When Nirav Tolia, CEO of Nextdoor, and fellow co-founder Sarah Leary conceived the idea of the global neighbourhood social network over 15 years ago, they partially did so by walking the streets of Rome and Florence.
“Everyone was eating alfresco,” recalls Tolia. “And the fact there was such a palpable sense of community really inspired us. As we thought about our lives in San Francisco, we didn’t feel that same sense of connection to the people that we lived around, so that was kind of the concept behind Nextdoor.”
This autumn, after five years away, marked the return of both Texas native Tolia at the helm and Leary as head of marketing, community and global business operations, with the duo pushing the button on a Nextdoor transformation.
Having launched in the US in 2011, the UK is Nextdoor’s largest international market with one in four households said to be on the platform, since its 2016 launch, after recently revealing 10 million UK users, who can access recommendations, local information and hyperlocal news.
Texas native Nirav Tolia has been a regular on CNBC’s Shark Tank, the US version of Dragon’s Den.
Tolia’s return, taking over from former CEO Sarah Friar, follows a period away from Nextdoor when he took his family to Florence before COVID hit and they spent a year in Italy “tourist free”.
Learning Italian, Tolia was also given the opportunity to be a professor, with Stanford University managing a small campus in Florence. “Most Americans are pretty provincial and it really had a pretty strong impact on us in the way that we think about things [as a family],” says Tolia.
He also became executive chairman of London-based investment firm Hedosophia — an investor in $2.1bn-valued Nextdoor since 2013 — under founder Ian Osborne.
“His value-add was, ‘take money from me and I will help you as you think about expanding to Europe’,” says Tolia.
Previously “employee number 84” at Yahoo before leaving to co-found epinions.com in the dotcom boom, Tolia says Nextdoor “is the most important thing in my life.”
“It’s not only a business that I really believe in, it’s a concept that is very special to me,” he adds.
“We always felt with Nextdoor we had an opportunity to use social media to drive people into the physical world. We’re trying to just take our execution and match that potential.
“I think the main observation was that the world had changed a lot since we started Nextdoor.”
The Nextdoor platform asks users to verify their address which allows access to their chosen area. Over 80,000 local groups have been created in the UK, from swapping DIY tips and supporting local businesses, to job searching, a market place or joining singles groups. Meanwhile, more than half a million UK businesses have also set up a business page.
Nirav Tolia and wife Megha Tolia attend a business conference in Idaho. ·Drew Angerer via Getty Images
“We are going to allow anyone who has a local presence to create an organic user profile on Nextdoor,” reveals Tolia. “And amidst some rules, we are going to allow them to post into our network.
“Why do I have to go to Instagram to learn things, or X to learn things about the local event that’s happening?
“Nextdoor should very simply tell you all the interesting things that are happening around you. And if we do a good job with that, then you won’t want to miss something and you will start to use it from a daily standpoint.”
Essentially, Nextdoor is looking to become a one-stop shop, as well as a medium for publishers, with the BBC currently trialling the platform. “Particularly with the decline of local newspapers and the erosion of local media and information sources in general, I think that’s a vacuum that we can fill pretty effectively,” says Tolia.
“The feel is created and determined by the people who live in that neighbourhood. So the way that it would feel in London would be very different than the way that it would in the Cotswolds, and to how it feels in France or Italy, two of our other markets.”
Nextdoor has previously come in for a reputation as a “snitch” app while it has sought to address racial profiling on its platform. “We have used AI and other technologies to encourage people to post the right way that’s not inflammatory, harmful and hurtful,” says Tolia.
Nextdoor’s co-founder Sarah Leary speaks during the Web Summit in Lisbon. ·NurPhoto via Getty Images
“And we’ve had a tremendous amount of success. I mean, the content that we would consider harmful and hurtful is sub half a percent. However, it will always be singled out because that’s what people are looking for in some ways.”
Now, Tolia says that “local” is one of the last remaining giant consumer internet opportunities in a fragmented market.
“I think we have an opportunity to really be the most valuable local company in the world,” the internet entrepreneur adds. “We’re not today, not even close, but that’s the guiding vision.”
Growing Nextdoor
I was taking a monitor into the living rooms of people around Northern California, demoing this Nextdoor thing, saying ‘would you use this in your neighbourhood?’
Nextdoor logo is seen displayed in Krakow, Poland on July 3, 2021. (Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto) ·Jakub Porzycki, NurPhoto SRL
And we did that in 175 neighbourhoods in 26 states and the results were off the charts. A year and a half after our first year, we were launching 150 neighbourhoods a day.
Returning as CEO
I’ve pitched Nextdoor thousands of times over the last 14 years. And almost every time I would tell someone about the concept, they would nod their head. They would say, ‘that sounds kind of interesting.’ And then they would join or I would show them the app and it would be so different than what they’d imagined.
The app was good, but it wasn’t great. And so how do we take it from good to great? It just made a lot of sense to have a product-centric founder come back. Because I invented the product originally, so I obviously knew a lot about it.
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