Squarethe location-focused outfit that in 2020 merged with Factual, another location-focused outfit, joins the parade of companies to cut one of its biggest cost centers – workers – in 2024.
According to an email sent to employees Thursday afternoon by current CEO Gary Little and seen by TechCrunch, 105 employees have just been laid off as the company tries to “streamline” its operations and “put the company in more sustainable economic base”.
Affected employees saw access to their system removed upon receiving Foursquare’s notification email.
Little did not return a request for comment by the time of this post Thursday afternoon, and his letter to employees doesn’t shed much light on Foursquare’s promotion plan. According to a source, the layoffs represent about 25% of the company’s workforce.
The letter does, however, address which units were affected and, by extension, the departments Foursquare plans to abandon, including Visits, OCF and Foursquare City Guide.
According to Little’s letter, Foursquare is also pausing work on a number of other initiatives, including “Mobile Developers Tools, Geode and the current version of FSQ Insights.”
Foursquare, a favorite in the pre-iPhone days that invited users to “check in” to locations to earn badges, and which relied on hyperlocal ad revenue to fuel its business, later evolved into a tech company businesses that sees brands and publishers leveraging its data.
For example, Atmospherea grassroots-funded short-form video platform that invites users to explore local businesses, uses Foursquare’s API to power its own app.
After merging with Factual, whose location software helped marketers zero in on customer segments — say, people in the market for a new home — Foursquare went even further in the same direction.
Today’s layoffs aren’t the first to hit Foursquare. Workers were laid off at the time of the merger, and some reported a separate round of layoffs in 2022.
Little took on the role of CEO in late 2020, about six months after Foursquare’s merger with Factual was announced (the combined subsidiary lost Factual’s branding).
Financial terms of the deal were never disclosed, but Little settled heavily on protecting and growing an investment in Foursquare from Team Rainea commercial bank where Little was previously managing director and which led a $150 million round funding at Foursquare in 2019.
Foursquare has not publicly reported a new funding round since then. The 15-year-old company has raised about $400 million over the years.
