Dennis Crowley

Dennis Crowley (born June 19, 1976) is an American Internet entrepreneur best known for co-founding the popular social networking sites Dodgeball and Foursquare.

Education

Crowley was born in Medway, Massachusetts to Mary Moraski Crowley and Dennis P. Crowley. He grew up in a church-going close-knit family. He graduated from Xaverian Brothers High School in Westwood, Massachusetts in 1994 and was featured in the front-cover story of Xaverian's seasonal magazine. He received a B.A. in 1998 from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and a M.P.S. master's degree in 2004 from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP).

Career

After graduating from Syracuse, Crowley worked as a researcher for Jupiter Communications. In 2000, he joined mobile app provider Vindigo as a product developer. In 2003, he worked on MTV's wireless product development side, and held stints at PacManhattan and ConQwest 2004.

Crowley co-founded Dodgeball with fellow student Alex Rainert in 2003 while attending New York University. Dodgeball was subsequently acquired by Google in 2005, after which Crowley along with Naveen Selvadurai developed a second version of the original Dodgeball service called Foursquare in late 2008 and launched the service at SXSW in 2009. Foursquare, offering location-based social networking services via mobile devices, had over 6 million users worldwide as of January 2011, 10 million users as of June 2011 and 25 million users reportedly in August 2012.

Awards

Crowley has been a member of the Crain's New York Business 40 Under 40 in 2011; he was also named one of Fortune Magazine's "40 under 40" Business's hottest rising stars in 2010. The online magazine AskMen.com ranked Dennis Crowley number 19 of the "Top 49 Most Influential Men 2010." In 2005, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35.

Controversy 2014 Boston Marathon

In 2014 Crowley admitted to producing a fraudulent Boston Marathon bib for his wife, Chelsa Crowley, to use. He apologized for his actions. In a statement, Crowley admitted what he had done had "...overshadowed the event for those who ran and those who ran to honor others".

Personal life

Crowley married Chelsa Lynn Skees at Buttermilk Falls Inn in Milton, N.Y. Sarah Simmons, a Universal Life Church minister, officiated. He is a Christian.

External links

• Official website