Foursquare on Friday announced that their location based service has raised $50 million in new funding, bringing the company’s valuation to roughly $600 million.
Company CEO Dennis Crowley says the new money will be used to help the company “grown international” and “expand” their product line.
In an interview with the L.A. Times Crowley said:
“The thing that’s most exciting is that we think we’re inventing the future here a bit,” adding, “We’re doing things nobody has really done before, and to be able to raise this amount of capital will really allow us to look at the white board and accomplish the goals we have written up there — things we’ve been wanting to do for awhile now.”
The $50 million comes just after Foursquare announced they had passed 10 million registered users and then signed a deal to offer American Express customers discounts just for checking in at their favorite locations.
Foursquare plans to expand their merchant platform which allows business to offer discounts and passed on use metrics about those users and their frequency at locations
With 50% of users outside the U.S. it’s expected that the company will place more attention on expanding their international market reach in order to compete with the likes of Google and Facebook who offer their own “Places” platforms for user check-ins.
Involved in the new round of funding was group leader Andreessen-Horowitz followed by O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital.
It will be interesting to see what Foursquare can do with a treasure trove of cash sitting at their side.
