
Foursquare. The name likely conjures images of check-ins, mayorships, and social discovery. While the consumer-facing apps like Swarm and City Guide were its initial claim to fame, Foursquare has undergone a significant transformation, evolving into a formidable B2B location intelligence platform. This evolution wasn't just a pivot in strategy; it was, and continues to be, deeply intertwined with the practice of using its own technology to build, refine, and perfect its products.

### The Founder's Itch: Building What You Need

The Foursquare story begins with a classic case of a founder building a tool they personally wanted to use. Co-founder Dennis Crowley's work on Dodgeball, the predecessor to Foursquare, and subsequently Foursquare itself, was driven by a desire for a product that could understand how people move through the world and deliver timely, personalized experiences. As Crowley described in an interview with [First Round Review, "Lessons in Tenacity from the Co-Founder of Foursquare"](https://review.firstround.com/lessons-in-tenacity-from-the-co-founder-of-foursquare/), "To build it was almost like fulfilling a need to express myself." He further elaborated, "I wanted this thing to exist. I thought, 'It doesn't seem like anyone else is going to build this, so I'll go build it.'"

This intrinsic motivation is the purest form of what many in the software world call "eating your own dogfood." The initial product wasn't just for a theoretical user; it was for the creators themselves and their immediate circle. This hands-on usage inevitably shaped the early development and user experience.

### Core Technology Forged in the Fires of Internal Need

As Foursquare's consumer apps grew, so did the need for sophisticated underlying technology. The development of what was initially known as Pilgrim SDK (now the **Movement SDK**) is a prime example. This technology, which provides crucial functionalities like stop-detection (understanding when a user has stopped at a location) and snap-to-place (accurately identifying that location), was initially built to power Foursquare's own apps. According to [Wikipedia's Foursquare (company) page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foursquare_(company)), Foursquare began working on this core technology in 2011 to provide contextual awareness to its applications.

This internal development of core location technology meant Foursquare wasn't just relying on third-party solutions; it was building its expertise from the ground up, driven by the demands of its own widely-used products. This deep, internal understanding of location data intricacies became a foundational asset for its later B2B offerings.

### Consumer Apps: A Living Lab and Data Source

While Foursquare's primary focus has shifted to enterprise solutions, its consumer apps like **Swarm** and **Foursquare City Guide** continue to play a vital role. Former CEO Jeff Glueck highlighted this in a [Foursquare blog post](https://location.foursquare.com/resources/blog/news/foursquare-to-acquire-placed-from-snap-inc-to-deepen-its-location-technology-platform/) (related to the Placed acquisition), stating that Foursquare's consumer apps "showcase what's possible and inspire developers via our innovations around contextual location."

These apps serve as a valuable source of first-party data – the billions of check-ins, tips, and photos voluntarily shared by users. This "truth set" is instrumental in training and validating the machine learning models that power Foursquare's Places database and other B2B services. The company explicitly states on its developer portal that these check-ins ensure data quality. In a [Foursquare blog post titled "Technical Guide to Foursquare Places (Part 2)"](https://location.foursquare.com/resources/blog/products/technical-guide-to-foursquare-places-part-2-how-does-foursquare-get-location-data-right/), they detail how these check-ins power rich attributes and help refine their POI data. Furthermore, the ongoing beta testing of apps like Swarm, as evidenced by its [TestFlight page](https://testflight.apple.com/join/0rRfTytM), suggests that employees are among the first to test and provide feedback on new features, ensuring the user experience is continuously honed.

### Turning the Tools Inward: Enhancing B2B Products with B2B Products

Perhaps the most compelling evidence of Foursquare's commitment to leveraging its own solutions comes from how it improves its current B2B offerings. In an insightful engineering blog post, ["Digitizing real world POIs with Foursquare Places,"](https://location.foursquare.com/resources/blog/developer/digitizing-real-world-pois-with-foursquare-places/) the company reveals a critical internal feedback loop: "**We use Foursquare Studio to visually analyze and identify geographies & categories where we have low quality POIs... We then use a multitude of techniques... to make quality improvements in a measurable way.**"

This is a direct example of Foursquare using one of its flagship B2B products, **Foursquare Studio** (a geospatial visualization and analytics platform), to enhance the quality and accuracy of another core product, its **Places** database. This internal application allows their teams to identify weaknesses in their data, understand patterns, and ultimately deliver a better product to their enterprise customers.

This practice aligns perfectly with Foursquare's stated company culture, which emphasizes that employees are "builders" and "owners," and that "experimentation drives growth." Their careers page notes a "bias for shipping" and a "test-and-learn approach to both product development and our internal processes and systems." Such a culture naturally encourages employees to be the first and most critical users of the tools they create.

While older, an [AWS case study on Foursquare](https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/foursquare/) also shed light on a company-wide culture of data analysis and testing, noting how "anyone in the company can set up any queries they like" and that "Data scientists can spin up ad hoc clusters for urgent analysis, and engineers can run their own dedicated clusters to test new applications." This proactive approach to data and testing is a strong indicator of a company comfortable with using its own (and other) tools to drive improvement.

### The Developer Experience Edge

Foursquare has made a "strategic commitment to continuing to build innovative and user-friendly geo tools for the developer community," as mentioned in a [Street Fight Mag article](https://streetfightmag.com/2020/01/21/with-investment-in-geo-foursquare-focuses-on-improving-data-access/). It stands to reason that Foursquare's own developers and product teams would be primary consumers of their **Places API** and other developer tools. This internal usage is invaluable for understanding developer pain points, improving documentation, and refining the overall developer experience before it reaches external customers. A recent job posting even highlighted a role focused on enhancing the team's *internal* developer experience, underscoring this commitment.

### Challenges and Evolution

No company journey is without its challenges. The strategic shift from a primarily consumer-facing model to a B2B-focused one required significant adaptation. While the direct "dogfooding" of early consumer apps was straightforward, translating that to complex B2B data solutions requires a different, though equally important, internal adoption mindset. The focus shifts from personal utility in a social context to how these powerful data tools can solve internal business problems and, by extension, those of their clients.

The retirement of the original Foursquare app and the unbundling into Swarm and City Guide was a period of significant change, and as current CEO Gary Little mentioned in an interview with [Digital Frontier](https://digitalfrontier.com/articles/foursquare-ceo-gary-little-city-guide/), the initial split "didn't work, frankly." This honesty about past challenges suggests a company willing to learn and iterate, a key aspect of successfully leveraging internal product usage for growth.

### Building the Future, From the Inside Out

Foursquare's journey demonstrates a powerful pattern: building tools to solve its own problems, then productizing those solutions for the wider market. From the initial spark of a founder's need to the sophisticated internal use of its B2B analytics platforms to refine its core data assets, Foursquare has shown that being the first and often most demanding user of your own technology is a potent strategy for innovation and quality. As they continue to build the future of location technology, it's clear that their own teams will be integral to paving that path.

Articles tagged with "Location Intelligence"

Building from Within: How Foursquare's Own Tools Forge Its Location Intelligence Edge