Inventing the Future of Location Technology with Jeff Glueck
CEO of Foursquare
Foursquare is inventing the future of location technology, and you probably didn’t know it. This month, Jeff Glueck, CEO of Foursquare, shared how he was able to take an incredible community of more than 50 million people and turn it into a sustainable business. And as the leader of one of the fastest growing companies in the world according to Deloitte’s fast 500 list, Jeff deftly demonstrated Foursquare’s success to the After Hours crowd, which was at an all time high of 60 Alumni and guests.
Most of us may remember Foursquare as a way to check in, share locations with friends, and become “mayor” of the local Starbucks. And users across the world are still discovering new places, exploring the world, and checking in with Foursquare City Guide and Foursquare Swarm apps. What you might not know is that Foursquare’s incredible location technology powers location data for other tech giants including Apple, Samsung, Uber, Twitter, Snapchat and more than 125,000 other developers. A clear lesson to the entrepreneurs in the room was that sometimes it is most effective to keep your core technology behind the scenes and power other consumer facing products.
Jeff also shared his entrepreneurial journey and career challenges. He told stories of working in all corners of the world through his time as a consultant and White House Fellow, building new businesses at the dawn of the internet era, and leading innovation as the CMO of Travelocity. There, he was able to cement the company’s position in the travel industry and lead the creation of everyone’s favorite traveling gnome. And while the gnome campaign was a shock to many in leadership at Travelocity, Jeff demonstrated that knowing your target audience and how to grab their attention can yield tremendous impact.
The audience was inspired by Jeff’s leadership evolution and asked questions about how Jeff was so effectively able to enter organizations and facilitate change and growth. The lesson of Foursquare’s success became the theme of the evening and the crowd walked away with an incredible appreciation of the work the company is doing.
This month’s event was held at Norwood, a private arts club in a beautiful 5-floor Chelsea townhouse that brings together creatives from the NYC community for talks and events, such as speaking engagements, art classes, film screenings, music performances, cocktail tastings and culinary experiences.
[March 2018, Norwood]
After Hours is a Cornell Tech alumni run event where we host industry leaders at the coolest NYC (and as of recently, SF) venues we can find.
Interested in speaking? Know of a great space to host? Kind enough to sponsor an event? 🙏
