Flickr / Sharyn Morrow
- When Foursquare launched in 2009, it was a startup sensation. The check-in game app has grown and changed a lot over the past decade. Now Foursquare is mostly a location data company that lots of enterprises use.
- The company has gone on to raise over $240 million from investors and its valuation has soared.
- Cofounder Dennis Crowley shared Foursquare’s first-ever pitch deck, just before investors really started showing interest in the company.
- It’s clear from the early presentation that Crowley had a vision and a plan to execute, complete with lots of features that could create a highly engaged audience and future revenue streams.
When Foursquare launched, it quickly became one of the biggest, buzziest startups.
The company, which started as a a location-based check-in game for users, has gone on to raise over $240 million from investors, including from prominent venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Spark Capital.
What did Foursquare look like before it raised any money at all?
According to the company’s earliest investor pitch deck, which cofounder Dennis Crowley sent to Business Insider back in 2011, the app was a self-proclaimed "part friend-finder, part social city-guide, part social-game."
Crowley shared Foursquare’s original pitch deck from July 6, 2009, three months after Foursquare’s famous SXSW and two months before he says funding talks "really kicked up."
"Decks don’t have to be super formal," Crowley told Business Insider back then. "It’s okay to stray from the ‘business school 10-slide pitch deck template."
A version of this story was first published in 2011.
Foursquare’s initial logo looked a lot different than the pink logo it has now.
Dennis Crowley
Cofounder Dennis Crowley’s deck opened with a vision slide about what he was building. He described Foursquare then as "part fried-finder, part social city-guide, part social-game."
Dennis Crowley
Foursquare was thinking about mobile apps before mobile apps were really a thing. iPhones back in 2009 were a lot different than today.
Dennis Crowley
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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Source: Business Insider – ashontell@businessinsider.com (Alyson Shontell)