Dennis Crowley
Now: Co-founder and CEO of Foursquare
First Job: Research associate, Jupiter Research
It was a low-level research position, interviewing Internet 1.0 companies about the things they were doing right and wrong in building and scaling their websites. I got to meet with lots of great companies and work with an amazing pool of people who are all over New York City doing great things now (e.g. Pat Keane from Associated Content, Evan Cohen who's now our GM). I had just moved from Syracuse University to New York City and the mix of Internet rock stars and downtown kids working there and the access to the people and companies as reps of Jupiter made it the ideal first gig out of school.
Of course, this is all in hindsight. While I was there I was thinking, "I can't believe I'm stuck here making PowerPoint slides!"
NEXT: Max Levchin
Last updated October 29 2010: 7:00 AM ET
