Eighteen months ago, it looked like the location wars were over. Foursquare had just closed a $20 million Series B round and rivals like Gowalla, Loopt and Brightkite weren’t having the same buzz or traction. Meanwhile, Christian Wiklund’s company Skout was down to a skeleton crew of three people after burning much of the $4.6 million it had raised since being founded in 2007.

“We were close to going under. We had no traction,” Wiklund said. “But we were really stubborn and there was no way we were going to let that happen.”

A first-time entrepreneur, Wiklund and his co-founder Niklas Lindstrom put their heads down. In 2009, they changed the app to focus on a new demographic: young people who wanted to meet strangers and singles who wanted to flirt.