Sarah Friar (Nextdoor) - Building Better Online Communities [ETL Looks Back]

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)

Stanford eCorner

Journey, Startups, Education, Stanford, Culture, Strategy, Stanford University, Entrepreneurship, Business, Life Lessons, Thought Leadership, Creativity, Etl, Challenges, Leadership, Innovation, Founders

4.4 • 739 Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In December 2018, Sarah Jane Friar became CEO of Nextdoor, the world’s largest private social network for neighborhoods. In her conversation with Stanford professor Tom Byers, she discussed her passion for fostering a sense of community amid the challenges of misinformation and social disconnection. Friar highlighted that Nextdoor uniquely leverages the power of proximity, allowing neighbors to connect and support one another effectively. During her early tenure, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she saw rapid growth in platform usage and introduced initiatives to promote kindness and support local businesses. By emphasizing the importance of neighborly behavior, Friar aims to cultivate a kinder world where everyone has a neighborhood to rely on—a vision that remains relevant as new social media platforms emerge and society navigates increasing division and isolation.

The episode first aired on November 18, 2020

Transcript

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0:00.0	Who you are defines how you build.
0:06.7	This is the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series.
0:10.7	Brought you by Stanford E. Corner.
0:13.8	On this episode, we're joined by Sarah Fryer.
0:16.9	Sarah is the CEO of Nextdoor, the world's largest private social network for neighborhoods.
0:22.5	Here's host and Stanford professor, Tom Beyers.
0:25.6	Let's talk about Next Door first. We got a whole bunch of stuff here, but let's dive in the Next Door.
0:31.7	So could you describe Next Door for everybody just in case they do not know about it?
0:37.6	And then what attracted you to take that job?
0:40.4	I'm sure you had lots of opportunities.
0:42.3	Yeah.
0:42.8	So in a nutshell, next door is the place you go to tap into what's going on in your neighborhood.
0:48.5	What's going on around you locally.
0:51.2	It can be a great place to solve problems.
0:53.3	If you are looking for a plumber,
0:56.0	which I was this weekend, an emergency plumber, if you're looking for a great place to go grab
1:00.3	a coffee that can deliver it to you safely right now, you might want to sell a used bike,
1:05.2	you might want to find out what a local event is going on or what the local Health and Human
1:09.7	Services Department is saying about COVID-19. So we really serve us all of the stakeholders in a neighborhood.
1:16.2	It's very different from other social networks in your life. So there's clearly a platform for
1:21.1	your friend network. There's clearly a platform for your professional network. There's many other
1:25.2	platforms that are being born all the time in
	...

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