Many of us don’t know our neighbors anymore — and Nirav Tolia wanted to change that. He walked away from millions in stock options at Yahoo and eventually co-founded Nextdoor, the hyperlocal social network where neighbors share local news and recommendations. Along the way, he learned that for a digital service, Nextdoor demanded a ton of manual work: drawing neighborhood boundaries with Sharpies, sending individual “invite” postcards by snail mail, talking to neighbors about the information they wanted. After 8 years of grind, Nirav stepped away as CEO, only to return 6 years later to spearhead an ambitious rebrand of Nextdoor, which now has 100 million users around the world.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why Nirav walked away from millions in stock options to launch his own business
- How the failure of an early business helped fuel Nextdoor’s success
- How not having an initial vision for your brand can be a superpower.
- Why apps that focus on “local” are so hard to master
- Why Nirav believes” local” is a massive untapped opportunity in tech.
