Tristan Walker leaving foursquare for Andreessen Horowitz

Foursquare’s head of business development, Tristan Walker, has announced that he’s leaving the company. Walker essentially founded foursquare’s business development role and has been instrumental in many of the company’s efforts to grow through partnerships.

Walker announced the move in a blog post on his personal blog. He’s accepted a position with foursquare investor Andreessen Horowitz as an entrepreneur-in-residence.

Once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky, you nail your dream job. It happened to me a little over two and a half years ago when I walked onto the 5th floor at 36 Cooper Square. From day one, the opportunity at foursquare enabled me to think big, take risks, re-imagine what’s possible … and following an incredible journey, I have decided to resign from foursquare to pursue my next big dream.

The past two and a half years spent with the foursquare team have been nothing less than life-changing and it has left me incredibly thankful and inspired. It’s been an amazing experience to watch us grow from 3 to over 100 and my love for the company runs deep – it always will.

The story of Walker’s hiring at foursquare is legendary. While working on his MBA at Stanford, he pestered founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai, until they finally offered to have him stop by the office if he was in New York. He hopped on a plane and was there the next day, where they said the job was his if he could sign up 200 businesses. He did it in record time and was offered the position.

Walker led efforts to partner with large brands like PepsiCo, the History Channel, MTV, and others. Many of those partnerships were key to foursquare’s initial growth because they led to exposure to a much wider audience than a NY tech startup could have generated on its own.

The move follows closely behind Selvadurai’s decision to leave the company last month.