NextDoor

I visited NextDoor's office for OpenCo several weeks ago. OpenCo is an event that enables you to visit your local companies, factories, governments, etc.

Patio on first floor.



Entrance of NextDoor.



Their Manifesto at the entrance.



The 2 co-founders, Prakash and Sarah gave us a talk. Thank you for taking your time for us! Prakash Janakiraman is VP of engineering, he is ex-Excite and ex-Google, managed the Google Maps engineering team in Mountain View. Sarah Leary is VP of marketing.

NextDoor is the private social network for your neighborhood, a service that enables "conversation" among "neighbors"- police can come but not in conversation. 

29% of Americans know only a few of their neighbors and 28% know none by name- NextDoor is bringing back those neighbor communities back to America.



Which in effect lowers crime, improve public health, and raise test scores.



3 features of NextDoor - private, local and useful.



Their first year was devoted to product-market fit.

First year, they had 176 neighbors in 26 states, which grew rapidly, and today 21,249 neighbors in 50 states.

Many major cities reaching tipping point:

97% San Francisco

96% San Jose

94% Seattle

91% Denver

88% San Diego

80% Dallas

65% Chicago



And across regional areas.



 Member engagement is very strong.

40% growth in neighborhoods last 3 months

46% of members contributed content

1.3M member messages sent per day

20k member invitations sent per day

70 new neighborhoods launch every day

Wide range of use Cases:

26% Recommendation

22% Community issues

20% Crime and Safety

14% Classified

11% Events
7% Other

NextDoor enables virtual neighborhood watch.

They partnered with 120 cities including:

New York, Dallas, Houston, San Jose, San Diego, Phoenix, etc

NextDoor has become lifeline of neighborhoods.



Take mobile seriously- they only had web version, and when they decided to make mobile version, they stopped ALL of development for 1 week to work on iOS version. They could have outsourced, but since mobile is very important, the management wanted all of their engineers to understand mobile. They currently have iOS & Android version.



Demo



Deciding the right boundary is very difficult- when the boundary is proposed, 9 others verify the right boundary.







They have 57 employees.

Q: Dealing with difficult neighbors?
 -real name
 -norm of the neighborhood is different 

  ex. neighborhood in Tenderloin and Texas
 -neighbors self police
 -mute

Q: Business model?
 -Currently focus is in "best consumer service"

Q: How to grow to new city while the company is small
 -word of mouth
 -focus on top cities, have people on the grounds
 -user stories

-Start of NextDoor was pivot from other project
 -Had a team of 7, pivoted.
 -A product that is personally valuable for the founders
 -Initially Sarah was doing hand to hand combat, making phone calls

 -Solve one problem at a time
 -Engineering team worked on automation

-Make the service work for one neighborhood
-Make the service so that they can't live without it

Q: How to find cofounders?
 -Worked together on shopping.com
 -See how people handle stressful situations
 -Find someone who compliment skills
 -Startup is lonely road, you want to have good cofounder,
 think about how much time you spend with them- you need right people

Environment

Some photos from the office:

















Meeting Rooms



Post its!









They prepared tons of donuts for us :D



Fundraising

...and on 10/29 they have raised $60 Million- congratulations!!

Dealbook @ NYT: Nextdoor, a Start-Up, Raises $60 Million

The San Francisco start-up announced a $60 million investment on Tuesday, led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Tiger Global Management, two prominent venture capital firms. Comcast Ventures, Benchmark, Greylock Partners and Shasta Ventures also participated in the fund-raising round.

BloombergBusinessWeek: Nextdoor Said to Top $500 Million Valuation in Financing Round

TechCrunch: NextDoor, The Facebook For Your Neighborhood, Lands $60M From John Doerr, Tiger Global And More To Go International

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer. -Fumi Yamazaki