• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, April 11, 2013

Giving itself more time to grow and mature as a business, Foursquare just took $41 million in private equity.
 
“We’ve got a ton left to do,” Foursquare founder and CEO Dennis Crowley stressed in a Thursday blog post. “We’re building tools for local businesses to connect with their customers. We’re making search better, every single day. We’re building that location layer for the internet… This takes time and a lot of work.”
 
“The news … puts to rest speculation that has been swirling for over a year about how the company needed to raise money to avoid running out of cash,” TechCrunch reports.
 
Regarding the company’s direction, WebProNews writes: “You know that Foursquare has to now focus more on monetization.”
 
“With the additional funds, Foursquare has time to actually build up its business by focusing more on ad operations, sales, and local search features,” Venture Beat notes.
 
Meanwhile, the way in which Foursquare raised its most recent capital round has Web watchers talking.  
 
“The bulk of the money is a multiyear loan from Silver Lake, the rest is convertible debt,” Bloomberg Businessweek reports. “By taking on debt, rather than giving investors equity stakes, Foursquare delays a public debate about its true worth.”
 
Acquisition rumors have followed Foursquare for years, but this latest round of investment makes selling out less likely.
 
As such, “The 1,300,000 businesses using Foursquare to market themselves can sleep easy as it appears they won’t be closing their doors soon like other competitors have,” Marketing Land writes -- referring to Gowalla, which shut down after selling to Facebook in late 2011.