Foursquare died at the hands of private equity. What happens next?

Link: Some final words on Foursquare, by Dennis Crowley

I freaking loved Foursquare. It was a wonderful way to explore cities with the help of my friends: in the same way that Upcoming was my best way of figuring out which events I should be going to, Foursquare let me know which restaurants, bars, parks, etc, were worth checking out. If Chris ranked a cocktail bar, you know it was amazing. Aaron always found the best coffee spots. And so on: my friends were better recommenders than any other source I had.

My own map lists every state and country I’ve been to over the last few decades. If I’m back in Amsterdam, I can figure out which Indonesian food place I really loved, because there it is on my map. (It’s Paon Bali, by the way. You’re welcome.)

So this was sad to see as an outcome. I think there are a bunch of important lessons here – not least the dangers of raising too much too soon without tethering the business to revenue. But at the same time, Foursquare launched during a startup explosion, and this kind of fundraising was the norm; I don’t fault Dennis for his decisions. The bigger problem seems to have been the private equity leadership more recently. I can’t think of a time when private equity hasn’t led to toxic leadership and a strip-mined company with an inequitable deal for employees.

Which leads me to an obvious problem. That check-in data is intimate stuff. It probably shouldn’t be something private equity can just inherit and do whatever with. Journalists and activists should hopefully not have been using Foursquare to check in; if they did, that data can almost certainly have been bought for analysis. And then a future-facing question: how might we have these kinds of social effects without sacrificing privacy?

Regardless, I’m pouring one out for Foursquare. I loved it. Thanks to everyone involved for building something that I found genuinely meaningful.