When Foursquare launched, it quickly became one of the biggest, buzziest startups.
The company, which started as a a location-based check-in game for users, has gone on to raise over $240 million from investors, including from prominent venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Spark Capital.
What did Foursquare look like before it raised any money at all?
According to the company’s earliest investor pitch deck, which cofounder Dennis Crowley sent to Business Insider back in 2011, the app was a self-proclaimed “part friend-finder, part social city-guide, part social-game.”
Crowley shared Foursquare’s original pitch deck from July 6, 2009, three months after Foursquare’s famous SXSW and two months before he says funding talks “really kicked up.”
“Decks don’t have to be super formal,” Crowley told Business Insider back then. “It’s okay to stray from the ‘business school 10-slide pitch deck template.”
A version of this story was first published in 2011.