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"After getting stuck in Paris' snowstorm (see Dennis' photo on the right), Dennis Crowley makes it to LeWeb for his Q&amp;amp;amp;A with its charismatic founder Loic Le Meur.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&amp;quot;Have you unlocked your Foursquare LeWeb badge?&amp;quot; Le Meur asks the audience.\u00A0Nearly everyone in the audience at LeWeb raised their hand, a room of Foursquare users, including Google's Marissa Mayer.\r\n\r\nLast week, Foursquare reached 5 million users.\u00A0The service is growing by 25,000 users a day with an average of 2 million check-ins a day. (The average Foursquare user checks-in 3-4 times a day.)\u00A0Foursquare's current user base is 60% U.S. and 40% International with concentrations in cities like London, Paris and Buenos Aires (a city I single-handedly convinced to join Foursquare).\r\n\r\nIn its Series A round, Foursquare raised just over $1million dollars, enabling them to hire 8 people. Months later, they raised $20 million in Series B, which Le Meur suggested was raised by refusing an acquisition by Facebook.\u00A0Now, 34 year-old Dennis Crowley runs a 40-person company in the ballpark of $140- $150 million.\r\n&amp;quot;Foursquare is growing and it's growing fast. We know what the roadmap looks like, it's just a matter of getting enough people in the room to execute everything,&amp;quot; says Crowley.\r\nIn a few\u00A0questions\u00A0from the crowd, Crowley outlined his purpose, determination and sensitivity. How would Crowley make the world a better place? &amp;quot;I really enjoy building products. We never set out to make companies,&amp;quot; he answers. &amp;quot;There are things that are broken about the way we are connecting in the real world. We built Foursquare to find a way to remember the things you want to do and to make your experiences richer.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nAs far as competition with Facebook? Since the inception of Dodgeball, Crowley has seen a slew of similar check-in type platforms. &amp;quot;I don't think people have the same approach we do,&amp;quot; he explains. Crowleys aims to make the world a little more fun through game mechanics, which he believes will keep Foursquare unique and independent-- at least, for now. &amp;quot;We're building a platform for connecting people. We're seeing more and more platforms pushing check-ins to us, like Foodspotting and Instagram. But we're still in the plumbing business.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nOne of the emotional highlights was seeing Crowley get a little chocked up when a young technologist named Daniel from Siberia pitched his location-based scavenger prototype. &amp;quot;It's difficult to build a platform on Twitter in a country where nobody has ever heard of Twitter,&amp;quot; he said.\r\n\r\nExpect international announcements like local language editions from Foursquare in a month's time. But first, Foursquare has to coordinate efforts between its existing New York offices and its new office in San Francisco. And they are hiring, rapidly. Check out Foursquare.com/jobs for more info."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/eu/2010/12/08/foursquare-rapid-growth-international-efforts-and-did-crowley-shed-a-tear/5244124140/>