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When she was a young woman growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, Sarah Friar witnessed the bombing campaign and the windows of her family home were shattered due to the explosions.
But Friar also saw the best of human nature. In their small town, founded by Quakers firmly opposed to segregation, Catholics and Protestants lived side by side despite their differences and the brutal conflict surrounding them.
“Even against this backdrop, our neighbors, still the same people, were still incredibly involved in our lives, even though they were Catholics, we were Protestants,” Friar said in an interview with the Financial Times. “You could still find ways to be deep friends.”
Now, as executive director of the hyperdoor social network Nextdoor, this 48-year-old is trying to recreate that camaraderie and spirit Blitz, this time, online.
Founded in 2011, Nextdoor has become a niche platform compared to social media giants, aimed at neighbors to share local news, score local businesses, and exchange goods and services.
After less than three years at the helm, Friar announced Tuesday that, after boosting the pandemic-related commitment, he announced Tuesday make the business public through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company backed by Khosla Ventures, raising $ 686 million in gross revenue and valuing the business at $ 4.3 billion.
But as the company grows, continuing to gain favor on Wall Street and its revenue-earning advertisers, it will also mean subjecting keyboard warriors who tend to shrink curtains and racial profiles when they are behind a screen.
For investors, the question remains whether the famous sympathetic Friar can be ruthless enough to wipe them out. nasty neighbors. Proponents, such as John Hope Bryant, a board member of Nextdoor that runs Operation Hope, a nonprofit in financial literacy, have little doubt: ‘just cut it four ways’ starting Sunday,’ Bryant said. ‘It’s no joke.’
Friar, born to a district nurse and a personnel manager in Northern Ireland, Friar struggled to “go out and go see the world”. Few chief executives in Silicon Valley, where the myth of the founder of the genius is approaching and external heads are scarce, have a more varied CV.
After studying at Oxford University, Friar worked as a mine analyst for McKinsey in South Africa immediately after the break-up of apartheid. He then spent more than a decade as a technology-focused equity analyst at Goldman Sachs in San Francisco after the dotcom bubble, through the financial crisis.
It was in this role that he met his mentor, Marc Benioff of Salesforce, who was initially furious because he had put a rating of “sale” on his shares. But the two soon engaged in regularly debating Silicon Valley trends, in a good mood.
When she was disappointed by the financial world after the crisis, Friar called Benioff for advice on whether to join a start-up. Minutes later, he called, “Come work with me. You will learn a lot more by working with me than you will at any of these small businesses, ”he said.
His first stint as Senior Vice President of Finance and Salesforce Strategy was quickly followed by a longer term as CFO of the Jack Dorsey Square Payments Group.
While in Square, Friar “kept the street quite happy with reliable projections and helped the management team create that balance with investment in the future,” said Vinod Khosla, the billionaire founder of venture capital group Khosla. Ventures, which launched Spac on Tuesday.
“We didn’t always agree, but we had a great time looking at that kind of compensation,” he added.
Bill Gurley, general partner of Benchmark Capital and board member of Nextdoor, describes attracting Friar to the role of CEO of Nextdoor in 2018 as a coup; in fact, the share price of his former company fell 15% at the time. “I remember the day it was announced, the statement I started getting from everyone on my network, was‘ how did you get it? “, He said.
Today, board members paint Friar as a shrewd communicator and a hard worker; one described being bombarded with very detailed briefings and board reports almost daily. Others said she is an egotistical leader, a rare quality among the typically macho tech elite.
Still, the bet on the recent Spac boom was bold. Friar has argued that the Spac process was simpler, shorter and more predictable than an initial public offering. He spoke with eight different Spacs, he said, but was selective in partnering with Khosla for his “scale” and “brand.”
T Rowe Price Associates, Soroban Capital, Ark Invest-advised accounts, as well as existing Tiger Global investors, have been involved – and Friar has his own skin in the game, putting what he described as a “significant” amount in the private sector. investment in public capital.
According to the investor’s presentation, the community of about 60 million verified Nextdoor users generated revenue, largely derived from advertising, of $ 123 million in 2020, a 50% year-over-year increase. The company projects a similar growth rate this year, at 44%. Still, the company continues to make losses, with net losses of $ 75 million last year expected to grow to $ 103 million this year.
Moving to profitability will depend on whether Nextdoor’s promise of hyperlocal targeting can attract brands, many of which focus advertising on the Facebook-Google duopoly. Several senior advertising agency executives as well as analysts told FT that the platform was not on their radar. Friar is committed to maturing the company’s advertising offer.
Meanwhile, Friar continues to fight the brand’s security issues, and it’s ironic that Nextdoor has chosen to include it in the $ KIND stock list. Pressed by the concern that some parts of Nextdoor will continue to be a source of misbehavior and misinformation, she offered the same saying that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made after numerous moderation scandals: “Look, we’re not perfect.”
This article has been modified to clarify the nature of the bombing campaign in Northern Ireland
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