Foursquare CEO Jeff Glueck is leaving at the end of the year, to be replaced by David Shim, who joined Foursquare as president in June
a company many had written off, that instead is finishing the year with $100 million in revenues! https://twitter.com/... Sally Shin / @sallyshin : More CEO exits...This time at Foursquare. CEO Jeff Glueck out, President David Shim to become CEO, effective immediately. https://enterprise.foursquare.com/ ... Bryce Roberts / @bryce : “This has been a monumental year for Foursquare: a record $100 million-plus in revenue, $100 million-plus in new investments, reaching 100 million-plus points of interest and 100 million-plus devices measured on a monthly basis.” Thank you @JeffGlueck! and let's go @davidshim! https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This is Foursquare's second CEO change in four years. Glueck took over from founder Dennis Crowley in January 2016 alongside a USV-led $45M Series E that sources said valued the company at roughly half its prior $650M figure — the low point of the write-offs this handoff is meant to rebut.
Since then Foursquare pivoted from consumer social network to location-data provider and raised a $33M Series F in 2018; David Shim joined as president only in June, and now takes the CEO job immediately rather than at year-end, with investor Bryce Roberts framing 2019 as the proof point: $100M-plus in revenue, new investment, points of interest, and monthly-measured devices.
First-order effects
- David Shim gets the top job six months into his tenure, inheriting a business whose sales pitch is now scale metrics — 100M-plus POIs and monthly-measured devices — rather than the consumer app legacy.
- Jeff Glueck exits after a run spanning the pivot and the $33M Series F, leaving behind a company that claims to have converted its 'written off' reputation into nine-figure revenue.
Second-order effects
- For ad buyers and platform partners, a revenue-backed Foursquare becomes a credible counterweight in location measurement, forcing competitors to argue on verified device reach rather than panel estimates.
- Roberts citing '$100 million-plus in new investments' alongside the revenue figure signals existing backers doubled down on the data business, narrowing the odds of another strategic reset or fire-sale valuation.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Foursquare's leadership changes track business-model phases rather than failure — founder era, pivot era, scale era — making CEO churn a feature of its transition to a measurement company, not a distress signal.
- A location-data market where scale claims are auditable in device counts pushes the whole category toward standardized measurement benchmarks, raising the bar smaller data brokers must clear.
The trend: Post-pivot data companies cycle operator-CEOs at each phase change, and Foursquare's handoff from Glueck to Shim marks its move from survival story to scale story in location intelligence.