Despite Foursquare’s garnering a $600 million valuation in an investment round last year, some investors are skeptical about its prospects. Others just seem to find the app and the whole concept of checking in every place they go annoying.
Foursquare has come up with an interesting concept of awarding badges, mayor ship and sharing that has made the app very popular among users and has made the company growth study and solid. The company founder and CEO Dennis Crowley has over 100 employees and is described as a very hands on CEO.
The three year old company has a user base of 20 million people who have accumulated over two billion check ins. The company has over 750,000 businesses that use the platform companies by the name of Pepsi, Walgreens and American Express just to name a few. The company has been competing with Instagram, Facebook (FB), Groupon (GRPN), andYelp (YELP).
Foursquare is looking at using coupons as a form of revenue. This will require some tweaking of there app to help point users toward those places that they have checked in or other friends have checked in. They have made changes to there app for recommendations that are tailored to the individual.
Foursquare has a lot of work a head of it now that they have built there user base they need to focus on making revenue. The biggest problem with any .com company is making sure they have a revenue stream. After 3 long years Foursquare as a company knows they need to produce a revenue stream or investors will pull out. The revenue stream will also be important if the company decides to take the company public with the latest .com IPO boom. For Foursquare I hope they are able to compete and continue on against composition and revenue issues in the future of there business.