- Do any of us know our neighbors anymore?
Sarah Friar, the CEO of Nextdoor is trying to change that.
- When you talk to people
about what their neighborhood was like when they grew up,
they all say something very similar.
It was great.
We knew all of my neighbors.
I played in and out of other people's homes.
And yet today, all of that has been taken from us.
- It's a different kind of social network,
bringing people together instead of driving them apart.
- Unlike other social media platforms
where you don't have an expectation of seeing that person
in real life, Nextdoor is all about real life.
I think that in real life piece
is actually the magic of Nextdoor.
- I'm Monica Langley, and this is "The Inflection Point".
Hi, Sarah.
Thanks for joining me today.
- It's great to be here, Monica.
Thank you.
- First question to you is when was that moment
in your life that turned out to be a real inflection point?
- My inflection point was moving to South Africa
right at that point where that country
was going through massive societal change.
It became the rainbow nation,
but it taught me so much about business, about leadership,
but also being a human in society.
- That's a big amount of stuff put into that one moment.
Let's unpack it.
What year did you go?
And paint us that picture.
- Yeah, so I went in 1996.
I was fresh out of university.
I joined McKinsey and so they sent me down there to work
with a lot of mining companies and so on.
- And in '96, that was just two years
after apartheid ended in South Africa,
Nelson Mandela had just been elected
and so there was a lot of tumult in that country.
- There was tumult,
but also just incredible optimism and joy.
- So how did that change you as a human being?
- There were kind of two moments.
One personal, one business.
I'll start with the business one.
We were working on a mine that was trying to figure out
how to become viable.
On top of that, the government was saying,
we have to start seeing black people
at the top of these organizations.
So we were trying to bring people
through the organization speedily.
We had posted notes, sticky notes, all over this big wall.
I remember I was tracking this one guy,
I'd met him,
I was so taken with him,
he was such an up and comer.
He deserved to be right at the top of this company.
One day I came in and his post-it note had disappeared.
I was kind of, did this just fall off the board?
I'm looking around the floor,
and I said, "where did Daniel's post-it note go?"
They said, oh, he was diagnosed HIV positive.
In that moment I realized we could do everything we wanted
as business people,
but if we didn't think about the society
and what was impacting the societal outcomes,
the business was for not, in that case,
getting control of the HIV epidemic, as an example.
The personal one was going, believe it or not,
to Michael Jackson concert.
- In South Africa?
- In South Africa.
He sang "Black or White",
doesn't matter if you're black or white.
The whole audience, I remember just looking around
and then holding hands with all of the people
of all different colors and shapes,
and it was an amazing personal moment.
It still gives me goosebumps,
still makes me a little tearful.
Just realizing, again, humanity is awesome
when we do the right thing.
It's a lot of what keeps me optimistic in what I do today.
- Let's talk about also your life
and having seen people work together,
but also have so much strife.
That is your own childhood.
- Yeah. I mean, I grew up in a little village
right on the border in Northern Ireland, between north and south,
during the troubles.
I think, today, people start to understand a little bit more
that that was a war,
but it was not well known for many, many decades almost.
But we had gotten to a point where religion divided everyone
and we were willing to kill each other.
My parents are, today, we'd call 'em community activists,
but they didn't have fancy names like that.
So my mom is the local nurse.
She's the midwife.
A lot of people are still giving birth at home.
My dad is the personnel manager of the local mail,
and every night there's people outside our house,
like whatever problem you had, if you had a health issue,
if you needed a job, if you know...
- They were at your house?
- They were knocking on our back door.
My mom and dad would get up from the dinner table
and they would go into the kitchen,
and there'd be two chairs and they would have a chat.
And that as kids,
we saw that over and over again.
So you have this wonderful community thing going on,
but at the same time, there are bombs going off.
There are people getting shot around you.
I think, as a parent, I look back now
and I'm like, how did my parents deal with that
because it's kind of all sorts of crazy in hindsight.
- You lived through these very pivotal moments in history
in Northern Ireland
and then when you were working in South Africa.
Has that really informed your leadership?
- It has.
If I think about why I'm so excited about Nextdoor
and why it speaks to me, it's all about community
and about this belief that when you aggregate people
like humans coming together
around something they care about
and local is something everyone cares about,
'cause it's where you live, right?
It's where your family is.
It is the most potent thing on earth.
But I think that's what those arcs have brought me too.
- Which brings us to Nextdoor.
Millions of people are on Nextdoor, as am I.
- Thank you. - I checked it this morning.
My home is in South Carolina,
so I wanted to see what's happening at home.
There was a beautiful rainbow this morning
according to Nextdoor,
and there also is an alligator on the loose.
(both laughing)
- That's a good Nextdoor story.
- Yes.
So what is the origin of Nextdoor?
- So our founders got together
and read this wonderful Pew Institute survey
that said 29% of US neighbors only knew one other neighbor
and 27% knew zero.
So half of the United States said they only knew one person
in their neighborhood or no one at all.
So they said, we are going to try to solve that problem.
- First of all, that's a shocking number,
but second of all, you can kinda see it
'cause we all go inside
and stay on our social media anymore,
and do that kind of thing.
So there is a real need for a Nextdoor.
- It's really needed, because of what you just said.
When you talk to people
about what their neighborhood was like when they grew up,
they all say something very similar.
It was great.
We knew all of my neighbors.
I played in and out of other people's homes.
Yet today, all of that has been taken from us,
and so what's that leading to?
It's leading to social isolation, loneliness.
It's an epidemic.
We've done research that shows knowing six neighbors or more
but just six has a statistically significant impact
on your feelings of well-being.
If you're willing to do one little act of kindness
every week, and we did it over a six week study,
that has a huge impact on your actual physiological
as well as mental wellbeing.
So if you think about loneliness as being the equivalent
of smoking a pack of cigarettes per day,
then Nextdoor must be the equivalent of, I don't know,
running and eating your greens every day. (chuckles)
- It's so much easier.
- And it's much more fun.
(both chuckling)
Exactly.
- Tell us what it is for those
who don't yet know what Nextdoor is.
- To me, Nextdoor is, first of all,
the place you go when you need trusted information.
So I always say Kathy down the street is my neighbor
but she's the font of all knowledge.
So when I needed a babysitter or I needed to know
like an emergency plumber, I'd call Kathy.
And to me Nextdoor is just Kathy on steroids, right?
It's big time word of mouth trusted information.
It's also the place you give and get help.
Like help me find my lost dog,
help me get together in a group.
There's lots of way help happens.
The final reason that we think actually the most important
is people come to Nextdoor to create connection.
So unlike other social media platforms
where you don't have an expectation of seeing that person
in real life, Nextdoor is all about real life.
I think that in real life piece
is actually the magic of Nextdoor,
because that's where great communities are created.
- You became CEO of Nextdoor in 2018.
You took the company public this past fall.
Yes.
So why did you decide to take the company public?
- Couple of reasons.
Number one to raise money.
So we wanna be huge.
Nextdoor should be global.
There is not a person in the world that's not a neighbor.
I actually love that thought.
Queen Elizabeth is a neighbor to someone.
Second, we were ready
and I think it's a credentializing moment.
It kind of says we are serious
and you should take us seriously.
Particularly, think about our costumers, our advertisers, for example,
it's just another way of continuing to put Nextdoor
on the map of the up and coming platform
where you wanna come advertise.
- Your stock soared on the day of your IPO.
- It did.
- Yeah, I saw that.
Now, why did you pick your ticker symbol?
- Ticker, yes.
- It was interesting.
- Kind.
- Kind, K-I-N-D.
- K-I-N-D.
It was kind of a throw-down moment of we are building,
our purpose is to cultivate a kinder world
where everyone has a neighborhood to rely on.
We believe that in this case, a platform can be used
for good for really pro-social behaviors.
The word kind for us is not just about nice staff, right?
There's a lot of kindness that is super nice,
but there's a lot of kindness
that I think edges into toughness.
As a leader, I actually think giving kind
and candid feedback can be a tough moment,
but it means I care about you
and I want you to develop.
Because if I don't give you that tough feedback,
I'm actually being unkind,
'cause how are you ever gonna get better?
Growing up in Northern Ireland,
I think, one of the things I learned
is if you didn't get the opposing sides around the table,
how are you ever gonna create peace?
So kind for me is also that, it's being willing
to have our toughest conversations,
but in a constructive way.
That's what we're building with Nextdoor.
- You talk about that because one of the models of Nextdoor
is civil disagreement.
- We have constructive conversations, civil disagreement.
Yeah. - Yeah.
So it's interesting
because you do read people disagreeing out there.
- Absolutely.
It's healthy.
By the way, I think that's supremely healthy.
Those are the debates that should happen in neighborhoods.
- So we all know communities kinda like families
can be messy.
So what do you think about now
that when some of these people on Nextdoor
have their megaphone moment and they can go off?
- So a couple of things there, number one,
remember, Nextdoor is founded on trust.
So it's real people at a real address.
I'm gonna meet you.
I can be a jerk online
but I'm probably gonna bump into you
on the side of the kids' soccer pitch.
Second, we have pioneered community moderation.
This is very different from every other platform.
We have over 230,000 neighborhood team members,
we call it, all over the world
and they are the people who do moderation
in their community, they welcome a new neighbor,
and we felt that was important
'cause it brings local context.
So if you think about my dad's neighborhood
in Northern Ireland, someone sitting here on the west coast
of the United States has no idea
of how to moderate that neighborhood.
What's a joke, right?
We're a little bit more sarcastic in Northern Ireland.
Probably, wouldn't go down as well here on the west coast.
So you need that kind of tone, that cultural piece.
- Is there a point when it has to rise
to your level as the CEO, Sarah, where you've had to jump in
and they're like, this is not working here.
You're like, okay, I gotta make a call.
- Me jumping in on a topic or a person
is a really unscalable model.
So being willing to make this trade-off
between engagement and growth.
Now, I do think this is a CEO decision,
'cause in the end, it's about the size your company becomes.
We have decided to take the path of slowing people down.
So we've worked with literally some of the best
in the world.
So Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt out of Stanford.
She is wowing, just won a huge prize for this work,
which is all about how do you slow people down.
So we have something called kindness reminder.
So if I were writing back to you and was gonna say
Monica, you moron, for example, use a better word.
You get a little pop up, that slows you down.
- That's fascinating.
But it goes to what we have told as moms
to our children sometimes.
My daughter even sometimes tells me, take a breath.
- Yeah.
We know over a third of people are willing to edit.
They still post, which is important,
'cause you want the conversation to keep going.
But a third of people edit
and we're continuing to do more there.
So we're willing to slow you down,
that balance of engagement and growth.
- Do you find that this is particularly helpful
now that we know with social networks,
there's a lot of divisiveness, misinformation
as well as racial profiling or xenophobia.
Do you find that you're employing that in those areas?
Because that's what people are critical of.
- Absolutely. - Of all social networks.
I'm not singling out.
- Oh, totally.
In fact, we would like other social networks.
This is an example where I'm like, copy our IP,
because we've led the way, but please do this.
We do it for all sorts.
Like kindness is one.
We do one for misinformation.
We do one for discrimination,
where it's has just a slightly different design element,
but the science behind it is the same.
- Have you called Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook?
- (chuckles) We have shown it to a lot of people
in these different companies.
- Another thing that fascinates me about you
is when I look at you as a CEO,
you are not scared to take on hot button issues.
Some CEOs say, absolutely not.
Why do I wanna attract attention for the good or the bad,
because I know I'll anger some people
and other people will love me.
- I mean, it comes back to the inflection point, right?
It was that moment where I realized you cannot just live
in your bubble and say, I run a business
and it's just about dollars and cents, right?
It's the old Milton Freeman, right?
That you - shareholder value.
Stakeholder value is where the world is going.
I think more and more CEOs are being asked to step in.
I think you have to be careful of if you stand
for everything, you stand for nothing.
So you have to pick your entree points.
I think they should be aligned to your purpose as a company.
So if something has a local element to it,
then I think Nextdoor has to have a point of view.
- Let's talk about ladies who launch.
I love this.
I like it so much better than the ladies who lunch.
- Yes. We launch things,
we don't lunch a lot.
In fact, we barely eat
'cause we're usually working so hard.
I remember so clearly a friend who laughed,
she had this great ad job at Conde Nast,
and she laughed and was doing her own business.
She's sitting at her kitchen table and I called in
for a quick cocktail on the way home from work.
She said, I had a really miserable day.
Now I run my own business, nobody shows up for me.
It kinda really resonated.
Nobody shows up for you.
I'm like, you know what?
I am gonna show up for you.
We're gonna build an organization
that shows up for you and people like you.
- When I started at the Wall Street Journal decades ago
before I joined Salesforce,
I was one of the few women on Wall Street.
It was daunting because I was really looked at hard
and it was a little lonely.
Have you felt heading a tech company is either of those?
- (chuckles) Well, I think it's definitely,
you have to be better.
There is no room.
- Your daughter gave you a bracelet that says badass.
So she knows you gotta be a badass to do this.
- Yeah.
I mean, there is no room for mistakes
when you are the the only in the room
or the the only few in the room.
And that's been true right,
I was an engineer in college.
I joined a consulting firm
where there are not a lot of women.
I went to South Africa, there are no women.
I joined banking, there was no women.
I went to tech, there really weren't a lot of women.
So I think you have to be better.
There's no room for mediocre women.
I will not say what the other side of that statement is.
(Sarah laughs)
But is it lone-
- Well, what? Say it?
- Well, I think, there's a lot of room for mediocre men.
- Yeah.
- It's because the network supports them.
I think it's getting better.
On the other side, I think it's getting better,
but not fast enough.
That frustrates me for my daughter.
- Okay.
It's 2032, a decade from now, where is Nextdoor?
- Nextdoor is global.
Number one.
Everyone's a neighbor,
we are gonna be everywhere in the world.
We are going to be known as that platform
that helped communities really come together,
but also an amazing platform for social commerce.
- And where are you, Sarah Friar, in a decade?
- That is a hard question.
I hope I'm at the helm of Nextdoor,
and if I'm not, it's because I'm side-by-side
with someone amazing that I've groomed
that's come up and that we share a common vision.
I hope I'm still as intellectually, crazily curious
as I am today.
I don't think that will ever leave me.
Of course, a decade in technology was kind of wild to think
what the opportunities will be for someone like me
to keep partaking in building out
this crazy tech-driven world.
- We look forward to seeing it.
Thank you so much.
- Thank you.