About

Dennis Crowley builds things at the intersection of the real world and the digital world — software meant to make everyday life feel a little more fun and playful. He grew up in Medway, Massachusetts, earned a B.A. from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in 1998, and an M.P.S. from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) in 2004.

At ITP he co-created PacManhattan (2004) and co-founded Dodgeball (2003) with Alex Rainert — one of the first location-based mobile social services in the US, acquired by Google in 2005. In 2009 he co-founded Foursquare with Naveen Selvadurai, serving as CEO through 2016, then Executive Chairman; today he is Co-Chair.

He has kept following the same thread ever since. In 2016 he founded Kingston Stockade FC, a semi-professional soccer club in New York’s Hudson Valley. He co-founded Street FC. And in 2024 he co-founded Hopscotch Labs, where he is CEO — building a spatial-audio layer for the world, a “Marauder’s Map for AirPods.”

He was previously an adjunct professor at NYU’s ITP — the same program where he earned his degree. He splits his time between New York City and the Hudson Valley.