In 2013, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley walked into a bakery and bought a cake. Almond, with meringue on top. It was sweet — but the milestone was sweeter.
For more than a decade — since his grad school days — he’d been pursuing one big idea: a product that understands how users move through the world so well, it can deliver timely, personalized tips. That idea had evolved through several iterations, from a startup called Dodgeball to the founding of Foursquare. When he bought the cake, the company best known for “checking in” was several years into something bigger, developing mobile software that would recognize users’ locations and automatically push tailored recommendations.
