Sarah Friar - Building the Local Graph - [Invest Like the Best, EP. 249]

My guest today is Sarah Friar, the CEO of Nextdoor, which connects people in local neighborhoods together. Sarah’s CV sparkles with impressive achievements at interesting businesses, and we spend a lot of time in this conversation thinking through what excellence looks like as a CEO, CFO, equity analyst, and board member. The rest of our discussion is focused on Nextdoor and how the soon-to-be public business is fostering connections between people and businesses in their local areas. I do this podcast so I get to meet and learn from people like Sarah. I could have talked to her for hours. I hope you enjoy this great conversation with Sarah Friar as much as I did. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here. ------ Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Show Notes [00:03:03] - [First question] - What makes an excellent equity analyst [00:05:51] - Things Sarah does differently as an operator because she was an investor [00:08:29] - Key factors that make a great CFO [00:09:31] - The role of the CFO in regards to capital allocation as a company grows [00:11:50] - What convinced her to join Salesforce and Square [00:14:45] - The initial spark and appeal that led her to join Nextdoor [00:17:35] - Existing problems with ‘community’ and how they approach fixing them [00:21:36] - Interesting and compelling data points about in-person interactions [00:23:54] - Network density as a driving factor of product quality [00:26:43] - What gives Nextdoor a unique angle against some of its existing competitors [00:28:51] - Thoughts on platform leakage and user retention [00:30:57] - Successful strategies for deploying Nextdoor in a new country [00:35:32] - Having a feed and trying to avoid creating echo chambers [00:37:04] - Some of the biggest mistakes they’ve made while trying to grow [00:38:49] - Options for a business model and thoughts on advertising [00:43:25] - The importance of scale, advertising, and their relationship dynamic [00:45:55] - Ways she’s learned to effectively steer the businesses strategy [00:49:48] - Why she doesn’t like titles [00:51:07] - Key levers that will allow Nextdoor to succeed in the future [00:53:35] - How advertisers evaluate platforms like Nextdoor compared to Google or Facebook [00:57:19] - What a successful board member looks like and how she’s learned to be one [00:59:34] - Leading with transparency and empathy [01:02:00] - An overview of what Ladies Who Launch is and what they do [01:03:57] - Way to educate our children about finance and encourage financial literacy [01:07:51] - Making your platforms welcoming and guiding users away from conflict [01:10:30] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for her