Foursquare Labs Inc. Chief Executive David Shim is stepping down Jan. 1, the company said, and will be succeeded by Gary Little, a member of the company’s board.
In an interview, Mr. Shim said he is leaving to pursue new opportunities after a decade running location-based data businesses.
Foursquare rose to prominence as an app that let users log visits to their favorite restaurants and other establishments and share their location with friends, but pivoted in recent years toward providing location data and software to businesses including marketers and ad agencies. The company’s tools, for example, help brands see how well their ads steered people into visiting stores.
Mr. Shim joined Foursquare in 2019 when the company purchased Placed, a location-data provider he founded, from
Snap Inc.,
which itself acquired Placed for $135 million in 2017.
Foursquare’s acquisition of Placed made Mr. Shim president of the company. He became CEO at the end of 2019.
The Placed acquisition coincided with a $150 million investment by the Raine Group, where Mr. Little is managing director and head of technology. He was instrumental in Foursquare’s evolution into a provider of location-data software and ad services, the company said.
“The potential of location technology and data is massive, which led to my role as lead investor of Foursquare’s $150 million fundraise round last year and today as an active Foursquare board member,” Mr. Little said in a post on the company’s website.
Newsletter Sign-up
CMO Today
CMO Today delivers the most important news of the day for media and marketing professionals.
Earlier this year, Foursquare merged with another location-focused startup, Factual Inc., in an all-stock deal. At the time, the company said Mr. Shim would remain as CEO.
While the Placed deal improved Foursquare’s ability to gauge the effectiveness of ads by measuring foot traffic, the merger with Factual was designed to build on its ad-targeting capabilities, executives said at the time.
Mr. Shim said he made the decision to step down in the early fall after shepherding the integration of Placed and Factual into Foursquare.
The company’s revenue is rising after its business took an initial hit during the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, which broadly hurt the advertising business and related services. Foursquare’s services focused on audience-targeting, measurement and attribution were affected, Mr. Shim said, while the impact on its enterprise business that provides location data on venues and other places was negligible.
Revenue bounced back as businesses such as fast-food...
Read the Original Article on Source Page
#Foursquare #CEO #David #Shim #Steps
0 Post a Comment:
Post a Comment