Dennis Crowley, co-founder and former CEO of Foursquare, said in a blog post that the company's investors did not see any returns from its sale last month to advertising company Infillion. Crowley pointed to a post by an angel investor and drew the conclusion that neither preferred nor common stockholders received any value from the deal. He said he was disappointed by how the sale turned out for those who backed the location-data platform.
In the post, Crowley expressed sorrow over the outcome and addressed the roughly 1,600 people who worked at Foursquare over 17 years. He said many of them devoted time, energy and passion to building the company, its products, its brand and its culture. He apologized to former employees that the end of the Foursquare story made it appear their collective efforts were worth nothing.
Infillion acquired Foursquare at an undisclosed value. Foursquare was once a popular social network, and it had raised more than $411 million in funding according to PitchBook data. The company shut down its app in 2024.
Crowley said Foursquare performed well after it shifted focus to enterprise business, posting consecutive years with more than $100 million in revenue. In 2019, the company raised capital from a private equity firm, and in 2021 it brought in the banker who led that raise as CEO. Crowley attributed the final result to that leadership transition, saying management was unable to preserve or create new value.
Reaction to Crowley's post included comments from people who said Foursquare had been very useful for finding new places in their cities and had inspired ideas for new apps. The company's approach to social mapping has since been explored by startups such as Zenly and Jagat, as well as by Instagram and Snapchat.
The transaction adds to a mixed record for consumer location apps in the US market, where Foursquare built a large user base before pivoting toward enterprise data and advertising products. Its sale to Infillion closes out a company that spent years as one of the better-known names in social check-ins and local discovery.
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