Executive Chairman and co-founder of Foursquare Dennis Crowley drew from his career as a tech entrepreneur and encouraged Boston College students he spoke with over Zoom on Wednesday to transform their visions into something tangible.

“My best piece of advice is that if there is something in the world that you wish existed and it doesn’t yet exist, you have to go find a way to make that thing,” he said in an Instagram story video on the Shea Center for Entrepreneurship’s account in promotion of the event. “No matter what it is, focus on making that thing, and get it built.”

After graduating from Syracuse University in 1998, Crowley moved to New York City and worked for an internet analyst firm. While working there, he was exposed to not only a rapidly growing city but also an ever-expanding internet landscape, he said. Although the city was quickly expanding, the city guides were not.

“At the time I realized that no one had made a city guide that could keep up with how quickly New York was expanding,” Crowley recalled. “I kind of came up with this idea that there should be a city guide where anyone can just add a place, and anyone can add their own reviews.”

Crowley was not going to wait around for such a platform to materialize—thus, Dodgeball, one of the first mobile social media platforms, was born. “[We thought,] ‘If no one is going to make it, we should just make it ourselves,’” Crowley said.

Source Credit: The Heights