00:14:01 · Nirav Tolia
[00:14:01] S8: So those bonds in the local community, they had been eroding. We found a book called Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, the chair of the sociology department at Harvard. And the book was about the sport bowling and its evolution in America and how the popularity of the sport has not changed, but people no longer bowl in bowling leagues. They bowl alone. And it was a symbol of the decline and erosion of community. So we started to look around in our industry, in our lives, in the world in general, and here's what we noticed. We noticed the emergence of social media services. This was the summer of twenty ten. Facebook was starting to really ascend. LinkedIn was starting to ascend. Twitter, now called X, was starting to ascend. And so there was a social platform connecting you to your friends, connecting you to your business colleagues, connecting you to people that you found interesting. There wasn't a social platform though that was connecting you to the physical world in which you lived, your neighborhood. And so as we moved from what was happening in the industry to what was happening in our own lives, we were getting a little older, we were getting more rooted in our neighborhoods, we were less likely to move away, we were more likely to invest in the place that we'd chosen to live. But technology wasn't helping us make those investments. The same way Facebook was making it seamless for us to communicate with friends that we hadn't seen in years, there was no technology service that was making it easy to speak to the person next door. Now we don't rely on that village of the neighborhood where it does take a village. We don't have it anymore. All of those things compelled us, really inspired us to think, can we create a social media service that's focused on what we believe is one of the most important parts of our lives, and that is our local community. The idea was the neighborhood is one of the most important communities of them all, And ironically, while technology may have caused us to retreat away from our neighborhoods and onto our screens, can we use those same screens to bring us back to our neighborhoods? And that was the original vision. To hear from actual neighbors what they wanted in a technology tool to make their neighborhoods stronger, safer, and happier.
00:16:31 · Nirav Tolia, S0
And so before we wrote a line of code, before we designed a single interface, before we thought about the business model, we simply drew a mock up on a piece of paper and we showed it to neighbors and we let them respond. And very quickly we found out that there were no existing technology tools that were bringing people together locally. We could use technology to speak to people on the other side of the world in real time, but there was no technology tool that would introduce us to the person right across the street. And so instantly we knew there was an opportunity, but the problem is when we started the company, the need for Nextdoor existed because people didn't know their neighbors. So if you don't know your neighbors, how do you invite them to a service? And this was a paradoxical challenge for us from the very beginning. The value we were looking to create was squarely in the way of us being able to build that value in the first place. And so we had to invest in really understanding the manual ways to get the first few people in the neighborhood and make sure they were the right few people. And then we had to invest in offline mechanisms, flyers, postcards. People used to laugh at us and say, let me get this straight. You're using real paper, like dead tree paper to advertise your service? And we would say, well, our service is about the real world. Ad[00:18:01] S0: This episode is brought to
00:18:01 · S0, S1, S14, S15
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00:19:01 · S15, S16
Ad[00:19:01] S15: This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just $15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like all I want. Right. Okay. We can afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget. We're gonna stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. Ad[00:19:19] S16: Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for twelve month plan required, $15 per month equivalent, taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Ad[00:19:32] S15: Carhartt's holiday gift guides were built in collaboration with the greatest gift giver of all time, Santa Claus himself. Old Saint Nick counts on Carhartt's durable gear to have his back through rain, sleet, and snow on the biggest night of the year. Because when everyone's counting on you to do your job, what else would you wear to work? Tap the banner to grab a gift for every hardworking person on your holiday shopping list or head to carhartt.com.
00:19:59 · Nirav Tolia
[00:19:59] S8: We aren't advertising using flyers and postcards. Our neighbors are using those mechanisms to tell their neighbors who they don't know about this new service. It ended up working. We're in over 90% of neighborhoods in the country, but it was very slow, although it was steady. And one of the learnings for us is that great community building happens bottoms up. It can't happen top down. And sometimes that means it's slow but steady versus fast and instant. And we live in an industry where companies seem to grow with the snap of fingers, where successes are called overnight successes, but long term value and community, which is a uniquely human value, well, that's something like trust that takes a lot of time to build. You can lose it instantly, but to gain it takes repeated effort. And so all of our challenges, they've all been in the variety of choosing, in many cases, the hard thing to do, because it's the thing that's gonna drive the most long term value when in almost every case, the conventional wisdom is, go and do the things that you can do quickly and easily and efficiently. But for us, it's about choosing the things that build community. And in almost all cases, those are the things that take forever. Being a founder, being a CEO, being an executive, it's a lonely journey. It's not easy to talk about the struggle. It's not easy to confide in people. You wanna be the person who's confident, who's optimistic, who's secure that what we're doing is the right thing. But in reality, it's very, very, very challenging. And there are many moments when you're unsure of yourself. How do you get around those moments? For me, I would tell entrepreneurs and founders the solution has been to first focus on who and then what. And that means first thinking about your teammates versus the business opportunity. So many founders start by saying, what is the business opportunity here? What is the vision that we're trying to build? What is the company we want to create? I always started by saying, who do I want to work with? Who is going to be my set of co founders? Because I know that when I'm alone, the lows are even lower. And frankly, the highs are not as high. But when I'm with a group of people, my community, when I think about we, not me, those lows, they can be overcome. And those highs, they are sublime because I'm sharing them with someone else.
00:22:59 · Nirav Tolia, S0, S1
And so the number one piece of advice that I give founders that I would give anyone trying to do something hard, first focus on who. And when I thought deeply about the thing that I felt had gone really well, but sometimes not so well and needed to go better, it was all around motivating my teammates. How am I interacting with my fellow employees? And ultimately what I realized is leadership is about lifting people up. It's about celebrating their accomplishments. It's about helping them when they feel stuck. Yes. We need to have incredibly high standards. Yes. We need to always be shooting for the stars. Yes. Performance is absolutely the single most important thing in driving success. You have to perform. We're a public company. But as leaders, we can do that by championing people. Ad[00:24:00] S0: This episode is brought to you Ad[00:24:01] S1: by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed Sponsored Jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.