That was a great read. Thanks for posting. It might just be your writing style but one thing I took away was Foursquare was leading and you were following. Or, to put it another way, you guys obsessed over them at the expense of your vision and they stuck to their vision. If that happens they're always going to be 1 step ahead by definition. Maybe that's what you mean by "Play by your own rules"

Great story, thanks for the post and congrats on achieving what you did.