Naveen Selvadurai (born January 27, 1982) 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 A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

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

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...

and

StumbleUpon StumbleUpon was a website, browser extension, toolbar, and mobile app with a "Stumble!" button that, when pushed, opened a semi-random website or video that matched the user's interests, similar to a random web search engine. Users were able to ...

Garrett Camp Garrett Camp (born October 4, 1978) is a Canadian-French businessman, investor, and software engineer. He helped build the search engine StumbleUpon and is a co-founder of Uber. He lives in Los Angeles. Early life and education Camp was born ...

, as a partner. He was featured in

Inc Magazine ''Inc.'' is an American business media company founded in 1979 and based in New York City. ''Inc.'' publishes several print magazine issues per year, and is anchored by journalistic content online and on social media, focused on entrepreneurship a ...

'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 website. Founded by Ajit Balakrishnan in 1996, it was the first Indian website to become a mainstream news media organization. It is headquartered i ...

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

Early life

He was born on the January 27, 1982 in

Chennai Chennai, also known as Madras (List of renamed places in India#Tamil Nadu, its official name until 1996), is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Tamil Nadu by population, largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost states and ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

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

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 King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

. 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 busines ...

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

and

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

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 January 20, 1964) is an Indian-born 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 c ...

, "Getting American Back to #1," talking about how he became the person that he is today.

Foursquare

In 2009, Selvadurai co-founded

Foursquare Four square is a ball game. Four square may also refer to: Internet and entertainment * Foursquare City Guide, a local search and discovery app * 4 Square (game show), ''4 Square'' (game show), a British game show * 4 Square (TV series), ''4 Squ ...

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 OpenStreetMap (abbreviated OSM) is a free, Open Database License, open geographic database, map database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveying, surveys, trace from Ae ...

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

FastCompany ''Fast Company'' is an American business magazine published monthly in print and online, focusing on technology, business, and design. It releases six print issues annually. History ''Fast Company'' was founded in November 1995 by Alan Webber ...

, 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 Partners, LLC is a multi-stage venture capital firm based in the U.S. with operations in San Francisco, New York, and Boston. Spark is a generalist VC firm with a portfolio that spans verticals such as consumer internet, enterpris ...

before leaving the company. Selvadurai joined the Expa

startup studio A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to ...

, founded in May 2013 by former Uber and StumbleUpon founder

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

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 American people of Indian Tamil descent American people of Indian descent