Foursquare co-founder says equity holders saw no returns from the company’s acquisition

Last month, advertising company Infillion acquired location-data platform Foursquare, a once popular social network, at an undisclosed value. Now, in a new blog post, Foursquare co-founder and former CEO Dennis Crowley said that investors didn’t see any returns from the sale.

Crowley referenced a post by an angel investor, inferred that neither preferred nor common stockholders got any value out of the deal, and said he was disappointed by the outcome.

“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 said that the company did well after it started focusing on enterprise business and had consecutive years with over $100 million in revenue. In 2019, the company raised capital from a private equity firm and, in 2021, brought in the banker who led the raise as CEO. Crowley blamed the final outcome on that transition, saying that the management of the company wasn’t able to preserve or create new value.

Foursquare, which had raised over $411 million in funding according to PitchBook data, eventually shut down its app in 2024.

Several people reacted to Crowley’s post and said that Foursquare was very useful to them in discovering new places in their cities and also gave ideas for new apps. After Foursquare, startups like Zenly and Jagat, along with Instagram and Snapchat, have explored social maps.

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Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web.

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