NEWS
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NEWS
Foursquare CEO steps down as company valuation tanks
Foursquare Labs Inc co-founder Dennis Crowley has stepped down from his role as CEO amidst a massive drop in the valuation of the company, which has struggled to monetize its location discovery and check-in apps over the last six years.
While the exact number of Foursquare’s drop in valuation is currently unknown, the company had previously dropped from a $760 million valuation in 2012 to a $650 million valuation a year later, if Crowley’s departure from his role is any indication, things do not seem to have been getting any better. According to the Wall Street Journal, Foursquare’s valuation is likely no higher than $330 million.
When it released in 2009, Foursquare became one of the earliest and most popular check-in apps, in part due to its gamified achievement system, which gave users the title of “mayor” if we visited a location more than anyone else.
Five years later, Foursquare made the somewhat confusing decision to split its popular check-in feature into an even more gamified standalone app called Swarm, and the main Foursquare app continued to focus on location discovery and business reviews.
“I felt like now is the right time to put our strongest executives in the company’s top leadership positions”
In a blog post, Crowley said that the company’s changes in leadership “have been in the works for a while,” and he painted his shift in roles as a positive one.
“With our business maturing and with our enterprise solutions (Places API, Place Insights) and as programmatic advertising platform (Pinpoint) fueling our revenue growth, I felt like now is the right time to put our strongest executives in the company’s top leadership positions,” Crowley said.
Replacing him as company CEO will be former COO Jeff Glueck, and Foursquare chief revenue officer Steven Rosenblatt will be “acting as Jeff’s co-pilot” as the new company president.
“Jeff and Steven have helped to build Foursquare into the business it’s become, defining new products and building strong teams,” Crowley said.
While he will no longer head the company, Crowley will still be part of Foursquare, serving as its Executive Chairman.
Image courtesy of Foursquare Labs Inc
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