Dennis Crowley - Check-in to NYU

Crowley thought about going to business school after he was laid off from a startup company. A friend brought him to an art show, sponsored by NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). Students at the show were doing cool things, like making robots just for fun. That convinced him to attend ITP.


For his graduate thesis, Crowley decided to make a product with someone he met during his first day of school at NYU. Alex Rainert helped Crowley create Dodgeball. In 2005 Google bought the company for a few millions of dollars. Crowley worked at Google for two years but felt too restricted.


He left Google and created a better evolution of Dodgeball that came to be known as Foursquare.