How Nextdoor found product-market fit: Sarah Leary shares how pivoting helped Nextdoor scale to over 250,000 neighborhoods

How do you know when an early-stage startup idea is working, and what do you do if it isn’t? 

Today we talk with Sarah Leary, the Co-Founder of Nextdoor, the iconic neighborhood network that enables local communities to receive trusted information, give and get help, get things done, and build real-world connections with those nearby. Sarah gives us insight into the early days of Nextdoor: the pivots they made, community-building strategies they used, and how they found product-market fit on their path to being adopted by over 250,000 communities in 11 countries. 

Join us as we discuss:

•  How Nextdoor found product-market fit. 
•  The early days of Nextdoor and the founding team’s decision to pivot from a sports community to what became Nextdoor.
•  How successful community products empower users by helping them replicate their real-life workflows online easier and faster.            

For more resources from Sarah on how to validate your startup idea and start your company, check out the Unusual Ventures Field Guide module here: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/building-conviction About Unusual Ventures — Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building infrastructure software and application-level companies. Unusual was founded in 2018 with the mission to reinvent the venture capital engagement model by serving entrepreneurs with an unprecedented level of hands-on services.   

Described as a partner versus a top-down stakeholder by its portfolio companies, Unusual is laser-focused on serving exceptional founders and teams building innovative products. With offices in Menlo Park, San Francisco, and Boston, Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, Harness, 
and Vivun. 

About Sandhya Hegde — Sandhya is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in enterprise SaaS companies. Previously an early employee and executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc and on Twitter (https://twitter.com/sandhya) and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyahegde/).