>>Jonathan Zittrain:
When you were ten, and you are now long past
that time; correct?
>>Naveen Selvadurai: Much less so than these
guys. I am 29.
>>Jonathan Zittrain: When you were ten, did
you know you wanted to go into location-based
check-in reporting for consumers?
>>Naveen Selvadurai: When I was ten, I don't
think -- I think we had mobile phones, but
we didn't have GPS. We didn't -- well, not
that we didn't have GPS. We didn't have GPS
in our phones. We didn't have any of this
location technology.
When I was ten, I think I knew I wanted to
become an engineer. My dad was a engineer.
He was a Merchant Marine. He was kind of a
jack of all trades. So he could do electrical.
He'd kind of hack together tools on his own.
He built his own radio from scratch. So I
grew up in that environment. And I knew I
wanted to be an engineer. I knew I wanted
to do something with computers.
>>Jonathan Zittrain: And?
>>Naveen Selvadurai: And, yeah, I think the
transformation is that I went to school to
study engineering not really knowing what
I was going to do in the future.
>>Jonathan Zittrain: And did you graduate
school?
>>Naveen Selvadurai: I did, yeah.
>>Jonathan Zittrain: We won't hold that against
you.
>>Naveen Selvadurai: Well, thank you. I got
both my bachelor's and my master's. My parents
made me kind of have this wholesome education.
They really wanted that on my resume before
I moved on to other things. And I went to
do that. And then, again, I still didn't know
what I wanted to do in the future. And I just
happened to be working with some people, consulting
with a startup that my college roommate was
working in. And we were trying to bring music
to mobile phones. So this was before iTunes
and Spotify and all the stuff that we know,
way back in, I guess, 2002, 2003. I started
working on that project and went to work at
Sony. And I built tools to bring all sorts
of music dynamically to phones all around
the world in all the major carriers.
Then I sort of got bored with that, and I
have been doing a lot of travel. I've grown
up in a family that loves to travel. My dad
spent 15 years sailing around the world. I
wouldn't see him for eight or nine months
of the year because he was always somewhere
else. That was ingrained in me as I grew up.
I wanted to do and build something that helps
us learn more about where we live and learn
more about locations to go to our friends
go to and learn more about the world in which
we interact every day. And I guess those are
some of the things that I, you know, like
-- that moved me to start something.
>>Jonathan Zittrain: You came up with the
idea that I guess was known as Dodge Ball
and then became foursquare.
>>Naveen Selvadurai: well, I was actually
not a part of the Dodge Ball program. So when
I quit Sony, I actually met my cofounder Dennis,
my buddy. And he actually started Dodge Ball
and went to Google and then decided to leave
and start over again.
And we met around that time. And we brought
some of these ideas together, me more from
the travel side of things and the idea of
to do lists and recommendations, and, you
know, just built it on that foundation.
>>Jonathan Zittrain: And how much naysaying
did you encounter from family, from friends
otherwise as you started something pretty
much from scratch?
>>Naveen Selvadurai: Quite a lot, actually.
I think there is this kind of saying in the
U.S., like the haters are going to hate. And
that's always true, because people are always
going be to be naysaying, for various reasons.
Maybe they're too afraid to take the risks.
Maybe they think they can see the future.
I don't know what it is. But when you're really
passionate about something, you just have
to keep going and you just have to go do it.
You're not going to get it right the first
time. You're going to make a lot of mistakes.
You're going to have to find people to tap
into, people that have done this before or
people that can kind of sympathize and point
you in the right direction. People you can
talk to about certain ideas, whether they
be technical or business or social issues.
And you just have to try it out. You never
really know.
I think one of the reasons I quit my job,
and I was very comfortable in that job, I
was only 24 at the time, and I, you know -- I
realized that now is kind of the time to take
risks, much -- I'm much younger than I'm ever
going to be, obviously. And now is the time
to do interesting things and try it out. And
that's what propelled me to do it.
>>Jonathan Zittrain: What made you head east,
away from Silicon Valley to do it?
>>Naveen Selvadurai: I was actually never
in Silicon Valley. After school, when I was
at Sony, I moved to New York City. And I've
been there ever since. So there was no question
of should we start in Silicon Valley or somewhere
else or New York City? We love New York City,
the city has everything to offer us, whether
it be our friends or cultural things or social
things, great food, all of the stuff, as well
as a great base for good engineers and everything
we need to build a company.
>>Jonathan Zittrain: Gotcha.
