Company: Foursquare Location: New York City Founded: January 2009 Founders: Dennis Crowley, Naveen Selvadurai Funding: $21.35 million Employees: 35

Roaming the streets of New York City, Foursquare chief executive and founder Dennis Crowley actively checks in and shares his location from a number of venues, including restaurants, bars and business meetings, using his own creation. We caught up with Crowley to talk more about the app, now available for most major mobile devices and platforms, and ita4‚¬a4„s growing popularity with over 4 million users.

Why did you start the company To build something that makes cities easier to use and help and encourage people to go out and explore the real world.

Whata4‚¬a4„s the coolest place you checked into recently The Waverly Inn in New York City, while eating the truffle mac and cheese.

When did you realize Foursquare was working Before we launched, I went to a birthday party at a bar. I checked in and a tip popped up about where to get after-hours snacks. I was like, &''Holy crap, this is going to be huge.&''

What&'s next for the location-based industry and services The key is building on top of the check-in and recycling the data that check-ins provide to help people discover interesting things nearby.

Where are you checking in next I plan on checking in to my apartment tonight with my brother and some friends to nerd out and play FIFA for PS3!

VentureBeat&'s Local Heroes series is sponsored by Adobe and is also available as an Adobe Acrobat X Pro portfolio. Check out the portfolio to read the entire series and get additional content.

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Tags: Local Heroes, location based services

Companies: Foursquare

People: Dennis Crowley

Tags: Local Heroes, location based services

Companies: Foursquare

People: Dennis Crowley

Cody Barbierri is a social and digital media consultant. He works for Piehead and blogs about social media at Social Tab. (None of his posts are about clients or their competitors.) Reach him at Cody@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Cody on Twitter.

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