Mar 24, 2017 · 22m · mad
Location Intelligence // Jeff Glueck, Foursquare (FirstMark's Data Driven)
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
At Data Driven NYC, Foursquare CEO Jeff Glueck demonstrates how Foursquare transformed its consumer check-in roots into a massive spatial data set, advanced machine learning platform, and predictive location intelligence engine for enterprise partners and financial analytics.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Matt holds 3.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Matt as informed peer 0.4 Guest teaching 5.2 Guest disagreement 0.8 Matt pushing back 0.4
speaking balance: gold is Matt, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 15:40 Dismissing low-quality ad tech competitors
Glueck forcefully criticizes ad tech competitors who use inaccurate satellite boundaries and outsourced manual mapping, referring to competing location signals in the market as junk.
Hardest push from Matt ▶ 12:35 Host seeking clarification on product brandingHost Matt Turck pushes for clarity on the exact product name when asking Glueck about how Foursquare commercializes its foot traffic panels.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 19:00 Explaining limitations of satellite dataGlueck reframes an audience question regarding satellite data by listing critical technical shortfalls of satellites, such as cloud coverage, single-pass limitations, and lack of dwell time context.
Matt holds his own ▶ 12:43 Framing the data productization challengeMatt Turck demonstrates domain understanding of data commercialization by asking Glueck to detail the specific engineering steps required to turn raw unstructured data into actionable B2B products.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Matt as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Matt pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Do You Know Foursquare? Data-Driven Foundations | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Glueck delivers a monologue detailing Foursquare's evolution from early check-ins to an enterprise location intelligence platform. Because this is an uninterrupted presentation monologue, the host is inactive, resulting in host scores of zero. | |
| Snapchat Geo-Filters Case Study | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Glueck explains how enterprise partners like Snapchat, Twitter, and Apple rely on Foursquare's location dataset and machine learning API. As Glueck continues his solo keynote presentation, host-side metrics remain at zero. | |
| Foursquare Dataset Scale Metrics | 0 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Glueck provides a technical breakdown of Foursquare's passive tracking, Wi-Fi triangulation, and multi-floor spatial disambiguation in dense urban environments. The host does not interrupt or participate during this keynote monologue. | |
| Predictive Foot Traffic Case Study: Chipotle and Retail Sales | 0 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Glueck presents real-world case studies where Foursquare foot traffic metrics accurately predicted financial earnings for Chipotle, Apple, and Black Friday retail. This segment concludes Glueck's presentation without host intervention. | |
| Audience and Host Q&A Session | 2 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Matt Turck opens the Q&A session asking Glueck how raw location data was productized, followed by questions from audience members on advertising, satellite comparisons, and political analytics. Glueck retains full command, authoritatively clarifying industry standards and technical capabilities. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Glueck: Foursquare reaches 50M monthly users across web and apps
“We have about fifty million people who use the Foursquare and CitiGuide and the Swarm, or the Foursquare Swarm location-based game around the world each month across websites and our apps.”
Glueck: Foursquare's daily user check-ins hit an all-time high in 2017
“We do more check-ins each day than ever in the history of the company”
Foursquare location technology powers Apple Maps, Uber, Bing, and 100,000 others
“We power a lot of the location inside Bing. We power a lot of Apple Maps around the world. If you search in Uber or Tencent, Pinterest, and Snapchat, Samsung, Twitter, Garmin, these are among the 100,000 companies that now are using this technology set.”
Glueck: Foursquare can map 100 million places worldwide for venue targeting
“We can help you map out a hundred million places in the world, and for us it's a 32nd problem to do what you just said and show when you're inside those businesses the right ad or the right, you know, geo filter for this restaurant, this small restaurant in LA…”
Foursquare processes one billion daily API calls to power Twitter location
“Twitter runs on our hosted platform, which does about a billion API calls a day, and if anyone in the world wants to tag a tweet with the location where they are standing, that uses all of our machine learning to understand where the phone is and tag the tweet…”
Uber dropped Google Maps for Foursquare to power venue search
“If you use Uber and you say, like, I, you know, please pick me up at the, you know, Regency Cinema in Tribeca and take me to the Starbucks on 27th street, rather than typing addresses, That's all powered by Foursquare's global data set and they moved off Googl…”
Apple used Foursquare data to improve international maps after botched rollout
“Apple had a few problems with their map rollout, as you may have heard. And so you know, they came to us to try to improve the map data set around the world outside the U.S.”
Foursquare maps venues within a 95% confidence interval using check-in data
“Over time you build a data set over billions of check-ins, you know the shape of every place, and you know the 95% confidence interval in terms of lat-long where someone is.”
Foursquare passively tracks user phone movements across 105 million businesses
“We understand when phones move in and out of a hundred and five million businesses passively.”
Foursquare Predicted Chipotle's Q1 Sales Drop Within 0.3% Using Location Data
“We went on CNBC a couple weeks before Chipotle's Q-one earnings, and I said in two weeks they're gonna report their earnings, and you're gonna see same store sales down 30% in the United States post the E. Coli scale. And they were like, why should we trust yo…”
Foursquare Predicted Black Friday Retail Drop Within 0.2% Using Store Traffic Data
“We predicted that retail shopping Black Friday weekend would be down three and a half percent watching store traffic in the six weeks leading up to Black Friday last year. NRF came out after the weekend said it was down 3.7%.”
Glueck: Foursquare outpredicted Wall Street on iPhone 6s launch sales
“When we predicted Apple the first weekend of sales for the iPhone six S, and at the time Wall Street consensus was you know, around 11 to twelve million units the first weekend, and we said it would be 13 to 14, and they came out over 13.”
Foursquare data showed women's foot traffic to Trump properties dropped 29%
“During the peak of the campaign, Women, women's foot traffic in blue states to Trump branded properties was down 29% year over year.”
Glueck: Bernie Sanders' campaign used Foursquare data to target Michigan voters
“The Sanders campaign used the data in Michigan, which was the primary that they won, to sort of figure out likely voters, and so we know who goes to colleges. We know, you know, which phones go to yoga studios and buy Subarus, you know, and so, like, we were a…”