Foursquare finds itself a new CEO

Replacing him as company CEO will be former COO Jeff Glueck, and Foursquare chief revenue officer Steven Rosenblatt will be “acting as Jeff’s co-pilot” as the new company president.

Foursquare Labs Chief Executive Officer Dennis Crowley is stepping down as the company seeks to restart growth under his successor Jeff Glueck. “Maybe no USV portfolio company (with the exception of Twitter) has taken it on the chin more for being the ‘hot company that fell out of favor, ‘” said Union Square Ventures head Frederick Wilson in a blog post ahead of the funding announcement.

Foursquare also announced on Thursday it has raised $45 million in a Series E funding round, cutting by half its $650 million valuation of 2013.

Foursquare new focus – more structured and organized – is on building the technologies required for empowering other services. Although it was initially created to let users experience a social networking layer on their current location, the Crowley-led team launched companion app Swarm in May 2014 to deliver mobility in location sharing.

Foursquare’s value has fallen, and the company is looking to a new CEO to change that.

After debuting in 2009, Foursquare became a popular tool among mobile users who would “check in” when visiting a place – from restaurants and shops to cities and airports – in order to share their location with other people.

Foursquare is trying to put Crowley’s departure in the best light. The company “just closed” a new, $45 million round of funding, which will provide “the fuel we need to continue enhancing our apps and to build out our location intelligence“. Crowley will remain at the company full-time as executive chairman, focusing more on developing new products.

Foursquare has used ads for monetization in the past, but has found licensing its location database to companies like Twitter, Pinterest and Microsoft to be more lucrative. The data is what Foursquare plans to capitalize on now. “We’ve got this business that’s performing very well, and we’re taking the two strongest business executives at the company and we’re putting them in charge”.