Naveen Selvadurai (born January 27, 1982 in

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil language ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

) is an American

internet entrepreneur An Internet entrepreneur is an owner, founder or manager of an Internet-based business. This list includes Internet company founders and people brought on to companies for their general business or accounting acumen, as is the case with some CEOs ...

and co-founder of location-based social networking site Foursquare.com. Until recently, he was working at startup studio Expa which was founded by co-founder of

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery (Uber Eats and Postmates), packa ...

and StumbleUpon -

Garrett Camp Garrett Camp (born October 4, 1978) is a Canadian billionaire entrepreneur. He has helped build a series of companies, including founding StumbleUpon, a web-discovery tool; co-founding Uber; and founding Expa, a startup studio. Camp is chairm ...

, as a partner. He was featured in

Inc Magazine ''Inc.'' is an American business magazine founded in 1979 and based in New York City. The magazine publishes six issues per year, along with surrounding online and social media content. The magazine also produces several live and virtual events y ...

's 30 under 30 list in the year 2010. He was also featured in

Rediff Rediff.com (stylized as ''rediff.com'') is an Indian news, information, entertainment and shopping web portal. It was founded in 1996. It is headquartered in Mumbai, with offices in Bangalore, New Delhi and New York City. , it had more than 300 e ...

.com's article - 4 NRIs among US's coolest young entrepreneurs.

Early life

He was born on the January 27, 1982 in

, to Kuppuswamy Selvadurai and Latha Selvadurai. He was their first child and has a younger sister Chindhuri Selvadurai.

Career

Selvadurai graduated in 4 years from

Worcester Polytechnic Institute Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) is a Private university, private research university in Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1865 in Worcester, WPI was one of the United States' first engineering and technology universities and now has 14 ac ...

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 Lucent Technologies, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was established on September 30, 1996, through the divestiture of the former AT&T Technologies business u ...

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...

and Sun Microsystems before he started his mobile social-networking venture Foursquare, along with

Dennis Crowley Dennis Crowley (born June 19, 1976) is an American Internet entrepreneur who co-founded the social networking sites Dodgeball and Foursquare. Education Crowley was born in Medway, Massachusetts to Mary Moraski Crowley and Dennis P Crowley. He ...

. He has been on Fox Business Network, and CNN's special by

Fareed Zakaria Fareed Rafiq Zakaria (; born 20 January 1964) is an Indian-American journalist, political commentator, and author. He is the host of CNN's '' Fareed Zakaria GPS'' and writes a weekly paid column for ''The Washington Post.'' He has been a columni ...

, "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 A startup studio, also known as a startup factory, or a startup foundry, or a venture studio, is a studio-like company that aims at building several companies in succession. This style of business building is referred to as "parallel entrepreneurshi ...

, founded in May 2013 by former Uber and StumbleUpon founder

. Selvadurai joins Expa as a partner focused on New York operations for the organization.

Controversy

According to Naveen, he was pushed out of his position in Foursquare. According to an article published in

FastCompany ''Fast Company'' is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes six print issues per year. History ''Fast Company'' was launched in November 1995 by Alan We ...

, 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 and it surfaced out that he sold his stock of Foursquare to

Spark Capital Spark Capital is a venture capital firm in the United States, responsible for early-stage funding startups of consumer, commerce, FinTech, software, frontier, and media sectors. It has branches in San Francisco, Boston, and New York City. Hi ...

before leaving the company.

Personal life

Naveen married Diana Marie Hardeman in 2017.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Selvadurai, Naveen 1981 births Living people Alumni of King's College London Worcester Polytechnic Institute alumni 21st-century American businesspeople