Failing publicly and feeling at home with NextDoor’s Nirav Tolia

Nirav Tolia [00:00:02] My mom thought to herself, my son was going to be a doctor, and now he wants to work at a company called Yahoo! And I think my mom actually believed that I was going to go work for a milk company. 

Sophie Bearman [00:00:28] You're listening to Life and Seven Songs from The San Francisco Standard. I'm Sophie Bearman. I'm going to take you back to social media circa 2011. You had a network for family and friends, Facebook, you had a network for colleagues, LinkedIn, and then Near of Tolia, originally just a kid from small town Texas, launched the first social network for neighbors. Nirav is the co-founder and CEO of Nextdoor, a private social network serving neighborhoods with the goal of connecting nearby strangers so they can give and give help, get things done, and build IRL relationships. And this week, Nirav will tell us how he went from pre-med at Stanford to working at Yahoo, the tech company, not the chocolate milk brand, Yoohoo, to launching his own businesses. Nirav, thank you so much for joining us. 

Nirav Tolia [00:01:21] Thank you for having me, Sophie, It's a pleasure to be here. 

Sophie Bearman [00:01:23] So you describe Next Door as being a place where you can connect to the neighborhoods that matter to you so you belong. So I'm curious, did you ever feel like you didn't belong? 

Nirav Tolia [00:01:34] It's very personal because my parents are Indian immigrants. They did not grow up in America. I was born here and I grew up in America. So I feel very American, as do my parents now. But there have been many moments in my life, not just when I was growing up, but even when I was a professional feeling a little bit of imposter syndrome where I wasn't sure if I belonged. And so the kinds of things that would make me feel like I belong have always been very important to me. And songs are one of those things. 

Sophie Bearman [00:02:04] So let's go back to the beginning then. You were the only Indian-American in your school. Was that the case through elementary, middle school, high school? Pretty much your whole upbringing? 

Nirav Tolia [00:02:12] Most of my upbringing and my parents moved to Texas when I was, I think, 1 or 2 years old, so I grew up in West Texas in a small town called Odessa. Very famous these days for its football team because of the book and the movie and the TV show called "Friday Night Lights." And I certainly felt like a stranger in a strange land as one of the only Indians, if not the only one. And I had to find my way because initially I wasn't sure am I Indian or am I American? I think people around me weren't sure Am I Indian or am I American? I had a different name and a different skin color. And so the question is, what are you, right? What is your identity and why can't I fit in? And I think having this inner conflict of do I belong? Those were thoughts that were going through my head. 

Sophie Bearman [00:02:58] Is there a moment where you were judged as a kid? 

Nirav Tolia [00:03:02] I think it was more when I look back. My my mom telling me that I would ask her not to wear her traditional Indian clothing because I was embarrassed when she would come to pick me up and look different. I remember friends visiting me at home and saying that our homes smelled different than their homes did because of the Indian spices. It's a tough feeling because you have to be confident enough and self-aware enough to not take it personally. And I would say more often than not, I did take it personally. And so I remember thinking, people are judging me because of things I can't control. I can't control the way my name is spelled or pronounced. I can't control the color of my skin. What I can control, however, is how good I'm doing in school, how well I'm playing in any sports, the kind of person that I am. Am I polite, courteous and giving? Ultimately, those became a big part of making me who I am and a big part of whatever success I've achieved. 

Sophie Bearman [00:04:07] You chose the song. You chose John Denver's T"ake Me Home Country Roads" to represent Your time in Odessa. How come? 

Nirav Tolia [00:04:15] It is a song that my parents played for me growing up and a song that we loved listening to as a family. In fact, I remember listening to it on an eight track player, if you can believe that. And the words, they evoke this feeling of being at home and because of the word "country." I was in West Texas. Many people did consider that country. It feels like Texas, even though he's talking about West Virginia. And as immigrants, when you come to a new country, you're looking for totems that make you feel like you're American. And there's something about the words "Take me home, country roads." Even John Denver's name, John Denver, felt very Americana. 

Nirav Tolia [00:05:06] "Home is where I'm going." And there's that word "belong." One of the beautiful things is even thinking about "Take me home." What does home mean? Does home mean a place? Does it mean a person? Does it mean a time of your life? And it's just it's it's very powerful to me that I'm hearing a song that I heard when I was three, four, five years old. And here I am 50 years later, and it makes me feel like I belong even today. And when I look back on my life now, the fact that after living in California for 30 years, I've gone back to Texas says a lot about how I did feel like and do feel like I belong there. 

Sophie Bearman [00:06:00] You're based in Texas now?

Nirav Tolia [00:06:02] We have moved my wife and three young kids and I three years ago to Dallas, Texas, where my parents have moved and where my only sibling is. I'm a little surprised that I went back to Texas. But Texas has a lot of values that I respect. And at the very top of that list is family, community. And then coming back to that word, belonging. 

Sophie Bearman [00:06:22] Both of your parents were physicians. What did you want to be growing up? 

Nirav Tolia [00:06:26] Well, if you're an Indian kid growing up in those days, you can really only be a physician or an engineer and you have to go to the best school possible. And so as I went off to Stanford, I wanted to be exactly like my parents. And in particular, I wanted to be a surgeon like my dad. 

Sophie Bearman [00:06:40] So you're studying medicine at Stanford? You're pre-med. How is that going for you? 

Nirav Tolia [00:06:45] Almost immediately I realized, gosh, almost everyone here is smarter than me and they work harder than I do. We used to joke about going into the big classrooms where folks were studying organic chemistry and physics and biology, and all you would hear is clicks because all of those aspiring pre-med had four color pens and they were very dutifully enumerating all of the things that the professor said in four different colors. And that was probably a dead giveaway that I wasn't going to do well. But I really struggled academically and it was difficult for me because I had not struggled in the past. And so my outlet was a collegiate, a capella singing group called the Stanford Fleet Street Singers. I took it very seriously. We were very competitive. We wanted to be the best of the best of the best. 

Sophie Bearman [00:07:31] What kind of singer were you? Are you. 

Nirav Tolia [00:07:35] I'm a tenor. There were tops, leads, buries, baritones and bases. And I was mostly a lead when I was singing. So I was lucky enough to be able to sing the melody in most of the things that I was that I was singing. And it was a huge part of my life at that point in time. 

Sophie Bearman [00:07:52] Is there a particular song from the a cappella days that stands out?

Nirav Tolia [00:07:58] For folks that were at Stanford at the time, they were at Stanford in the early 90s, which means that they mostly came of age during the 80s. And there is a group in the 80s, Duran Duran, that almost everyone listened to and loved. And so was a set of Duran Duran songs all put together in one beautiful arrangement. And I was lucky enough to sing the solo that started the medley, which was a song called "The Reflex."

Sophie Bearman [00:08:27] And this is the part you sang?

Nirav Tolia [00:08:30] This was one of the parts. Yes. Thankfully, we're not listening to me. 

Nirav Tolia [00:08:43] My life really changed being in that group because not only was I able to feel the sense of community and belonging one year that I was in the group, they needed a business manager and I didn't know anything about business, but I volunteered to be the business manager. And because I'm so competitive, I went and research all the best a cappella groups across the country, and I found the Yale Whittenpoofs, the oldest and most prestigious group in the country. And I started to say, okay, what would it take for Fleet Street to not only be as good as the Whittenpoofs, but better? And that unlocked something in me from an entrepreneurial standpoint and from a business standpoint that I didn't even know existed. And so I owe a lot to Fleet Street because I am 100% sure that I would not have pursued business if it weren't for being in Fleet Street. And frankly, if it weren't for going to Stanford and struggling as a pre-med as well. So it is the case that sometimes failure can pave the way for future success. 

Sophie Bearman [00:09:44] So as you're struggling as a pre-med, you eventually turn your focus towards technology. How did you choose that focus instead? 

Nirav Tolia [00:09:53] Well, again, this is the early 90s. The Internet is slowly but surely starting to become more mainstream. The first web browser is about to be invented, and I had an Ethernet connection in my dorm room at Stanford and a computer, and discovering this world of the Internet was one of those moments for me that really just took my breath away. And it was really coming back to this idea that growing up in Odessa, 300 miles from the nearest big city, I felt geographically constrained. I remember wanting to read, as an example, The Wall Street Journal, and not being able to find it because there wasn't enough demand. So they didn't deliver the paper to anyone in Odessa. Yet all of a sudden I'm in my Stanford dorm room and I can go online and I can access the Wall Street Journal the same instant that the banker on Wall Street can experience it. And that idea was very visceral for me. I can articulate it better now in retrospect, but I knew this was something different and it was personal for me. 

Sophie Bearman [00:10:59] And you chose a song for this this moment, this kind of awakening. 

Nirav Tolia [00:11:02] Well, again, being a child of the 80s and early 90s, another one of those pop bands from the UK is Depeche Mode. And there is a song in particular. It's the first song on their album" Violator," called "World In My Eyes." And it's this idea that I'm going to show you the world in my eyes. I'm going to take you on a trip without you having to move. 

Nirav Tolia [00:11:41] There's a great quote from Steve Jobs about technology creating a bicycle for one's mind. This song means that to me. You won't have to move. You just sit still, let your mind do the walking. 

Sophie Bearman [00:11:55] So after college, you joined Yahoo! How did you land that job? 

Nirav Tolia [00:12:00] Yahoo in particular was created by two grad students at Stanford. And so there was a mythology around the company with Stanford students and ultimately through one Stanford son and another Stanford student, I end up at Yahoo as one of the first hundred employees. And I'll never forget when I called my parents to tell them that I wanted to work at this company called Yahoo! And this is before the company had gone public. This was before the Internet was really even close to mainstream. My mom thought to herself, my son was going to be a doctor. We paid all this money to send him to Stanford. He's been away from me for four years and now he wants to work at a company called Yahoo! And at the time there was a chocolate milk called Yoo Hoo. And I think my mom actually believed that I was going to go work for a milk company. It didn't even make sense to her that I was going to a technology company. And later on I found out that in our little community in Odessa, she wasn't the only one who thought that whenever folks would ask about me and my parents would say, yes, he didn't go to medical school. He works at a company called Yahoo! There were many people who would kind of quietly walk away and think to themselves, I feel so bad for Dr. and Dr. Tolia, their son. He was so high potential, he was going to be a doctor just like them. And now he's delivering chocolate milk. 

Sophie Bearman [00:13:24] There was so much promise there.

Nirav Tolia [00:13:27] The good news is, before we knew it, Yahoo! Was everywhere. And it was the Internet company that if you think of any of the coolest Internet companies today, Yahoo! Was that all rolled into one.

Sophie Bearman [00:13:39] Chart for me then how you go from working at this incredible growing company to having the confidence to leave and start your own company? 

Nirav Tolia [00:13:48] It certainly was more stupidity than confidence. But I'll tell you the story. I mean, so 1996, I joined Yahoo! It's less than 100 people. By 1999, I think there were 10,000 people in the company. The company had gone from being worth 100 million to 100 billion. And I started to feel like all of this was great, but what could I create myself? And so I remember they threw a party for me because I was probably the only person who'd left Yahoo! at that point, Yahoo was still very much at its height. And Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo, came to the party and he came up to me and he said, you know, I'm kind of curious. I mean, you do know no one's leaving Yahoo right now. Why did you decide to leave? I said, Jerry, look around. Look at everything you've built. I want to try to do that myself. And I'll never forget. He was kind of quiet and with a very dry tone. He said to me, I'm glad you're leaving because you're a lot less smart than I thought you were. Everything you see is the output. What you don't see and what you don't know is just how hard it is. And I've never forgotten that because truer words were never spoken. Being an entrepreneur, I mean, it is the hardest job I can think of. 

Sophie Bearman [00:15:07] It's time for a quick break. When we come back, Nirav shares some of the lowest lows of entrepreneurship. Stay with us. 

Sophie Bearman [00:15:31] You said being an entrepreneur is the hardest job you can think of. But that first company you came up with did pretty well, right?

Nirav Tolia [00:15:38] You know, after leaving Yahoo! I have been so incredibly fortunate. I've started three companies, so I've been a three time entrepreneur, and two of the companies that I've started have ended up going public. But in every one of those journeys, even for the two companies that went public, Next Door is the most recent and the most important. There is a series of struggles and a series of adversities that ultimately almost knock you down. It's actually almost perfectly characterized by the next song we're going to talk about.

Sophie Bearman [00:16:10] It is "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor. You can't get a better fit than that. 

Nirav Tolia [00:16:13] And this is a song that I even use as the song that I would walk into in weddings. 

Sophie Bearman [00:16:18] What do you mean you'd walk into weddings with it? 

Nirav Tolia [00:16:20] Well, I remember when my younger brother was married, I was walking in as part of the wedding party. And so they ask you, what song do you want playing when you walk in? And I remember the DJ looked to me like, That's a little weird.

Nirav Tolia [00:16:51] And it's all about this idea that you are going to live and die 100 times when you're building a company, sometimes 100 times every single day. But you just keep getting back up and you do it because you have passion. You have belief. You have something inside, this inner conviction that's driving you. And it's something that's almost primal. You can't put it into words. You can't you can't articulate it or intellectualize it. It's emotional. 

Sophie Bearman [00:17:23] Let's get specific. Give me a moment where you were at your lowest. I mean, a real struggle moment. 

Nirav Tolia [00:17:30] Literally every day as I walked in to do this interview, I was talking to some investors and I remember thinking through the conversation when they weren't really nodding in agreement the way that I wanted them to. And when it didn't strike me that they weren't really resonating with the argument. I remember thinking to myself even ten minutes ago, gosh, today's a hard day. Now there are very visible moments. Whenever you fail publicly, that's very difficult. And increasingly as a company gets larger, and particularly when it's a public company, your scorecard is out there for everyone to see. There's no place to hide. And as the leader, the face that you wear, the energy that you project, the kind of mood that you possess, those are the things that the company takes on. And so probably the hardest thing to do for me in many ways was take those body blows and some of them even felt like kill shots. But to take those and get back up and authentically project my personality, which is one of optimism. 

Sophie Bearman [00:18:42] Tell me Next Door's genesis story. How did you come up with that idea? 

Nirav Tolia [00:18:46] It's really funny because there's a there's an expression that Reid Hoffman, a very famous entrepreneur and founder, has, which is "great entrepreneurs typically work on the same idea their entire careers." And I don't know that I would call myself a great entrepreneur, but community and building community is something that's been very important to me, as I mentioned from very, very early on in my life. And that moment of understanding that the Internet was about transcending geography was a very powerful one. But as I looked back on my career in 2010, I started to realize that while the Internet had done so much to make geography transcended, it was starting to erode the real bonds of geography in the physical world. And in particular, those real life communities were starting to be negatively affected by the virtual ones that we were creating. And the stat that really struck us as founders of Next Door was back in 2010, almost 30% of Americans could not name a single neighbor by name. And if I think about growing up and not knowing a single neighbor that feels like such an alien concept.

Sophie Bearman [00:19:52] I'm just curious. Growing up, who lived next door to you? 

Nirav Tolia [00:19:54] We had the couple next door that had a kid that was my age that I would play with. We had the couple two doors down that had a tennis court at their house and would let me climb over the fence and go play tennis there. We had the folks that were three doors down that we hardly ever saw. We had the folks that were four doors down and I would babysit for them. And these were people that gave us respect. They gave us support when we needed it. They were always friendly. You know, we have this saying at Next Door that we love when neighbors wave at each other because the wave says a lot. It says hello. It says, welcome to the neighborhood. It says, you're home here. And that is what I remember about growing up. Lots of waves, lots of smiles, lots of support from the neighbors. 

Sophie Bearman [00:20:41] In an email to me you mentioned what you called the most important startup, which we haven't talked about yet. 

Nirav Tolia [00:20:47] Well, you know, I mean, building a company or in my case, three companies, I mean, that doesn't come for free. And so I wouldn't say that I had a very vibrant social life during those years. And somewhere along the way, it was actually three months before Next Door was conceived of I was so lucky to meet the most important person in my life, and that's my wife. And ultimately, we had three kids. They're now ages 12, ten, and eight. And without a doubt, that has been the most important thing in my life, the most gratifying, the thing that is essential to being who I am. And it's something that has made me truly feel like I belong: a father, a husband, part of a family unit. 

Sophie Bearman [00:21:34] And you chose "If My Heart was a House" by Owl City. 

Nirav Tolia [00:21:37] It's a little known song, but the words are so powerful because ultimately they once again talk about that idea of when I'm with you, I feel like I'm at home. And this was the song that was played at my wedding to my wife when we went and did the first dance. 

Nirav Tolia [00:22:10] That's what love is. Wherever you go. If my heart is house, you'd be home.

Sophie Bearman [00:22:19] So at a certain point, you left Next Door. When did you leave? Why did you leave? And obviously now you're back. But what happened there? 

Nirav Tolia [00:22:27] Well, I realized as I was building startups three, Next Door and four, my family at the same time, that I couldn't give the same amount of time to my family that I would really like. Because on a serious level, I mean, building a company, particularly in those early days, it's an all encompassing endeavor. And for me, it was hard for me to be the kind of husband and father that I really wanted to be, to be fully present, to even be at home all the time, the way that I wanted to be with my kids. And so when I had an opportunity after running the company for nine years to take a step back, that was an incredible blessing. At the time, I struggled with it because my entire identity was wrapped up in this idea of being the CEO of next door or being a tech CEO. My wife had recently been promoted. I was so proud of her and for her, and I was completely fine letting her step up with her career and take the priority in our relationship. And I would take a step back and be with the kids. And so that was the original idea. In early 2019, when I left next door and I was going to be at home with my kids and I got this great piece of advice from Reid Hoffman again, he said, "Hey, if you really want the new CEO of Next Door to be successful, you need to get out of the country." And I looked him and I said, "Get out of the country, what are you talking about?" And he said, "Well, you know, you're the founder and you are the CEO and people are still going to ask you questions. And, you know, you want the new CEO to have every opportunity to run the company the way she sees fit. You should get out of the country." And I said, "I think you're talking metaphorically, right?" And he said, "Yeah, I'm talking metaphorically." But then my wife and I, after some conversation said, "What if we actually took this practically, not metaphorically." We had long been lovers of Italy, and so we did something crazy. We took our entire life and we went to Florence, Italy. 

Sophie Bearman [00:24:19] Did any of you speak Italian? 

Nirav Tolia [00:24:21] No. We knew how to say buongiorno. We knew how to say grazia. We certainly knew many names of food items, but we did not know how to speak Italian. And so one of the most gratifying things I mean, my wife is so talented in so many ways, but language is a particular talent of hers. And so I was a visiting professor at Stanford, Florence, so we had all of those people that were supporting us. But I have to say, when my wife learned the language, it was almost like a skeleton key to the most important community of them all, and that is the community of authentic Italians, because you don't really need to know Italian to be in Italy, but when you can speak Italian, they know that you respect their culture and that you've made the effort and that opens up a whole new dimension. I mean, we love Italy so much and we do consider it to be a second home. 

Sophie Bearman [00:25:14] This chapter of your life, you chose a song to represent it, it's that important to you guys. What did you bring? 

Nirav Tolia [00:25:20] Well, this is a very famous Italian song by a very famous Italian singer, Andrea Bocelli, "Con Te Partiro." And there is a part of this song that's all about going to lands you've never seen and being there with people that you love, in this case a person you love. And there's no one like Bocelli. I remember listening to this song so many times before we went, and then when we were there and ultimately we were so lucky we were able to meet Signore Bocelli ourselves.  To be part of the culture and to listen to the language and to understand it and to celebrate with music, it was very special. But in many ways, Italy has made us appreciate being American as well. And so. 

Sophie Bearman [00:26:23] And you came back home. 

Nirav Tolia [00:26:23] We came back home, right? And that led to going back to Texas. And ultimately, you know, going back home is a big theme in my life because then ultimately, I went back home to Next Door, as well. 

Sophie Bearman [00:26:34] So you are back at Next Door as CEO. When you walked in that door what was the situation? I mean, what were you facing? What hurdles did you have to try to fix? 

Nirav Tolia [00:26:45] Well, the company is is my greatest professional blessing. And so the opportunity to go back and be CEO again, I don't think I ever imagined that it would happen. But the opportunity to come back to Next Door, particularly at a moment where we need to transform the product, we believe that the world has really evolved since we started the company and our product, even though we have 95 million verified neighbors that are using it, the product hasn't evolved quite as well as we would have liked. And so to come back and to give it that nudge, to work with people who are as passionate as I am about the original mission, using the power of technology to bring neighbors together, to bring them happier, more fulfilling lives locally. That's something that is truly a privilege. 

Sophie Bearman [00:27:31] I wonder if you're being a little bit diplomatic about the situation you walked into. You chose a song, "Beautiful Day," U2, and some of the lyrics are the traffic is stuck and you're not moving anywhere. We're talking about Next Door when you came back. 

Nirav Tolia [00:27:44] Right. Well, next door, like many small cap Internet companies over the last couple of years has had its share of adversities. The company went public and had a very successful public offering and now is down 75% off that IPO price. So when that happens, whether it's because of the macro or because of something we did, I'm less concerned about what happened. I'm more concerned about where are we going? And so the song that I picked, I do think it's a beautiful day.

Nirav Tolia [00:28:35] And I think the beautiful day is always on the horizon. And so wherever we are today, as beautiful as it is, I'm dreaming of a more beautiful day. As my dad would tell me, the journey is the reward. And so I'm in the middle of the journey right now. We're not where we want to be, where we need to be and where we will be, but we're enjoying the process. 

Sophie Bearman [00:28:54] Thank you so, so much. This has been a lot of fun. 

Nirav Tolia [00:28:57] It was fun for me as well. 

Sophie Bearman [00:29:23] Life in Seven songs is a production from the San Francisco Standard. This episode was produced by me, Sophie Bearman and our senior producer, Jasmyn Morris. Our executive producers are Griffin Gaffney and Jon Steinberg. This episode was mixed by Michelle Lanz. Our theme music is by Kate Davis and Zubin Hensler and Clark Miller created our show art. Our music consultant is Sarah Tembeckjian and our studio engineer is Sean McKenna at Pure Mind Studios. You can find this guest's full playlist at sf.new/spotify. Thanks for listening and see you next time.