Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley on Facebook copying their product

Before Facebook launched their check-in feature, Mark Zuckerberg spoke with Dennis about acquiring Foursquare:

“Mark was like, if you don’t end up here, we’re probably just going to end up doing something like this. It’s a feature we’ll build into our app.”

But after bad experience selling his previous company to Google, Dennis said no. And when Facebook finally announced their check-in feature, Dennis gave a talk to the team:

“They can copy everything we’ve done, but they can’t copy what our roadmap is… You should never have to check-in. A check-in button is stupid. The phone should just know where you are, and then based on where you are, the map gets smarter. That’s obviously how it’s going to go. And that is what we’re going to build. Will Facebook try to do that? They’ll copy all the stuff that we’ll do, but we will always be one step ahead.”

Foursquare ended up losing its consumer business, but more than a decade later, it’s still a good, profitable business with $100M+ revenue and over 400 employees.

Dennis also reflects on one silver lining of the Foursquare consumer app:

“All of these apps are better because we were all competing at the time. If you go into Google and see the ‘What are the popular hours?’ That’s a feature that’s ripped off of Foursquare. We did that. The automatic history - where are the places you’ve been? We did that. Little mini reviews that aren’t long Yelp things - we invented a lot of the stuff in the category, which makes its way through a thousand other internet products.”

Full video: South Park Commons “Navigating the Early Days of Foursquare with Dennis Crowley“ (Apr 2024)