When Apple opened an app store for its iPhone, it threw the gates open for anyone with an idea to become an entrepreneur by making apps for the phone. Apps like Instagram or Foursquare. The location-based social network is co-founded by Naveen Selvadurai along with Dennis Crowley.
A graduate of King’s College London, Selvadurai has both a BS and MS from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. Over the years he worked in many companies in the telecommunication industry like Lucent, Run Tones, Sun Microsystems, and Nokia. When the iPhone came out in 2007, Selvadurai was working as the Vice President of Engineering at Socialight, a location-based social media platform. But when the iPhone launched and made it easier to share your location, the idea for Foursquare was born.
In September 2008, Selvadurai co-founded Foursquare which he describes as ‘50% friend-finder, 50% social city-guide, 50% game…’
In the four years that he worked at the social network, Selvadurai has seen Foursquare grow into a social networking behemoth with upwards of 20 million users and which lets you ‘check-in’ into millions of locations around the globe.
Valued at upwards of $600 million, Foursquare made a millionaire out of Selvadurai and made him one of the ‘World’s New Young Millionaires’. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Cooper Union, a famous private college in New York’s East Village. A true entrepreneur.