Naveen Selvadurai (born January 27, 1982) is an American internet entrepreneur and co-founder of location-based social networking site Foursquare.com.[1][2][3][4] Until recently,[5] he was working at startup studio Expa which was founded by co-founder of Uber and StumbleUpon - Garrett Camp, as a partner.[6][7] He was featured in Inc Magazine's 30 under 30 list in the year 2010.[8] He was also featured in Rediff.com's article - 4 NRIs among US's coolest young entrepreneurs.[9]
Early life
He was born on the January 27, 1982 in Chennai, India, to Kuppuswamy Selvadurai and Latha Selvadurai. He was their first child and has a younger sister Chindhuri Selvadurai.[citation needed]
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.[10] During his time at Worcester, he spent 5 months in his junior year on a study abroad programme at King's College London.[11] 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.[12][13]
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.[14] 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.[15][16][17] He said he will continue to serve as a board member and adviser to the company.[18]
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.[19]
Controversy
According to Naveen, he was pushed out of his position in Foursquare. According to an article published in FastCompany,[20] he mentions that "There was pretty much no other role for me at the company. Beside the CEO, there's nothing a founder can really stick around to do. You don't know a lot of these things when you're starting off." and this was extensively covered by multiple sources[21][22][23] and it surfaced out that he sold his stock of Foursquare to Spark Capital before leaving the company.[24][25]
Personal life
Naveen married Diana Marie Hardeman in 2017.[26]
