Advertising firm Infillion purchased location-data platform and former social network Foursquare last month for an undisclosed sum, and co-founder and former CEO Dennis Crowley revealed in a recent blog post that investors failed to receive any financial returns from the transaction.
Crowley looked at a message from an angel investor, deduced that neither preferred nor common stockholders received any value from the agreement, and expressed his disappointment regarding the final result.
"I was heartbroken by this ending. So many people put so much time and energy and passion and love into building Foursquare, the company, the products, the brand, the culture. If you were part of it (or even close to it), you know exactly what I'm talking about. To our ~1600 former employees over 17 years, I am sorry the Foursquare story ended in such a way that makes it seem like our collective efforts were worth ... nothing?" he said in the post.
Crowley noted that the business performed well after shifting its attention to enterprise operations and achieved successive years generating more than $100 million in revenue. A private equity firm provided capital in 2019, and the company appointed the banker who managed that funding round as CEO in 2021. Crowley pointed to that leadership change as the reason for the final result, stating that corporate management failed to protect existing value or generate new value.
PitchBook records indicate that Foursquare secured more than $411 million in total funding prior to closing its application in 2024.
Multiple individuals responded to Crowley by sharing that Foursquare helped them find new locations locally and inspired concepts for new applications. Following Foursquare, social map features were adopted by Instagram, Snapchat, and startups like Zenly and Jagat.
