# Gary Little

> Gary Little is President and CEO of Foursquare, the world's leading independent location technology platform. A rare operator-investor hybrid, he spent six years running internet monetization at Yahoo, then pivoted into investment banking at Credit Suisse, Lazard, and UBS before co-founding Buckthorn Partners and rising to Managing Director at The Raine Group. At Raine he led the $150M Foursquare investment and negotiated the company's transformative acquisitions of Placed and Factual - then stepped into the CEO seat himself in January 2021. Under his leadership, Foursquare has evolved from a nostalgic social check-in app into the dominant infrastructure layer for location intelligence, covering 190 countries, indexing over 200 million points of interest, and powering the geospatial stacks of enterprises across retail, advertising, real estate, and urban planning.

- **Role:** President and CEO at Foursquare
- **Organizations:** Foursquare, The Raine Group, Buckthorn Partners LLP, UBS Investment Bank, Lazard, Credit Suisse, Yahoo!
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** B.A. in Finance and Economics, Seattle University, M.B.A. in Finance and Accounting, Columbia Business School
- **Known for:** Led Foursquare's transformation from a social check-in app to a global location intelligence platform, Architect of Foursquare's $150M fundraise while at The Raine Group, Key negotiator of Foursquare's acquisition of Placed from Snap Inc.

## Career timeline

- **2002-2007** — Early career as internet operator; senior role in Yahoo! Media Group leading monetization strategy for $1B+ portfolio of properties
- **2007-2010** — Director, Strategy and Business Management at Yahoo!
- **2010-2012** — Associate, Financial Sponsors Group at Credit Suisse
- **2013-2015** — Vice President, Financial Sponsors Group at Lazard
- **2015** — Executive Director at UBS Investment Bank
- **2015-2017** — Principal Investment Director and Senior Advisor at Buckthorn Partners Limited, a London-based private equity firm focused on oil field services
- **2018-2020** — Managing Director and Head of Technology at The Raine Group; led the $150M Foursquare investment; key participant in negotiating Foursquare's acquisition of Placed from Snap and the Foursquare-Factual merger
- **2019-2020** — Board Member at Foursquare
- **2021** — Appointed President and CEO of Foursquare, effective January 1, 2021
- **2021** — Foursquare acquires Unfolded (geospatial data analytics platform)
- **2023** — Foursquare launches Foursquare Graph, a geospatial knowledge graph
- **2025** — Foursquare acquires Superlocal, an AI-powered personalized map app

## Achievements

- Led Foursquare's transformation from a social check-in app to a global location intelligence platform
- Architect of Foursquare's $150M fundraise while at The Raine Group
- Key negotiator of Foursquare's acquisition of Placed from Snap Inc.
- Key negotiator of the Foursquare-Factual merger that created a dominant location data company
- Grew Foursquare's POI database to 200M+ points of interest across 190 countries
- Oversaw acquisition of geospatial analytics platform Unfolded (2021)
- Led launch of Foursquare Graph in 2023
- Led acquisition of Superlocal in 2025
- Previously led monetization strategy for $1B+ portfolio at Yahoo! Media Group

## Latest updates

- **2025-04** — Foursquare acquired Superlocal, an AI-powered personalized map app, under Gary Little's leadership
- **2025-04** — Foursquare raised additional funding (latest round: $3.8M noted in CRM data; total raised $438M+)
- **2024-09** — Gary Little appeared on PYMNTS TV to discuss Foursquare's location intelligence capabilities
- **2024-04** — Gary Little appeared in a YouTube interview discussing Foursquare's remarkable transformation into a leading location intelligence platform
- **2023-05** — Foursquare launched Foursquare Graph, a geospatial knowledge graph under Little's leadership

## Links

- Website: https://foursquare.com
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-little-0670ba4
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/garylittlefsq
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOfDURxfzqY

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/gary-little
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-16