Foursquare is the “Switzerland” of the global tech industry, the company’s Chief Executive Officer Jeff Glueck said in a Friday interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC’s Mad Money. The top executive of the New York City-based discovery service said that the firm made the right move by entering big data that led it to discover unlimited possibilities in a wide variety of industries. The recently appointed CEO asserted that “there is no limit” to how many fields big data will be able to disrupt in the future, adding that Foursquare intends to be in the center of that trend. The company currently boasts a massive database of mapped places that consists of approximately 100 million locations and is working with around 100,000 clients, including half of the top 100 largest advertisers on the planet.
Foursquare was in a unique position to seamlessly enter the big data market due to its widely popular search-and-discover service and is currently in the process of expanding its already large client list even further while simultaneously improving its mapping and analytics technologies. The company’s new business focus revolves around tracking and identifying economic and demographic patterns around the world with the goal of serving relevant information to its clients that are aiming to sell their products and services in an efficient manner. Glueck said that each business has a unique “fingerprint,” which is why the company is looking to provide its clients with a highly customizable and specialized big data service that allows them to maximize their potential.
While Foursquare’s brand isn’t as valuable as that of Facebook and Google, the company is said to have developed a system that’s just as accurate at identifying people’s needs and movements as the solutions from the largest tech giants on the planet are. The firm’s services are being used by everyone from Snapchat and Uber to Twitter, and Foursquare is adamant to continue acting as the “Switzerland” of the tech industry by working together with everyone without aligning itself with any particular party, Glueck said. It remains to be seen how that strategy will work out in the long term but more details on the company’s operations and performance will likely be available shortly.