could help. The new layer has to feel like a new dimension, a dimension that none of the copycats have gone into.

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So It Was Not Pretty?

2010 PSFK NY Conference - Naveen Selvadurai (Photo credit: Dave Pinter)

This summer, over dinner at a restaurant only 400 feet from Foursquare's headquarters, Selvadurai had his first on-the-record conversation about the exit. He's still visibly hurt by it, like a man not yet over his divorce, and yet spoke politely, if hesitantly. "It was definitely a surprise. I wanted to stay," Selvadurai says. He'd look away and take long pauses, trying to find the words. He wouldn't go into detail. "This was my baby. To leave everything behind--it was the worst kind of breakup ever. I truly feel like an orphan." Though he remains a shareholder, Selvadurai left the board in October. When asked if he's on good terms with Crowley, Selvadurai only says, "We haven't talked in a long time, since that last conversation."

My instincts at the time were right. The guy was jilted, after all. Now that I have the truth, the call I am making is it was a bad move. It is a DNA thing. A move like that hurts the company, I think.

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Denveen

Source: Betabeat

Dennis Crowley On Disqus

Avoid The Haters

I noted both Fred Wilson and Dennis Crowley had replied to one of my comments at Fred's blog. How often does that happen!

So I proceeded to follow the guy on Disqus. Then I noticed he had left a few comments on some article about Naveen, his Cofounder.

When you become famous like Dennis has, media is just something you deal with. Dog bit man is not news, man bit dog is news. There is always that background radiation of sensationalism.

I remember being very surprised when Naveen relinquished his day to day role at FourSquare, but I quickly stood on neutral ground, primarily because Naveen himself had a blog post on the topic, and all I knew was what I had read in the media.

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I was hoping Naveen would start a new company. It would be good for the NY tech ecosystem.

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More To The Naveen Story

Naveen Leaving FourSquare

You don't want to believe everything you read in the media, but obviously there is more to the Naveen story than first emerged. My only sources of information are what are publicly available.

Business Insider: Co-Founder Naveen Selvadurai 'Tried To Fight' His Departure From Foursquare

A source who spoke with Selvadurai during his final discussions with Foursquare says Selvadurai feels pushed out – pushed out by his cofounder Dennis Crowley and the Foursquare board of directors....... Selvadurai told the source he was financially "screwed" when he was forced out too. ........ It's unclear how Selvadurai was financially damaged. When an employee leaves a startup, their salary stops and stock options stop vesting....... The severance was complicated enough that Selvadurai had to bring in a lawyer to help...... "[Selvadurai] tried to fight it," says this source. "It was a contentious thing. He was pretty f---ing upset." A second source familiar with the situation tells us Selvadurai's departure wasn't a simple firing or a resignation: "These things can be very gray." ...... one source tells us Selvadurai and Crowley "hadn't been getting along" for some time now. ...... Another source close to Selvadurai tells us he has, for a while now, felt lost at Foursquare and he has been frustrated about his role....... "Foursquare has a CEO; that job is taken" says a source briefed on Foursquare's founder divorce. "Might Naveen be happy about that or not, I don't know. I can see that as being hard." ...... Selvadurai worked hard to make Foursquare what it is today. But Foursquare has always been Crowley's dream. Crowley has been working on this company in some form for years, even before iPhones or his first startup Dodgeball existed. ...... Selvadurai, Foursquare PR, and Crowley declined to comment....... Jack Dorsey, who some have called the next Steve Jobs, was pushed out of Twitter. The board didn't feel he was ready to be CEO....... The exception may be Google's Sergey Brin, who heads "special projects" while his cofounder, Larry Page, runs the company as CEO. ....... When cofounders do stick around, it's often in non-operating, lower-profile roles. Yahoo's David Filo still works in a cubicle, even though he's a billionaire. Apple's Steve Wozniak never wanted a say in running that company. ...... A source close to Selvadurai can't imagine him being happy with a role like Filo's....... "Naveen is a proud guy and a real entrepreneur -- someone who probably wouldn't want to remain in a situation that wasn't fulfilling for him," says a source.

AllThingsD: Checking In With the Foursquare Founder Parting: More “Tense” (Of Course)

In a terse note, Sevaldurai wrote that he would remain on the company’s board and as an adviser, as well as the “single most vocal user” of the popular check-in service. ...... according to numerous sources inside and outside the company — the impetus for Selvadurai’s departure was a lot more complex and fraught than he or the company indicated. ...... Twitter went through the mother of all contentious partings — twice, in fact — in an ongoing battle among its founders. ...... Selvadurai and Crowley, who had together become New York’s highest profile entrepreneurs in recent years ...... they had come to the conclusion over a series of talks over the last several months that there was no place for Selvadurai any longer at the fast-growing start-up. ...... “This company grew very quickly and a lot of senior management has been added,” said one person with knowledge of the situation. “It got to the point where Naveen was not in charge of much.” ....... since Foursquare began adding execs — I have a list below — he had become ever more sidelined, ending up with a small team focused on platform efforts and supporting APIs. ...... “Naveen was no longer heading any meaningful area of functional responsibility, so things got tense” ....... the departure was not ugly or closely related to either a recent stock sale by employees or its most recent funding in June that valued Foursquare at $600 million. ...... “Dennis and he don’t hate each other — things just changed” ....... “When you look at all the external stuff, Naveen’s leaving was really not tied to anything in particular. The business was really starting to mature … and there is eventually a line in the sand between building a product and building a company.” ...... Foursquare now has 111 employees ...... the discussions about roles at the company became more pronounced. ..... Naveen and Dennis agreed that there was not a place for him day to day ...... Crowley’s public goodbye on Twitter was short and, yes, sweet

After 3 yrs, my @foursquare co-founder is moving onto new projects & big ideas. Can't wait to see what's next @naveen! naveenium.com/stream/next

— Dennis Crowley (@dens) March 5, 2012

Naveen Leaving FourSquare

Image via CrunchBaseI just read the headlines. I have not read the full length articles yet. But I must say I am very, very surprised. This was so unexpected, to me it was. Unless the split between the two cofounders was quite tilted, or if by now after having raised several rounds of money Naveen's percentage ownership in the company had become really low, or the guy has come up with the next big thing, I mean. I have thought of FourSquare as a company that could end up with an IPO.

Now let me go read. The guy himself has a blog post on the topic, I think. Let's hear straight from the horse's mouth. If I were him I'd have left my equity still in the company. Because that money is growing. I wonder what he did.

GigaOm: Naveen Selvadurai, Foursquare co-founder is leaving
Business Insider: The Co-Founder Of One Of New York's Hottest Startups Is Checking Out
Pulse2: Foursquare Co-Founder Naveen Selvadurai Stepping Down
TheNextWeb: Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai announces he is leaving the company to work on new projects
AllThingsD: Foursquare Co-Founder Naveen Selvadurai Leaving
Naveen: Next
VentureBeat: Cue violins: Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai leaving the company
CNet: Foursquare co-founder Selvadurai to leave company
TechCrunch: SV Angel Also Buying Up Foursquare Stock. Dennis Crowley Emerges As Big-Company CEO

Okay, so the guy sits on the FourSquare Board.

Looks like the guy sold his stock to Spark Capital, one hopes only some of it.

Okay, so the guy feels like he has done all he can and he needs to move on.

It is possible some of the VCs in the picture have been gently working towards this end.

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A FourSquare Mayor?
FourSquare Has 6000000 Users

I think they were at two million users or less when they got their 100 million valuation. Moving from two to eight million jacks up your valuation by four hundred million dollars, looks like. That is really something.

FourSquare is not mainstream yet, although the tech insiders might not believe that to be the case. It is still early days of Twitter for FourSquare. Eight million is not a lot of people, but the trajectory of moving from two to eight million people is what you have to notice. The movement has happened fast.

FourSquare Day Tomorrow: Rad

Let's see. I don't drink but I like meeting people. Oh hey, this year they are doing it three different venues. I like that. What are the chances I can go to all three? Or maybe I will pick two. Or just one.

Last year on my way out of the party I saw Vin Vacanti still in line.

"I am leaving so you can get in," I said only half jokingly. They were down to only letting people in after someone left.

I just got this info below from Dennis Crowley's tumblog.

5-8pm @ Agave (8th Ave @ Charles Street) 140 7th Ave
7-10 @ Sidebar (15th Street @ Irving) 120 East 15th Street
9-11 @ Village Pourhouse (3rd Ave & 11th St) 64 3rd Avenue

A FourSquare Mayor?

New York City

4/16: I Found Myself A Party: Tonight's Gonna Be A Good Night

Saturday, April 16 · 7:00pm - 10:00pm

Sidebar
120 East 15th St
New York, NY

You Have To Be A Little Wild

Image via WikipediaYou have to be a little wild to be doing the tech entrepreneur thing.

For one, the risks are high. All else equal you will more likely fail than succeed. The success stories make it to the press. The sob stories? There's not enough newsprint on the planet. And it is not one risk, one hump you get over. There are risks after risks after risks. Every step of the way. It is roller coaster. If you are not going to enjoy the ride, the solace of some day reaching the destination might be false. You might never get there. The journey is where it is at. The journey itself is the reward. If you don't think so, get into another line of work.

You have to be able to look at the establishment and look the other way. You have to be able to look at the status quo and sneer. You have to jolt. You have to give them the finger.

Charlie O'Donnell At His Inspiring Best

Should FourSquare Be Scared Of Facebook?

Facebook's recent poaching of a major FourSquare engineer gave me a moment for pause, the backdrop being Facebook's aggressively going after Google. Microsoft never went after IBM like that. FourSquare is no Google. It is still a very small company. And Facebook Places has been decently successful.

Models Naveen, Dennis

Click

An Offer To FourSquare

FourSquare: $20 Million At $95 Million Valuation

To: Dennis Crowley, Naveen Selvadurai, Fred Wilson
Sent: July 4 @ 4:16 PM (email)

Hello Dennis, Naveen, Fred.

I believe I have an offer for you that you can't refuse.

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I am really, really good at the vision thing, vision and group dynamics, but right now I want to talk about the vision part. You have done well at scaling and monetization, but your weakness so far has been in the features department. In a recent quote in a news article Dennis has expressed a hunger for "engineers." That tells me he is bursting at the seams in terms of where he wants to take FourSquare. Naveen was throwing lops of mud on the location space wall even before he ever met Dennis. Fred is a rare visionary VC. I think you guys are swell, but I think I can help.

Price Tag: $6,000
Duration: 4 weeks
Output: An average of three posts per week at my blog, Netizen

There will be no need to worry about the public nature of my work because when you walk into a Walmart store you have seen their entire business model and so far noone has been able to copy the most successful business in the history of humanity.

I will mostly be scouring the web, thinking, and I will need to spend 30 minutes each with the five key people on the team, and perhaps an hour each with the two founders, that perhaps during the third week.

I think my work will help speed up the burn rate for the $20 million you just raised, and that is what you want. FourSquare as a company is in that sweet spot where it does not have to worry about how it will raise its next round of funding. Burn the 20 million fast and go on to raise 30 million at a 300 million valuation or something. That speed is one of the things you need to do to cement the lead you have.

I hope this makes sense and sounds like a good investment.

Looking forward to it.

Paramendra.

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FourSquare: $20 Million At $95 Million Valuation

Image via Wikipedia

There has been tremendous buzz today about FourSquare's new round of funding. This process has gone for a few, long months now. It has been one drawn out process. There has been drama. There has been intrigue. The sweet spot for me was when after months of talk Yahoo might buy FourSquare, FourSquare instead went ahead and stole a key talent from Yahoo. That's the way you do it.

Selling FourSquare Would Be A Mistake, Partnering Would Be Genius

When there was talk it might get bought, I strongly argued selling FourSquare would be a mistake. I was not saying, do the right thing, don't go after the money. What I was saying was, think about money, big money, do not sell.

I am not the first person to draw FourSquare-Twitter parallels. But I sure am one who gets the parallel. The two have had similar trajectories. At first sight a tweet feels as lightweight as checking in. What the.

Twitter had enormous buzz. It scaled but not as well as I would have liked. It made monetization moves, but much too late for my tastes. And it has done a lousy job of adding new features. FourSquare has scaled well. What is the FourSquare version of the fail whale? I don't know it. And FourSquare has been very impressive in the monetization department. But FourSquare has not impressed me in the features department. And I have to say that out loud because, unlike Twitter, FourSquare has competition. I hope this new round of funding allows FourSquare to cement its lead. I wish Dennis (@dens) and Naveen (@naveen) all the best.

Like Andy Grove said, only the paranoid survive. Checking in is the starting piont of the FourSquare experience. Companies for which that is not true - Yahoo, Facebook, Google, Twitter - are not serious threats, although all of them could use that key feature. Checking in in the mobile space is like the inbox in the email space, it is basic. But that check in as the starting point space has a few different players, and checking in is an activity that leaves much room for imagination. Could FourSquare ride that imagination wave? If it does, it goes IPO in a few years. If it doesn't, it should then go ahead and sell off. I am betting it will ride the wave. We shall see.

FourSquare has a shot at going IPO before MeetUp.com, a more senior tech company in town, senior in terms of years. Unless we get a few solid IPOs, New York City has not really arrived on the tech scene. Until then we should brag about our subway instead.

Ben Horowitz: Why Andreessen Horowitz Invested In FourSquare

Dennis not only created the vision for the company, but for the entire product category. Beyond that, he is very clearly the thought leader in the market. This is not at all surprising as he has been working on the problem for a decade and has highly refined his thinking through that period. ...... . He’s the kind of leader that great technical minds will be excited to follow: visionary, righteous, and competent. I am really excited to work with Dennis to help him on his path from being a great leader to a great Chief Executive of an incredibly important company. ...... at Foursquare is growing faster than Twitter did at this stage. ......Dennis and team have identified over a dozen different dimensions of the Foursquare product that must interact with each other in precisely optimal ways to achieve user delight. Years and years of research and sweat equity went into cracking the code, and the results are magical. ....... over 4.6B people have mobile phones and there are 1.7B people on the Internet. Already, over 200M people worldwide have smart phones and that number is headed north fast. ...... , major brands such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Zagat, Bravo TV, Starbucks, C-SPAN, Marc Jacobs and over 10,000 businesses are currently working with Foursquare to build customer loyalty and drive traffic. Not many companies have their users turn into their sales force, and it’s definitely a good sign that this is happening around Foursquare.

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Happy Social Media Day.


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The FourSquare Appeal For Me

(1) Cutting Edge

FourSquare is on the cutting edge. (Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter) I would add FourSquare at the end if I were doing this blog post today.

2010: Location, Random Connections, The Inbox, Frictionless Payments

(2) New York City

I love this city like no other geographical location on earth. FourSquare is the hottest technology company in town, and it is one of the hottest tech companies out there, period. They are a hometown gig. That is illustrious. I take unabashed hometown pride in FourSquare.

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Silicon City
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(3) Mobile

The mobile web is bigger and growing faster than the old web. There location is key. Location is the starting point of the FourSquare experience, and that is so in sync with the mobile web.

The iPhone, Nexus One, Or Droid?

(4) My People

This is key. I am a Third World guy. This is existential to me. This is spiritual. This is religious. This is fundamental. I was born in India, grew up in Nepal next door. I was in my 20s when I landed in America. I have to move towards one world. The First World, Third World dichotomy is a little too much for me. It makes me uncomfortable. My startup that I have put to rest after a rough 2009 wanted to bring a ton of new people online. But I perhaps made the mistake of thinking in terms of the old web. Mobile is perhaps the way to go. Four billion of the six billion plus people already can access mobile phones. And so perhaps software is where it is at. How simple can you make it? If they can do voice over their mobile phones, could they do a mightily stripped down version of FourSquare? Before, way before, a full web experience? Could they check in as a way to protest and tell the world that they are protesting? Checking in even the illiterates could do.

This is the number one reason I want to work for FourSquare: 4:16 PM @ FourSquare.

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4:16 PM @ FourSquare

Not Union Square Ventures

I am in a job mood and I have decided to show up at the FourSquare office later today. 4:16 PM sounds like a good time to show up.

FourSquare HQ
36 Cooper Sq
at E 6th St
New York, NY 10003

• Marketing Director
• Business Development Director
• Jobs: Everything Else .... Dying to join foursquare and a rock star in an area not listed above? Send your resume to jobs@foursquare.com anyways with a note on how you can help!

I am not a developer/coder although I think you should check out my LinkedIn page to see all the languages I have picked up along the way, only two of which I was ever formally taught. Some of my strengths I have talked about here: Union Square Ventures Job Opening: I Am Applying. Fred Wilson thinks I am "overqualified" for Union Square Ventures, or at least for the two open positions, so I must be just right for FourSquare, I figured, the hottest tech company in town.

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What can I do for FourSquare?

• I see FourSquare going IPO, (Selling FourSquare Would Be A Mistake, Partnering Would Be Genius) and I see the intermediate steps. I see FourSquare in the big scheme of things: Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter.
• I am outstanding when it comes to group dynamics. 
• I am not a coder, but I could pick up some of the language fast, enough to be able to deal with coders. Teams of coders need big picture people like me. 
• I would be good at tactics, strategies, negotiations, deals.  FourSquare needs this more than most things right now to grow to new heights. 
• I have a thing for digital fights. "I believe in being nice, but that does not apply to my enemies." Larry Ellison. Sometimes you need that, like when Yelp decided to copy FourSquare. I liked how Dennis came swinging back. 
• Reference: Fred Wilson. 

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