– Home sweet home. They say you can never go home again, but Sarah Leary would disagree. In 2019, the Nextdoor cofounder stepped away from the company she helped build. Five years later, she returned to her old stomping grounds to help usher in a new era of the neighborhood social networking platform—now a $247 million-in-revenue business with 45.9 million weekly active users.
Leary says that while she attempted to take some time off (unsuccessfully, she points out) and then pivoted to investing in early stage companies like Contra and Connectly, she was able to reconnect with Nextdoor’s original goal of helping people strengthen their real life communities. “When you step away, you’re like, ‘Ooh, maybe we could do that a little bit differently,’” she says. While working with small startups, Leary also better understood the rarity of creating a platform that became ubiquitous: Today, there are over 100 million Nextdoor users in 11 countries.
Three priorities—time-sensitive information, local insights, and neighborhood news—are powering Nextdoor’s next era. A series of partnerships with local news outlets is being unveiled today, and Nextdoor is also improving real-time safety alerts to become an emergency resource.
What would 2011 Sarah think of all that her brainchild has turned into? “I’d be like, ‘OK, girl, you did it!’ And at the same time, I’d think: ‘Wow, building enduring companies is hard work,’” she says. “Nextdoor is my baby. I put my heart and soul into this. This is a mission that I believe in very strongly.”
Sara Braun
sara.braun@fortune.com
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