David Shim, who joined the location-based technology platform Foursquare as president in June, has been elevated to CEO and added to the board of directors, the company announced today.
Current CEO Jeff Glueck is leaving Foursquare at year’s end to explore new opportunities.
Shim had been founder and CEO of Placed, which was established in 2011 to provide brands with ad-to-store attribution. Snapchat acquired Placed in June 2017, and Foursquare closed its acquisition of Placed from Snap Inc. in June. Placed counts Twitter, Snap, Pandora and Waze among its measurable media partners.
Prior to founding Placed, Shim also held leadership roles at Quantcast, WebTrends and Farecast, the latter of which was acquired by Microsoft in 2008.
“This has been a monumental year for Foursquare,” Shim wrote in a blog post. “I’ve described it as building the ‘100 Club:’ 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.”
Foursquare secured $150 million in funding in May, led by The Raine Group. The company said it will continue to invest in core product offerings including Placed, as well as developer tools, data solutions and its Pinpoint programmatic tool.
Over 1,000 advertisers and brands use Foursquare’s technology, including AccuWeather, Apple, Hilton, Samsung, Tencent, TripAdvisor and Uber, and it counts 18 of the top 20 quick service restaurants and fast casual dining brands among its longtime clients.
Foursquare said it measured more than $3 billion in ad-to-store visits over the past 12 months, representing 250 billion ad impressions.
The company will also expand its commitment to Foursquare Labs, its research and development arm focused on next-generation location technology, which is led by co-founder and executive chairman Dennis Crowley.
Crowley said in the blog post, “It’s been an honor and privilege to work with Jeff. We’ve come incredibly far in the past five years since he joined Foursquare. I am incredibly thankful for the progress we made under his leadership, and I wish him the best.
“As a fellow founder, I have enormous respect for David Shim and his accomplishments,” Crowley continued. “He has passion and vision, and he brings a great energy to the company. I am excited about having him as a partner as we continue to ‘invent the future’ here at Foursquare.”
Glueck joined Foursquare as chief operating officer in June 2014 before assuming the CEO role in January 2016. He came to the company from Opera Software, where he spent one year as executive vice president of operator solutions. Prior to that, Glueck was CEO of Skyfire (acquired by Opera in February 2013) and chief marketing officer at Travelocity.
