How I Built This with Guy Raz Nirav Tolia: Nextdoor. How neighborhood chatter went global
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Sep 15, 2025 Nirav Tolia, co-founder of Nextdoor, stepped away from a lucrative career at Yahoo to enhance local connectivity. He shares his journey of creating a platform where neighbors can communicate, tackling challenges like establishing trust and defining neighborhood boundaries. Tolia discusses how an initial lack of vision became a unique advantage and the lessons learned from past failures. He emphasizes the untapped potential of local-focused tech, leading to a remarkable rebrand that now serves over 100 million users, ultimately redefining neighborhood engagement.
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Leaving Comfort To Build Something New
- Nirav left millions in Yahoo options to start his own companies because he wanted to build rather than work for existing products.
- He framed leaving as pursuing the chance to "create my own Yahoo."
Surviving The Dot‑Com Crash
- Epinions nearly died in the dot-com bust, shrinking from 100 to about 20 employees and barely surviving.
- The company merged, rebranded, and later sold to eBay after pivoting to shopping.com and finding profitability.
Resignation Over Misrepresentations
- Nirav resigned amid controversy after misrepresenting parts of his background while preparing the company to go public.
- He called stepping away the right decision and a painful lesson he had to pay for.
