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Foursquare Founder: Facebook Copied Us and We Had to Give a Pep Talk While the Building Was on Fire

By Dennis Crowley · Leadership · 2 min read

Mark Zuckerberg told Crowley: if you don't join us, we'll just build it ourselves. Then Crowley had to stand up in front of 60 people and explain why they could still win.

Key Points

Zuckerberg told Crowley directly: if you don't join us, we'll just build this as a feature
Crowley gave an unscripted pep talk his team still remembers years later
Facebook, Google, and Yelp all copied Foursquare — Foursquare is still alive at $100M+ revenue

They can copy everything we've done. But they can't copy our roadmap.

Zuckerberg's Warning

Crowley: I spent a bunch of time with Mark that spring. He was interested in buying the company. I had sold a company before and it was crappy. I did not have a great experience. I had to start the same company again. That's not going to happen here.

Mark was like — if you guys don't end up here, we're probably just going to end up doing something like this. It's a feature. We'll build it into our app.

The Pep Talk

Crowley: We knew it was coming. Wasn't a surprise, wasn't bad luck. But I remember we watched that keynote, watched them announce it. And having to get up in front of the team — maybe 50, 60 people — and give a pep talk just off the top of my head.

The vibe of the talk was: they can copy everything we've done, but they can't copy our roadmap. Our roadmap was that epiphany we had — you should never have to check in. A check-in button is stupid. The phone should just know where you are, and based on where you are, the map gets smarter. That is what we're going to build.

They can copy everything we've done. But they can't copy our roadmap.

They Still Remember

Crowley: People at Foursquare at that time — they still remember that talk. You don't remember what people said, you remember how they made you feel. People in the room remembered how that made them feel — that we were still going to win, that we could still do this.

You don't remember what people said. You remember how they made you feel.

Everyone Copied

Crowley: Facebook did it first. Then Google started doing it. Then Yelp — they had check-ins and you could be the Duchess of a place. That was shameless.

But the silver lining — all of these apps are better because we were all competing. When you go into Google and see popular hours — that's a feature ripped off from Foursquare. We did that. The automatic history of places you've been — we did that. Mini reviews — we invented that.

Foursquare is 15, 16 years old now. The company does north of $100 million in revenue. Profitable. 400 people. It's been a long journey of ups and downs.

When you see popular hours on Google — that's ripped off from Foursquare. We did that.