Hyperlocal Social Firm Nextdoor Closes $170M Round, Adds Meeker to Board
Nextdoor, the hyperlocal social network that connects users based on the neighborhoods in which they live and verifies identity via address, announced it closed a $170 million financing round. The global investment firm Bond close the round, which was joined by Riverwood Capital, Benchmark, Tiger Global Management, and Kleiner Perkins.
Internet trend visionary Mary Meeker of Bond is joining Nextdoor’s board of directors. “Nextdoor has proven itself as the leader in local connectivity. Nextdoor is built on trust — verifying each members’ name, address and neighborhood — which creates the transparency and accountability that is core to building communities,” Meeker told TechCrunch.
The company seems well positioned to address the ills of social network and platforms plagued by negative user-generated content in general these days. That’s because it actually verifies the identities of its users and puts people in touch who live near each other in the physical world, definitely not eliminating all risk but limiting the chance that people use digital anonymity to harass each other without repercussions.
Nextdoor is now active in 247,000 neighborhoods across 10 countries. It will use the funding to fuel global expansion and presumably monetize by focusing on building out its local business programming.
