Foursquare's new roadmap features an LA office and a growing data business
Foursquare has a new check-in.
The check-in-app-turned-location-intelligence company has opened its first office in Los Angeles, Foursquare announced Monday.
The new office will serve as a sales hub for business in Los Angeles and the greater Southwest. Foursquare is based in New York City and has offices in San Francisco, London and Shanghai.
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To run its LA operations, Foursquare hired three senior brand partners: Lindsay Aston who led national sales team at Gravity; Matt Bontaites who was region VP of sales Thinknear and previously in media sales; and Karen Lurry who worked in ad tech at Collective.
The expansion is part of Foursquare's effort to scale its business. User growth has stagnated at 50 million monthly active users, but Foursquare has pushed to offer more tools to its app users and to enterprise clients.
The company secured a $45 million in Series E funding led by Union Square Ventures in January and announced a new CEO (Founder Dennis Crowley stepped aside but is still executive chairman). Since then, they have hired 60 new people, bringing their total employee count to more than 200.
“We’re no strangers to LA, but a recent explosion in demand—from the local automotive, entertainment, [consumer packaged goods] and [quick service restaurants] industries—has led us to expand our presence there more seriously,” Foursquare CEO Jeff Glueck wrote in a blog post.
Foursquare got its start seven years ago as a mobile app solely focused on checking into a business or other destinations. Since, the company has spun out the experience into two apps: Foursquare as a city guide and Swarm as a check-in app, with more game features.
That split frustrated some users, yet Foursquare has continued to improve them and celebrate milestones. Earlier this month, Foursquare released redesigned versions of both apps and announced it had reached 10 billion check-ins.
Beyond those consumer apps, Foursquare has honed in on a business model. Rather than relying on in-app mobile ad revenue like Facebook, Google and Twitter, Foursquare has an ad platform called Pinpoint, an ad measurement service called Attribution and built a business around its location database and API. Customers include Apple, Uber and Twitter, which integrate Foursquare's location data into its own apps and services.
Foursquare also offers a product called Place Insights, which sells foot traffic data to predict and analyze store sales.
Last year, Foursquare accurately predicted how many iPhones Apple would sell during launch weekend.
Foursquare declined to disclose exact revenue numbers, but said it has doubled its enterprise and media businesses from 2015 to the first half of 2016.
The company also made several hires focused on its analytics and ad business. Tamar Shapiro is the new head of analytics and spent 10 years as head of global analytics at American Express. Gareth Paul Jones joined as director of technology services and worked at Twitter, Apple and Google prior. Marc Ellenbogen is Foursquare's new general counsel who hails from advertising company Undertone.
Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.
