Last week when I heard the news that Foursquare investors were buying up stock from current employees, it piqued my interest – who is Spark Capital buying stock from? For nearly three years, it has been one of my favorite apps and I keep close tabs on the company. Digging around, I ended up with an entirely different bit of information: Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai is likely leaving the company, though I don’t know why he is leaving the company. The company declined to comment. on the pending exit of Selvadurai.
Selvadurai and Dennis Crowley started Foursquare together. Selvadurai worked on the first Foursquare iPhone app, but since then the company has added many more engineers and developers. The company since those early days has come a long way and has attracted investment dollars from some of the biggest investors in business such as Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, DST Technologies and Andreessen Horowitz.
The New York-based company that moved into new offices recently, is currently said to be valued at over $ 700 million and has been growing its team in New York and San Francisco. Crowley, when speaking at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona said that his company has tripled the number of users from five million to 15 million in past one year and has signed up 750,000 merchants.
PS: I chatted with Selvadurai in September 2011 and here is a video for you to enjoy. Here are my two conversations with Crowley — Facebook, Check-in Fatigue and the Copy Cats & How location will connect us.
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