As we alluded to two days ago, the location-based social network Foursquare has just raised its first round of funding. PaidContent found out about the seed round through an SEC document, and we’ve confirmed the round with the company.
As expected, Union Square Ventures is one of the investors, but also participating in the round is O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and some angel investors, that co-founder Dennis Crowley was not ready to reveal at this point. The round is in fact $1.35 million.
For weeks, there has been plenty of talk about how Union Square’s Fred Wilson has taken a liking to the New York-based company. But it’s not Wilson who will be joining Foursquare’s board, instead that will be Union Square’s Albert Wenger.
Foursquare has been a hot startup among some tech early adopters, especially in cities like San Francisco and New York. The service is primarily used through its iPhone application right now, but it just launched an Android version, as we first reported two days ago. A BlackBerry app will be available in the coming weeks as well, and a Windows Mobile app could be available as soon as next month. There is also a mobile web interface that users can use.
Recently, Foursquare has started doing some things with its app to show the potential of using location for a business model. The company has started alerting users when there is a deal at a venue nearby. Right now, these deals are centered around “mayors” of places, meaning if a person has checked-in the most times at a location. Some venues are starting to offer deals like free beer to mayors, as it obviously benefits them to get people wantin to come back more to check-in.
Foursquare is an interesting player in the location space in that it’s just as much of a game as anything else. Users compete for mayorships, and try to earn badges and get points for checking in more places. The idea of the “check-in” rather than a constantly updated background location, also differentiates it, and makes some people less uneasy about the location tracking aspect, since you have to explicitly check-in at a location.
Foursquare was started by Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai, after Crowley rather famously left Google not exactly pleased with the company after they bought his previous (similar) startup Dodgeball, and decided to do nothing with it. This past January, Google officially deadpooled it. Crowley maintains that he has a good relationship with Google now despite what happened.
cool. maybe now they can deal with the issue of duplicate venues.
hear! hear! RT @jacob Congrats to @dens and @naveen for their $1.35M round. Long live @foursquare and here’s to many more Mayorial battles!
I hope Round 2 is right around the corner.
This site is ADDICTING and has a true use.
If they were selling shares, I’d send them money today. I think this is the strongest business model of UGC i’ve seen yet.
Congrats, fellas.
Congrats, Foursquare!
Foursquare? Sounds like they got beat up one to many times in Dodgeball.
Awesome! What’s great about Foursquare is there is infrastructure to make it fun (phones w/ GPS everywhere), tons of fanatical users, a clear business model and they have the talent, product and userbase to sell anytime they want.
I really like FourSquare and think it has a lot of promise.
clear business model? lets not get hasty
cool service
Great news, really enjoying it. Although I keep getting ousted as mayor of my own home.
By the postman?
yeah no surprise with this marriage
Didn’t the G1 app launch earlier this week?
android, yes.
Wow, to raise funding in this economic climate is in and of itself an accomplishment! Haven’t tried using the service yet, but a lot of friends in SF are always bragging about their mayorships. I’m waiting for the BBerry app.
Have location, will monetize!
And, no better tool than self-serve location-based mobile ad network – AdLocal – http://www.adlocal.biz
Might checkout Brightkite, too, while your at it.
FourSquare is a cigarette brand in India. I think Naveen got the idea for his startup from there.
does anyone know how much of the company USV got for the 1.35m?
It’s a little pointless posting a dollar amount without the actual details, is this series a equity? or is it a seed round with a ticking clock etc?
anyone have links to the actual details?
cheers,
Dean
Congrats. It’s a very addictive app.