Nextdoor.com—The Mothership

The first thing you see is the manifesto

Reprint from August 2014

They don’t make money and there’s no IPO, but Nextdoor.com is booming. The neighborhood social media company’s headquarters are in San Francisco and ESP visited them on Thursday.

Angel investors helped launch the start up and the young crew is busy working to join neighbors together.

The operation covers a whole floor of a historic building on Market Street and is tricked out like most Silicon job sites. Employees have a pingpong table, conversation cubbies, free food and drinks and a light-filled, airy, flexible workplace. Office design includes workrooms named after some of the original neighborhoods to join the network.

There is no East Sac room, yet

The hive

During my tour people waved, smiled and  yoo-hooed, but quickly returned to work. There was a high level of serious concentration in the cube-less work area.

I only have one complaint. There were no grey hairs walking around Nextdoor.com. This is the nature of social media, but many neighborhood group members and activists are 40+. (Often it’s when the kids are grown that neighbors have more time to volunteer.) Involving experienced (a-hem) older folks in the leadership team would be a positive move.

Nextdoor is working on many design and content changes. They soon will include neighborhood organizations, and they are fine tuning their layout and pages. One of the biggest challenges they face is making money. They won’t be selling any information, but they are considering offering local “groupon” type promotions and other user-choice money makers.

You can learn the full history and scope of the network on the Nextdoor.com website.

Ellen Cochrane