Quick Facts
Biography
Naveen Selvadurai (born January 27, 1982, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India) is a US internet entrepreneur and co-founder of location-based social networking site Foursquare.com.
Early life
He was born on the January 27, 1982 in Chennai, India, to Kuppuswamy Selvadurai and Latha Selvadurai. He was the first child and has a younger sister Chindhuri Selvadurai.
Career
Selvadurai graduated in 4 years from Worcester Polytechnic Institute with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and a Master of Science in Computer Science in Worcester, MA. During his time at Worcester, he spent 5 months in his junior year on a study abroad programme at King's College London. He went on to work with Lucent, Sony, Nokia and Sun Microsystems before he started his mobile social-networking venture Foursquare, along with Dennis Crowley.
He has been on Fox Business Network, and CNN's special by Fareed Zakaria, "Getting American Back to #1," talking about how he became the person that he is today.
Foursquare
In 2009, Selvadurai co-founded Foursquare with Dennis Crowley. It is a location-based social networking website for mobile devices, such as smartphones. Users "check in" at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application by selecting from a list of venues the application locates nearby. Location is based on GPS hardware in the mobile device or network location provided by the application, and the map is based on data from the OpenStreetMap project. Each check-in awards the user points and sometimes "badges". The user who checks in the most often to a venue becomes the "mayor," and users regularly vie for "mayorships."
On March 4, 2012, Selvadurai announced on his blog that he will step down from his day-to-day operational role at the company later that month. He said he will continue to serve as a board member and adviser to the company.
Selvadurai joined the Expa startup studio, founded in May 2013 by former Uber and StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp. Selvadurai joins Expa as a partner focused on New York operations for the organization.