GLOBAL – Check-in and location-based app Foursquare recently announced changes in terms of their top personnel. Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley is stepping down as CEO to become executive chairman. After 18 months as company COO, Jeff Glueck is taking over the CEO position from Crowley. Meanwhile, company CRO Steven Rosenblatt assumes the role of company president. Rosenblatt will also oversee all of the country’s revenue lines including enterprise solutions and business development.
The movements are quite the shakeup for Foursquare, once an app of choice for people who enjoyed the concept of “checking-in” and letting their friends know where they were. According to CNET, enthusiasm for Foursquare waned when companies like Facebook and Instagram built location services into their own apps. Some people also questioned the value of checking into restaurants and other spots. Foursquare tried to fix things in 2014 by splitting its services into two apps: Foursquare would be for recommending restaurants and other venues, and the new app called Swarm would be for check-ins.
For his part, Glueck announced via Medium.com that in the past 18 months, Foursquare “signed Apple, Twitter, Pinterest, and others as customers, and have 100,000 more developers who rely on our location data. We just had our biggest revenue month, quarter and year. Foursquare and Swarm, our consumer apps/sites, have over 50 million monthly active users and daily check-ins are at an all-time high.”
Although Foursquare also touted a new round of funding totalling $45 million led by Union Square Ventures, the New York Times said that is actually an indicator that the company is not as valuable as it once was. According to people with knowledge of the deal’s terms, the financing pegs Foursquare’s valuation at roughly half of the approximately $650 million that the company was valued at in its last round in 2013.
The Times further warns that Foursquare will likely be joined by other start-ups this year in accepting funding at lower values after once raising money at soaring valuations. These “down rounds” are based on fears that many similar young companies got ahead of themselves.
