He Built a $1B Company and Still Felt Like a Failure | Nirav Tolia, Nextdoor CEO

 The story of entrepreneurship is the story of 999 failures leading to one big success. And so the interesting thing is we look at the success, but we don't understand the failure. He's an entrepreneur, investor, and co-founder of Nextdoor. A lifelong believer in the power of community and helping other people. Please welcome. The CEO of Nextdoor, Nirav Tolia.
 Phil was about love, but he was also about pushing you to your limits. I grew up in Odessa. It was a place where people were genuinely happy. And they were happy because they had each other. I am such a big believer in community. And so when I think about Nextdoor and I think about this mission, I know that's something that would make him proud. And it's something that makes me proud. Phil Campbell, happy 30th birthday. We were three weeks away from shutting the company down.
 I met with Bill and he said, one foot in front of the other, someone's going to say yes. And with three weeks of cash left, someone said yes. What did his belief require of you? To be the very best. Have you become a Bill? To anyone? What a great question. How do you like that aura around you? Yes. Tom?
 Texas born, now living, well, you went to Stanford, lived in California, now back living in Texas, Dallas. Yes, and I don't admit this to too many people, but I was not born in Texas. Where were you? I moved there when I was very young, about two years old. I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And if I told people in Texas that when I was growing up, I wouldn't be making many friends. So I like to think of myself as born in Texas, even though technically I wasn't.
 I want to talk about what it was like growing up as one of the only Indians you saw in Odessa, Texas, where most people were white, right? Oil country. A great place to grow up, though. Before we begin there, I want to begin the way we always do. With this. Oh, there he is. Tell the audience listening and watching who that is.
 This is William V. Campbell. The V stands for victory, as he used to tell me all the time. This is actually better known as Coach Bill Campbell, the trillion-dollar coach of Silicon Valley and someone who...
 had such a remarkable impact on me, not just as an entrepreneur and CEO, but as a person. Bill is like a second father and a very, very, very special person to me and to many others in Silicon Valley. One of the very best to ever be in Silicon Valley. When my producer was asking who it was that you wanted to pick as the person who believed in you, why Bill? Well, yeah.
 I would almost always choose my parents. But when I thought about my journey as a CEO, as an entrepreneur, as someone in Silicon Valley, then it was so obvious that Bill was that person because as I said, he was a second father to me. So he wasn't just a CEO coach. And I was so blessed when I was a very young CEO at 28 years old to have the opportunity to be coached by Bill personally.
 But he didn't just coach me as a CEO. He coached me as a human being. And so when I think of Bill, often I think far beyond what he taught me around my companies and around my career. And I think a lot more about what he taught me about being a better human being. He coached Steve Jobs. Yeah.
 Yes, I joke that when Bill would spend time with me, he was coming to the junior varsity. Now, you notice that I have used the word coach and coaching. Bill was a football coach early in his career before he became a CEO and before he was in Silicon Valley. But his job was to coach up
 young CEOs. And so when I was lucky enough to be one of those, he was also coaching a few CEOs that you've heard of, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Larry and Sergey at Google. And so after spending time with those, he would come over to me and I'd say, Bill, what's it like to go from the big stadiums to the bleachers? What's it like to go from the prime time to the little time?
 But he never made me feel like I was a second-class CEO. How does a 28-year-old at a new company get a Bill Campbell?
 My life in so many ways is a story of winning the lottery over and over again, starting with even being with my parents in Odessa. But being coached by Bill, it's not something that you can apply for. It's not something you can buy or something that you can otherwise procure. I was just very lucky. Bill had been the CEO of Intuit and had been very successful there as a public company CEO. What did the company do?
 Intuit is a multi-hundred billion dollar public company and has been for a long time, and they do QuickBooks. So tax prep work, other financial services, one of the first financial services technology companies, and still very successful today. And Bill had been CEO for quite some time. He had retired.
 He had become chairman. And when he became chairman, he decided that in addition to being chairman of the company, he wanted to coach young CEOs. And so he went to two venture capital firms. He went to Andreessen Horowitz. Sorry, he went to – yeah, actually, I think he went to – before Andreessen Horowitz, he went to Benchmark. And he went to Kleiner Perkins. And he said, I would like two young CEOs to mentor.
 And one of them was Ben Horowitz, who went on to found Andreessen Horowitz. And the other was lucky enough to be me. And it was just luck. I did not know Bill. My company was promising, but it was not a slam dunk to be successful. And maybe in some way, my investors felt that as a 28-year-old CEO, I needed help, which I certainly did, but it was just luck. But one of the luckiest things that's ever happened. What company were you running at 28?
 I had started a company in 1999 called Epinions. It's a horrible .com era name, Electronic Opinions. But it was a company that was devoted to user-generated content and online community, which is really mainstream today. But back then, the idea that normal people would go online and write reviews about products and services that they loved, that was a new idea. And that was the idea behind Epinions. You would go to read opinions.
 opinions that people had left before you would buy things or before you would think about where to travel, before you would make purchasing decisions. And so that was the company in 1999. Tell me about the first meeting you had with Bill Campbell. I'll never forget it because again, I didn't know Bill and I'd never had a CEO coach. I'd never been a CEO before. And so everything was very new to me. And so my main investor, Bill Gurley from Benchmark Capital calls me up and says, I have some great news.
 We have a relationship with this wonderful human being, Bill Campbell. He's a legend in Silicon Valley. He's just stepped down from being CEO of Intuit.
 And he has agreed to be your CEO coach. And I'm thinking to myself, do I need a CEO coach? Am I not doing a good job? I mean, do I need to learn how to do this job that I've been doing for a little while? And I was certainly humble. I knew that I needed help, but because I was so new to the job, I didn't know that CEOs do have coaches and they do have advisors and they do have people who help them be more effective in their jobs. And I didn't know who Bill Campbell was. And so he shows up.
 And he comes to the front of the company and I'm waiting for him. And he walks in and he's looking around. I'll never forget. And I kind of looked at him and he said, okay, let's go to a conference room. And from the very beginning, he called me boy. He said, boy, let's go to a conference room. So very informal. And I'm standing up straight thinking, I don't know who this guy is, but like maybe his style is informal, maybe it's formal. And we sit down and he says, boy, tell me about your company.
 And so I pull up this presentation that I have, and it's kind of our stock slideshow about the company. And the very first slide has a quote on it because back then when I talked about the company, I would use a quote to frame the story of how we came up with the company. Which was? I don't even remember the quote. And the reason for that is because Bill immediately said,
 I don't want to read a quote. Tell me about the company. And so I was winding up to tell him this narrative. And the very first thing he taught me was, let's get right to the point. Forget all the window dressing. This job is not about narrative and construct and creating this environment, this reality distortion field, as many people in Silicon Valley say. This job is about being real
 being authentic and being direct. And so I will never forget that from that first meeting, he kind of put me on my back foot a little bit and he started to reshape the way that I think about things, which is he's...
 very authentic. He's very direct. He's very what you see is what you get. And that style of leadership is something that's very effective because then people know who you are and they start to trust you. And trust, as he taught me, is the bedrock of being an effective leader. But he did put me on my back foot and I was very nervous. And I realized from the very beginning,
 that I'm a 28-year-old who has no idea what he's doing. I was not trained to be a CEO. I had no experience in being a CEO. And I was making it up as I went along and not doing nearly as good a job as I wanted. But the good news is he was there and he was ready to help.
 You had grown up in Odessa, Texas, right? Population? 100,000. 100,000, okay. How many Indians were in Odessa, Texas? There weren't a lot. And certainly, it's interesting looking back on those days because my parents are both Indian immigrants. I was born in the United States, but they were born in India and they immigrated.
 And when they moved to Odessa, there were a handful of Indian physicians. So they felt like they had a very small community. If we fast forward now decades since I grew up in Odessa, there are hundreds of Indian physicians there now. So it became a place where there were and are many Indians. But when I was growing up,
 It was painfully obvious that there weren't many people like me. And so even though I am such a big believer in community, when I go all the way back to growing up in Odessa, I was looking for a community to be part of because my community, at least of fellow Indian immigrants, they weren't there. They weren't there.
 I was a stranger in a strange land, and that was something that very much shaped me growing up. But what did Odessa teach you that as you look back on, you treasure? Well, it goes back to community again. Odessa is in West Texas. It's equidistant between El Paso and Dallas, but about 300 miles from each, which is to say it's in the middle of nowhere. And Odessa, while it is famous for oil and gas, it's famous for Friday Night Lights, the football team that's there,
 It's not a place that you go to and think about dreaming of being a Silicon Valley CEO or dreaming about being a huge success in any way, shape, or fashion. It's Americana, but Americana with a humility and a modesty that is more about simple living, but with great values. And one of those values is community. So when I look back at that time in Odessa, even though I was different,
 Even though my parents were some of the first different people that came to Odessa, they felt like they were part of the community there, and so did I. And so that lesson that no matter where you are, no matter how different you may be—
 No matter how unique you feel in your ambition or the way that you grew up or your background, your heritage, you can still find community. And you crave that because we wanna be together. And interestingly in Odessa, while...
 It was not a particularly beautiful place physically. It wasn't near an ocean or in the mountains. While it wasn't a place where there was incredible industry that you would be inspired by, it wasn't a place that had an incredible heritage that you could look back on and be proud of. It was a place where people were genuinely happy. And they were happy because they had each other.
 There I am in my Western shirt growing up in Odessa. Talk to me about happy life. You're how old there? Gosh, it looks like I'm probably five or six years old. Your parents had a dream for that kid, and it was to be... Well, my parents wanted me to be happy.
 more than anything, and that's what they still want. And I'm blessed to have parents that want that for me, but they would have aspired for me to be a physician. My mom still teases me sometimes, are you going to med school still? No, mom, I'm not going to med school. That was a long time ago, but my parents are both physicians. And like all of us, we only know what we've experienced. And so what they had experienced, both of their fathers were physicians.
 And many people in our family, our extended family, are physicians as well. And so they were doctors and they expected their children to be doctors. Now, I have a younger brother who did go on to be a doctor. So he's the good son, but they didn't quite get what they wanted from me.
 So you set out for Stanford, and it was pre-med initially, right? Yes. For me to go to Stanford from Odessa, Texas was fairly unorthodox. In fact, I remember telling people in my high school, Odessa, Permian, that I was going to Stanford, and they thought it was an East College – or they thought it was a junior college in East Texas.
 They'd heard of it. It was a junior college in East Texas, and that's where I was going. But this Stanford was in Palo Alto, California. And yeah, I wanted to be just like my dad. My dad was a very successful ophthalmologist and eye surgeon. And I grew up thinking, I'm gonna be a doctor. I'm gonna be a surgeon. I'm gonna follow in my parents' footsteps. And so with great ambition, I set out for Stanford, thinking that that was my dream. So you're at Stanford, and when does life redirect, and why?
 Well, almost immediately it redirects because you're coming from Odessa and it's a small fishbowl. And you're different because I was Indian and you're different because you want to go to California for college. Most people stay in the state of Texas. And I get to Stanford and I immediately realize
 I am not an Odessa anymore. I'm seeing incredible diversity and I'm blown away by how impressive all the people around me are. And so imagine going to a place and realizing very quickly,
 Everyone's smarter than you. Everyone is more athletic than you. Everyone is more articulate than you. Everyone has come from a place where they've been prepared for a place like Stanford better than you. And you immediately start to feel a little anxious. And so like that first day with Bill Campbell, my first day at Stanford, I was nervous. And so I was reset almost immediately at that point. And then when I started classes, I realized that,
 I truly wasn't prepared for the rigor and just how difficult it would be to compete at Stanford relative to how I had competed in Odessa. And so that first year, I loved being there, but I also struggled quite a bit. Struggled. I struggled because I wasn't at the top of the class. I struggled because things were not coming easily to me. I struggled like we all do because I was in a different place.
 Was the struggle good when you look back on it? Good for you. Struggles are always good when you look back on them. Sure, sure, sure. And they are definitely good for you because we don't learn much when we're successful. Yeah. We just enjoy it. Touche. But when we struggle, when we fail, when we fall down and have to get back up, it forces us to grow. So looking back, yes, but when we're in the middle of it, it's hard. Okay, but did the struggle make you want to give up?
 Certainly at times. Now, I don't know what giving up feels like, right? Because again, when you're the son of Indian immigrants, and my parents really have lived the American dream. They came to this country with their educations and very little money. And because they work really hard and because they care very deeply and because they're good to other people, they've had every success they could imagine. And so seeing that-
 Giving up was not part of that equation, right? It was more about, okay, things aren't going as well as you want them to. What are you going to do about it, right? So it was more about the struggle of trying to find a way through that adversity versus thinking, I can't do this. I'm going to give up. You found something else you're good at, which was a community that allowed you to sing. So tell everybody we're looking at a picture of the Fleet Street Singers.
 Yes, and we're gonna go through all of the things that I do not admit publicly. I was not born in Texas, and yes, I was in a collegiate a cappella group. And growing up in Odessa, there was a very strong tradition of choir in my junior high and in my high school. And so I was a singer. And when I got to Stanford, as I was looking around for things to feel like I could be part of,
 I was struck by this group, the Stanford Fleet Street Singers. It was an all-male collegiate acapella group, one of those dorky little groups that you see on the movie Pitch Perfect that takes it very seriously. And we took our group very seriously and I loved it. I loved getting together with a group of people
 and trying to accomplish great things. This is the same thing as being part of a company. This is the same thing as being part of a community. It's finding people who are like-minded, that enjoy doing things together, and then creating something collectively. And that's what Fleet Street did. And it was much more, to me,
 than simply being able to perform and sing and be on stage, which is something that I absolutely loved. Fleet Street was a completely student-run organization, and so the musical director needed to be someone in the group, and the business manager needed to be someone in the group. And because no one else wanted to do it, I became the business manager of the group one year. And that, more than anything else, was the entree for me into the world of business and as an alternative to,
 to being a physician. And so Fleet Street was not only something that I loved doing, that pun intended, made my heart sing, right? It was something that gave me the insight that I could do something outside of medicine and ultimately led to me being in the world of business. So then what led from, because you could have become a business manager for, I don't know, famous celebrities today or whatever, but you went into tech. Why tech? What took you that way?
 I have so much that I can thank Stanford for in regards to my path. And so when I talk about winning the lottery, being born to my parents, growing up in Odessa, going to Stanford.
 What an incredible privilege because Stanford is in the middle of Silicon Valley. And when I was in my college dorm room my sophomore year, I had an Ethernet connection in my dorm room. Now, most people don't know what that is because we're all on wired Internet. But back then, everything was about plugging into a connection that...
 And that Ethernet connection gave me high-speed Internet access to this thing called the Internet. And this was pre the World Wide Web. And so I discovered the Internet. And it's a funny story because, again, serendipity in so many ways can lead to incredible opportunities. And in this case, the serendipity was coming from Odessa, Texas.
 I was and am a huge devoted fan of the Dallas Cowboys, this NFL team. And yet living in San Francisco or the Bay Area where Stanford is, everyone likes the San Francisco 49ers. And the 49ers and Cowboys at that time in the 90s were big rivals. And so I couldn't safely talk about my passion for the Cowboys anymore.
 at Stanford, but I would go online and find communities of Dallas Cowboys fans. And that is really, without even knowing at the time that those were online communities, that became the entree into understanding the power of the internet. And in particular, this incredible miracle insight, which is growing up in Odessa was great. However, I did feel landlocked. I felt like I was...
 limited in some way by the fact that I lived in Odessa. I remember in my high school days in Odessa, I really wanted to read the Wall Street Journal, but there weren't enough people in Odessa that wanted to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. And so there was no Wall Street Journal. You couldn't access it. You couldn't get it delivered. Whereas you go on the internet and you could be on the top of Mount Everest and you could click a few keys and boom, there's the Wall Street Journal. And it's just as accessible to you as it is to the person on Wall Street. And so I had this...
 Incredible awareness that by accessing a virtual space that was limitless, a kid in Odessa could have the same experience as a kid in New York City or in Los Angeles or in San Francisco. And so when I look back a little bit, the combination of dabbling in business as the business manager of Fleet Street and going online –
 to understand the potential of transcending one's physical surroundings. When you combine those two things and then you add the last thing, which is the struggle and adversity of not being able to be as successful as a pre-med, when you add those things together,
 it led to being a business person in the area of technology. And ultimately, because I love to create things, being a founder and an entrepreneur, and that's the tradition of Stanford. And so I am so much...
 a blessing of where I've been. And so whether that's Odessa, Texas, or whether that's Stanford, right? Or whether that ultimately when we lived in Italy, I learned so much being there. I'm a huge believer that our environment shape us. And so we should shape our environments.
 I want to take a moment to genuflect on that because I think that's a really important takeaway, which is had the struggle not existed and had the lack of success in medicine not presented itself, you're maybe not here today in this chair in this role. Right.
 It was because things got difficult, doors closed, and you didn't feel as adequate as maybe you did. Am I right? You're not only right, but when I look back at my life, every major inflection was because of a struggle. Yes. Yes.
 Whatever I did in Odessa to try to be ambitious and successful was because I was reacting to that feeling of being different. So the adversity of being different in Odessa led me to want to do well in school and to be a good athlete and to be a good singer. And if I didn't have that...
 That feeling of inadequacy, frankly, I wouldn't have worked as hard. And so that was the first one. Then I get to Stanford and I'm struggling. I'm struggling again after working so hard to get to Stanford. I felt like I dropped all the way down to the bottom again. So I'm struggling and that forces me to go find things where maybe I wasn't struggling. And that led to this discovery of the internet and this discovery of being business manager, right? And the story of entrepreneurship is,
 is the story of 999 failures leading to one big success. Oh, God. I have to tell you on that point, and then I want to go back to Bill Campbell. A friend of mine is the founder and CEO of Canva, Melanie Perkins, who's a phenomenal human being. And the story of Mel is that she was rejected 100 times before she secured her first investor. And what fascinates me, Nerov, about that story, and I want you to apply it to your own life,
 Most people would have stopped at, oh, I don't know, time number 18 or by 27, they'd have felt like an absolute failure. Nobody goes 100 times. And so the takeaway is, yeah, Melanie's now a billionaire and she runs Canva. But the whole point is she was a girl with a dream who was teaching college and wouldn't stop when the doors kept closing.
 Well, and you're defining really more than anything the recipe for success because you said nobody goes 100 times. I bet you everyone that we look at that is successful has had to go 100 or more times failing until they succeed. And so the interesting thing is we look at the success –
 but we don't understand the failure. That's right. Right? And as people, who wants to go back and think about failure? You know, you asked me, did I think at the time that it would lead to a better place? Was I enjoying the failure? Of course not. It was terrible. It was heartbreaking. It was difficult to get up in the morning. And frankly, that is also the story of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship feels like you're getting kicked in the stomach every single day. The moments that you feel great,
 are so small relative to the moments that you feel like you're struggling, but that struggle is hardening you. That struggle is teaching you. That struggle is forcing you to grow. And so with a little bit of distance, and if you've been very lucky to have success,
 Then you can start to say, all right, that was a time that I needed. I didn't want it, but I needed it. And when you encounter it again, you can start to feel like, okay, is this teaching me something? What is it teaching me? And Bill was someone who he constantly came back to that lesson, which is when something challenges you.
 it's an opportunity for you to get better. See it as an opportunity for you to get better, to help more people, to establish yourself more fully, to spread your wings and do things that you didn't think you could do. But the reason Bill is so powerful and he's thought of as the trillion dollar coach because he's coached so many incredible CEOs, their collective market caps of their companies is well over multiple trillions of dollars, but the,
 The reason that he was so successful is when you're going through those times of struggle, having a guardian angel like Bill, it makes all the difference because it's so lonely when you're failing. What's the job of the guardian angel?
 Sometimes the job is simply to inspire you to get out of bed and go take another run at the wall because you've run at the wall so many times and the wall hasn't given way, right? But you got to do it again. It's the hundred times that someone says no until the hundred and first time when someone says yes. And sometimes the guardian angel simply says, get up and do it again. Sometimes the guardian angel says, what have you learned from the hundred no's?
 so that you can make the 101st be a yes. Can you think of one of the toughest love conversations Bill had with you? Boy, there were so many. I mean, I mentioned the first one where Bill was famous for sprinkling a fair amount of profanity into the advice that he gave. And so when I gently described the way he said, I don't wanna hear profanity,
 fancy quotes. I want you to tell me about the business, right? There were probably a couple of F-bombs thrown in there about how CEOs don't need fancy quotes. They need directness and they need to understand their business. And so that was a tough love conversation from the very beginning. I remember Bill told me once, what's your title?
 And I said, CEO? And he said, no, that's not your title. You two are a coach. You're coaching your people. And if you don't see it that way, if you see it as you're the CEO, you're going to be arrogant. You're going to be untouchable. You're going to be someone that no one can relate to. But you are a coach because your responsibility is—
 is to make everyone better and to be their guardian angel, right? So Bill was a person who understood very, very intrinsically that to lift people up, you do need to support them. Didn't Bill say your title makes you a manager, but your people make you a leader? Well, that's his line, right? His line was, look, your title can be anything you want it to be.
 But ultimately, the way people perceive you and if they follow you and if they listen to you, that's ultimately what leadership is. It's not a title. What did his belief require of you? To be the very best that I could be. So Bill was someone who supported, but he also demanded a level of performance.
 literally loved by this person. I mean, Bill was about love, but he was also about pushing you to your limits. He was also about reality. He was also about truth. I mean, you mentioned Melanie at Canva needing to go pitch people a hundred times. There was a moment in that first company's history and opinions history when Bill and I were working together and the dot-com boom turned into a dot-com bust.
 And 90% of the companies were going out of business and couldn't raise money to continue. And we were one of those companies. And it had been so easy to raise money during the dot-com boom. You could snap your fingers and someone would write a check and you could continue doing whatever you wanted to do with your company. But then it completely changed. And no matter what you did, you couldn't raise money. And so I went down the hundred no's as well. And Bill said to me, you're going to have to start preparing to shut the lights off.
 How are you going to tell your company that they're all out of their jobs and it's over? And he was hardening me because while he said that in one ear, in the other ear, he would say, let's go find someone to do this. Let's go find an investor who's going to say yes. Let's go figure out a way to keep this going. And during the Christmas of, I guess, 2021, sorry, it was 2001 rather,
 We had had the hundred no's. We were three weeks away from shutting the company down. Three weeks away. And this is not a conversation you have with the entire company. You don't even have the conversation with the management team. It's very lonely to be the CEO of a company that you know is going to go out of business. And I met with Bill.
 And it was before Christmas. And he said, how are you feeling? And I said, I'm feeling terrible. I'm not sleeping. I don't know what to do. And he said, one foot in front of the other, keep driving as hard as you can, control the things you can control. Someone's gonna say yes. And with three weeks of cash left, someone said yes. And you would think that Bill would be celebratory. You would think that he would give you a big pat on the back,
 No, he was very sober. He said, you're one of the lucky ones because I have a lot of good people that I'm working with right now and they can't raise money. So be sober about this. Be modest. Be humble. This doesn't mean that you're successful and they're unsuccessful. This means that you got another chance, but you have a long way to go. Why did you get that yes?
 Every pitch during that time was filled with humility, which was the opposite of the pitches a year before then, because a year before then, all of the pitches were as arrogant as possible and as ambitious as possible. But when the dot-com boom turned into a bust,
 that arrogance turned into extreme humility. And so you would go in and talk about why you were worthy of survival versus worthy of greatness. And so that was part of the pitch. Bill's support was certainly a huge reason why investors would still pay attention to our company. And our company was pursuing a very human purpose and mission, which is
 Everyone has expertise. Can there be a platform online where they can share that expertise and help other people? So it was something that was relatable for investors. But one of the reasons why there was so much humility, and this is, I think, one of the reasons why Bill was also so down to earth about the fact that we were able to raise money is all money comes with strings attached. Hmm.
 In this particular case, the string was, if we write a check into this company to help it survive, you have to lay off a large number of employees. You need to reduce the cost basis. And so while it was a relief to not go out of business…
 That relief was soon followed by, beyond any doubt, the hardest thing I've ever had to do and the hardest thing any CEO ever has to do, and that is to lay off employees. I want to talk about Nextdoor, which you founded, left, are now back CEO. Why did you want to do Nextdoor in the beginning? Well, Nextdoor was, interestingly –
 something that came out of failure. I had started another company and it was about online community and it was around sports and it wasn't working. Fanbase. It was called Fanbase. And I was really ready to give up. So on that one, I felt like for two years, my co-founders and I had tried to build a successful company and we had not succeeded and we were tired and we were frustrated and...
 And thankfully, our investor, the same investor who gave me the opportunity to work with Bill Campbell said, why don't you take one more summer and come up with an idea? And that was the summer of 2010. And interestingly, the internet had been all about these virtual spaces. And that's what had drawn me to working on things in the internet because I'd grown up in Odessa and I wanted to go broader than that.
 But as I looked towards my, at that point, 10, 15 years in the industry, I realized technology has not done nearly enough to strengthen our physical communities. So while technology has enabled virtual communities that give us wings that maybe we didn't have before based on where we live or what we're doing or who we are.
 Technology had not strengthened our neighborhoods. And my co-founders and I realized, again, almost viscerally, that as we grew older, the communities in which we lived, which were in Silicon Valley, were not nearly as supportive and strong and happy as we grew older.
 as the communities, the neighborhoods in which we'd grown up. And so that was the inspiration for Nextdoor. Can we use the power of technology that's been so good to us and so good to so many people? Can we use it to create stronger, safer, happier neighborhoods for us, for our children, for our neighbors? And do you feel like you've been able to?
 The mission is never over. So I feel like we've been able to make progress against that mission. But I don't see that mission as something binary that can be solved. I see that as something that, along with all the other good things in the world, we need as much of as we can possibly get. We'll never be done. That will never be solved. But can we make the world better?
 one neighbor at a time. That's what we're trying to do. So, um, you know what I do for a living and I tell stories that set people's soul on fire by reminding us of our shared humanity. Right. And one thing you were doing that I want to touch on and I want to go back to some bill threads is you're finding a way to amplify stories of people doing good and being kind. Do you want to talk about that? Sure. We live in an increasingly divided world. That's just a fact. Uh,
 The press likes to say, if it bleeds, it leads. So we read stories every single day of things that threaten us and things that scare us and things that are not good for our souls. And so we need to be reminded that
 that ultimately at the core of each of us is a good person, a kind person, a constructive person, and that community, no matter what word you wanna use for community, is a very primal feeling. Being together with other people, helping each other gives us meaning. Now, how does this tie into Bill? Bill was all about meaning. Bill was all about doing things that would make the world better. And so for all of the people who are coached by Bill, in some ways,
 very significant way. We all want to make him proud. And so when I think about Nextdoor and I think about this mission, I know that's something that would make him proud. And it's something that makes me proud. I believe the world needs more
 of the stories that you tell. We need more inspiration, more optimism, more hope. And that's what we've tried to do with Nextdoor. Not always successfully, of course, but because the real world is messy. The real world has stories that aren't all inspiring, but let's take the ones that are inspiring and shine a light on them. And you've done some updates to the platform and more are coming, but isn't there now sort of a place and a push to find those stories and amplify those?
 Well, without a doubt, because it is too easy to find reasons for us to stay in bed versus get out of bed in the morning. And so when we go to social media,
 and we hope Nextdoor is a place where this occurs, we should be inspired. We should be inspired to do better, to help more people, to be more kind and more generous with our time. And so we are trying actively with Nextdoor to ensure that people know that this notion of the kindness of strangers, it actually exists. When I take a step back and I think about of all the things that I've been lucky enough to work on in my professional career, what am I most proud of?
 I am most proud of the fact that I've been part of creating a platform where people rely on the kindness of strangers. If you have a lost dog, your neighbors on Nextdoor who've never met you and they've never met your dog, they'll help you find the dog.
 If you need the cup of sugar, you know, the proverbial cup of sugar that you think of asking a neighbor for, your neighbors will bring you the cup of sugar. And that speaks of simple things. The really complex things in times of natural disaster, in terms of personal disaster, we can rely on our neighbors and they will help us because when they need us,
 They want us to help them. I want the audience to know how you and I met. I texted you out of the blue and I felt compelled to do so because I had heard about a story regarding a woman named Lynn Story. And Story is her real last name. Lynn had been a waitress all her life and Lynn was retired and Lynn was looking for something to do. And so she had gotten on the Nextdoor app and offered to help drive people.
 And she met a woman dealing with breast cancer and a man who is blind. And she brought that breast cancer patient to chemo and radiation for more than a year. And by the time I had met them, she had driven the blind man to work for almost eight months. And she never asked to be paid. She just asked that they help with her gas. And I was so blown away by a stranger who would do that.
 that I just wanted you to know about it. There was no other good reason other than you should just know this is existing. And so I texted you out of the blue and you responded. And I want more of those stories on your platform. And I go looking for them. I told you a story when we first met of a lady who was looking for a housekeeper. And she said, I only have $100. And the comments were filled with people who said, I'll come do it, but I'll do it for free. And how fortunate. That's what America's about. How fortunate are we?
 to hear those stories. Amen. And those stories are not created by Nextdoor. Nextdoor facilitates them being told, but those stories are because there are really good people in the world. That's right. And they want to help each other. And it comes back to, again, something that Bill would teach me, which is it's not easy to start a company. It's not easy to make a company successful. It requires tremendous sacrifice.
 If you choose to make those sacrifices, whether it's working all the time or being away from your family or choosing to do that versus doing something fun, you want it to go towards something that has purpose. Bill would use this word purpose. What is our purpose? He would start with people.
 and purpose, and then it would lead to products. So if you think about the three Ps, right? You're a technology company. What are you worried about? How do you frame the opportunity, the challenge? You start with the purpose. Why are we here? What are we trying to solve here? How are we trying to make the world better? And that's where Bill started. The very next thing is, okay, we're gonna do that with people. It's the people. He used to say it all the time. In fact, the core values of Intuit, his company, you know, every company has these core values.
 Intuit's always began with, it's the people. So you go from purpose to people to product, because in a technology company, it's the product that ultimately is the vehicle for the change that we're trying to drive. But with Nextdoor, we're so lucky because the purpose is something that's deeply human. And it's something that when it hits,
 When it's right, it's very inspiring. It's those stories you're talking about. It's the hurricane where you didn't know the person across the street, but the person came to save your life and bail you out during a time of turmoil. It's the small things. It's walking by and one of the neighbors waving and saying, hey, I noticed you just moved into the neighborhood. What can I do to help you?
 It's the small things, the big things, and everything in between, but it's purpose. You co-founded Next Door what year? 2010. 2019, you left, and you told my producer you felt like a shell of a man. What was the purpose for leaving then? Well, I think I was probably encouraged to leave at that point because I was a shell, and—
 As Bill would tell me, and as he knew because he'd been a CEO, it's a very hard job. And so you are interviewing folks who have been very successful and they've been fortunate. But the path to getting there is never easy and it takes a toll. And at that point, by the end of 2018, I'd been a CEO of various companies for decades and it had taken a toll.
 I was a relatively new father. My kids were quite young. I have three boys who mean the world to me. I have a wife who is the most important person in my world. And yet I was spending more time thinking about next door than I was spending about thinking about spending with them. And that's something that I had to right size.
 And the shell was a person who was devoting so much time thinking about making Nextdoor successful that he couldn't be the best father and the best husband. And so it was time for me to leave. Interestingly, not being a great father or husband was making me not be a great CEO. How so?
 Well, I think you need to have balance. You need to realize that if you're happy at home, you're happy in the office. If you're happy in the office, you're happy at home. But if one of those is out of whack, it's very difficult for even the other one to work. And so when I realized that, and it was really more about the company not thriving the way it needed to, it caused me not just to take stock of, am I the best CEO I can be?
 It caused me to take stock of, am I the best human being? Because the thing Bill did is he didn't just help me understand how to build a better company. He was all about understanding how to build a better person. He wanted the people that he was coaching to.
 to be better people, not just better leaders, better CEOs, better entrepreneurs, but better people. And in that particular time for me, I couldn't do both. I couldn't be an effective CEO and an effective family man. Was Bill still alive when you decided to leave next to him? He passed in 2016. But again, the powerful thing about someone like Bill
 no matter whether he is alive or has passed, no matter whether he was sitting with me the way you're sitting with me or whether I was imagining him, he's such an influence that you're constantly thinking, what would he say about this? What would he tell me to do? How would he coach me to get through this, to be better, to survive? And so when I left next door, it was –
 It was not a happy time. It was a very difficult time because my entire identity was being the CEO of Nextdoor. And to not be that anymore, who was I, right? Was I worthwhile professionally? And I could hear Bill's voice saying, of course you're worthwhile, but are you the best husband you could be? Are you the best father you can be? And yeah, you'll start another company. So Bill would have cared about that. There's no doubt. Bill cared much more about,
 being a high-integrity human being than being a high-performing CEO. Now, he believed that if you were a high-integrity human being, you could become more likely to be a high-performing CEO. But I don't think he ever felt the inverse could be true. So you did this life reset. You moved to Italy. You end up doing some teaching there. You put your kids in school. Y'all are there for a few years. And then you are now back at the helm of Nextdoor. Why did you come back?
 Well, I'm so lucky and privileged to have come back to the company that I love. And I never thought that I would. When I left Nextdoor, I thought, that's it for being a CEO. I want other challenges. My wife and I took on something completely crazy. We wanted to do a sabbatical in a different country, and we wanted to take our kids outside of America. And we love America, but we wanted them to experience life somewhere else.
 And so we went to Italy and COVID hit. And so we ended up staying a little longer than we originally thought. And we came back and I still didn't think that I would be a CEO again. I didn't think I'd go back to next door, but I had the opportunity because we needed to refound next door. We needed it to be more successful than it had been. And so I was asked to come back. And there are many times in life when you get a second chance and, you know, I'm going
 And it's not like after I left next door, I was thinking to myself, what can I do to go back? And I'm working on myself so that when I go back, I can be a different leader. It was nothing like that. I was sad to leave, but I was very happy to do other things in my life. And when I had the opportunity to go back, it took a little bit of time for me to ask myself, do I have what it takes? Can I go back and be successful?
 Do I even want to go back knowing the sacrifices that are required and the focus that's required? But it comes back to purpose. I believe so deeply in the mission of Nextdoor, which is to use the power of technology to create stronger, safer, happier local communities, better neighborhoods. I believe in that so deeply that if I could have an opportunity to be part of making that purpose real.
 There's no way. There's no way that I could say no. All right. So what's different? And let me preface that question with this. There was one story that sort of sent my career through the stratosphere. And what I'm very aware of is coming out of that story, I was both as a human and a professional, softer, more thoughtful, kinder, and more authentic on television than I had ever been before. Right.
 How are you as today's CEO compared to what you were when you first walked into Nextdoor? Well, I think I'm a different CEO because I'm a different person. Yeah, I get it. And Nextdoor needs a different CEO because the world is different than when we started Nextdoor. But as I've grown older and because I had some time to reflect, you know, one of the really interesting things about being a CEO is it's so all-consuming.
 that these lessons that we talk about that one learns through adversity and struggle, it's very hard to learn those in the moment.
 You are trying so hard to make the moment successful that reflection and growth almost always comes after you go through the process because you don't have time to take a step back and say, wait a second, what did I do wrong? What can I do better? And so that period that I spent away from Nextdoor, the few years that I spent away from it, because I wasn't a CEO. I'm not a CEO.
 I had the opportunity to wake up in the morning and just think about things versus operate. And so I became a different person because I could, for the first time in a long time, reflect on who I wanted to be and how I could be better. And then I could work on those things. So when I came back, I was older. I was younger.
 broader in my experience because I'd lived in a different country. I taught a class for Stanford and Florence. I'd become an investor. So I understood a different lens through which to view companies and their success. But more than anything, I think I'd become a better human. And that's because I spent more time with my wife and kids. How do you show up differently though? How does that better human show up differently today? Well, I've always wanted to be the best version of myself. So that hasn't changed.
 But my mission in being the best version of myself was maybe tied primarily to success, this notion of success. And how I defined success was the same way we all do. There are various scoreboards.
 What's the company worth? How many employees do you have? How many users do you have? How much impact do you have? All of that stuff still matters to me. But I look back to Bill and he's called the trillion dollar coach. That score is the trillion dollar coach because that's the collective market cap of the companies that are led by people who he's coached. But I think what Bill would say is if I had any success, it was because I lifted other people up.
 And so when I went back to Nextdoor, I said to myself, I want to be the best I can be. That hasn't changed. But where I'm going to start is I believe the way that I can be the best I can be and the way the company can be the best it can be is if I can lift people up. And in that incredible, intense, pressured environment of wanting to be successful in
 I beat people down versus lifting them up. Hmm.
 And that has been the main change. I want to lift people up. And I don't believe that you need to beat people down to be successful. It can be effective in the short term. We have to really genuflect on this point because it's such an important point because I too was there and I too have experienced the glory that comes with realizing when you spend more time trying to build people up, it is more successful for them and you.
 It is, and it feels so much better. I feel that. Because our animal brains, when we're stressed out, when we're pressured, we just want to contract the distance between A and B. And sometimes the way to get the quickest result is to smack someone, right? The way to get the, and I mean that metaphorically, the way to get the quickest result is to snap at someone,
 or to put them under pressure if you feel pressure, or to give them a deadline that you think is unrealistic that will stress them out because it will help them to perform. But in the long term, that's almost always ineffective. In the long term, you gotta nurture people. You gotta believe in them. You gotta make them think that they can do incredible things. You have to be that guardian angel. You know, when you take a step back and think, what would Bill do? Yeah, Bill would be tough on me.
 but he would always be tough in a way that I would believe I could do it. He would never be tough in a way that I felt desperate. Didn't break the spirit. No, the spirit was the thing that he would believe in. And in fact, he would go out of his way to say to me, and he called me, boy, he'd say, boy, no matter what happens here, I'm always in your corner. And when I failed, and I failed many times in front of him, he never gave up on me. And in fact, he supported me more during those moments.
 There's a Bill quote, the best leaders are secure enough to hire people smarter than them. Do you think you do that?
 I try to. I would joke and say that's a pretty low bar for me. But no, look, I believe and have always believed that I can be so much more successful if I have other people working with me than I can by myself. I've started three companies. I've never started a company by myself. And I would never think of it. I need other people. And in almost all cases, those people are better than I am.
 You said, Nextdoor exists because I didn't want my kids to lose the kind of connection I felt growing up. Do you feel like that connection is there for your kids? It is definitely there, and it's not just because of Nextdoor. When we came back from Italy, we decided to move to Texas. I'd spent almost 30 years in Northern California, Stanford, and then living in Silicon Valley. And I love Silicon Valley and I love San Francisco. It's where all three of my kids were born.
 But when we came back from Italy, we chose to move back to Texas, which I never thought I would do. Right. And the reason we did is because there is a sense of community there, even outside of Nextdoor, that is very familiar to me growing up there. And it's because my parents live there and my only sibling and his family lives there too. And so for my children, they have something in Texas that they didn't have in Silicon Valley, which is they have family. Yeah.
 And they have a sense of community that's part of the culture of the place. Yes, but allow me to push on that. That kid who went to Stanford also saw a world of otherness that he didn't experience. Do you worry that your kids won't experience that in Dallas?
 I think the world is very different now because of technology. So the kid who grew up in Odessa- Very fair. Good point. Had no access, right? Good point. My children do. But that said, I mean, again, Bill taught me to appreciate the two sides of every coin. Yeah.
 And so if you are living in Texas, you do need to get out and experience other places. If you're in Silicon Valley, you need to appreciate the heartland, right? So I think the contrast is where the specialness is. And so for my children, yes, they were born in San Francisco. They grew up in Silicon Valley.
 but they lived abroad. Now they live in Texas. I fully expect that when they go to college, they will choose to go outside Texas the way that I did. So one of the really beautiful things about the world is that there are many different places and they're beautiful in different ways. I think it is important to...
 Think of the world as many beautiful places versus I'm only going to be in Texas or I'm only going to be in Silicon Valley. And that's the only lens that I'm going to look through life at. Right. I think it's very important to appreciate different things.
 Where does Bill's voice show up for you today? In what moments? Well, it certainly shows up in every single day as a CEO because he was the ultimate CEO coach. But more than anything, it shows up whenever I want to be a better person. Yeah, but in the struggle or the success? When does it show up most? Both. When was the last time you genuinely thought, damn, Bill right now would say this or-
 We had a board meeting last week and it was in Dallas, which is where I live now. And it was the first time we've ever had a next door board meeting in Dallas because the company is primarily in San Francisco. And so that's where the board meetings are. And I was thinking about the board meeting and I went all the way back to when Bill taught me, here's how you think about a board meeting.
 Here's what you want to try to accomplish. Here's the kind of vibe that you want to create. You want to ensure that you talk the least, that everyone else is putting their opinion in. You want to use that incredible board of directors you have to get great advice, but you don't want to drag them through the weeds because they're not in the weeds themselves. And I was literally thinking about if Bill were sitting in the boardroom, I had a feeling of how would he want this conversation to go?
 And then I had another feeling, which is how proud would he be that we're sitting there in Dallas, Texas, having this conversation? Because one of the things Bill used to push me on all the time is he'd say, okay, you're this big time Silicon Valley CEO, but have you forgotten your roots?
 Do you still go back to Odessa? Do you still have friends there? Do you remember the lessons you learned there? Because even though he was the real big time Silicon Valley person, he never forgot Homestead, Pennsylvania, which is where he grew up. And so as I thought about that board meeting, I was like,
 There was a very loud Bill Campbell voice helping me think about making it a productive and successful board meeting. But there was a very soft Bill Campbell voice saying, you're bringing him to Texas. What a cool feeling that must be. And you haven't forgotten your roots. A few things before we wrap up. Have you become a Bill to anyone? Boy, what a great question. Something important I'll say about Bill
 Because it's so unique for me in my life. I've had many great mentors, but I've never met a mentor where after spending some time with that person, I thought to myself, even if I'm the best CEO that Nirav Tolia can be, even if I'm just judging myself against my own capabilities, I will never be the CEO that he was.
 And I knew that. He was just, he was magical. He was special in so many ways. And so I look up to him in a way that I could never think of myself as being him. What I have tried to do is to have positive impact on people and to help them believe in themselves the way that he helped me believe in myself.
 And that ultimately, I think, is the legacy of Bill because when I think about my own life, my most important legacy is my children because they will be here when I'm gone. When I think of Bill's legacy, the most incredible thing that he's done is he's activated all of these people to lift other CEOs up the way he lifted CEOs up. And so I have tried to do that, but for me to say that I've been like Bill,
 or I've been a Bill, that's a bridge too far. There was only one Bill Campbell, and there will always only be one Bill Campbell. But shouldn't that be what we aspire for our legacy to be in the sense that Bill is gone, God rest his soul? But we didn't talk about what Bill built. You mentioned trillion dollars a few times. But this whole hour has been spent talking about how Bill believed in a guy.
 Like, isn't that the story you want your kids to tell? I mean, your kids might remember opinions and fan base and next. They don't they don't know any of those things, whatever else you go to do. But isn't this the story you want them to tell? You know, interestingly, Bill, Bill was so low ego that I think Bill would be embarrassed and horrified.
 that there was a book about him called Trillion Dollar Coach. Bill is someone who never wanted the spotlight. And he didn't want anyone to feel that someone's success was because of him. And so I think ultimately the thing that was really so beautiful about Bill and that I would want my legacy to be is, I want my children to be
 very productive people in society, meaning I want them to make society better. I want them to help people. I want them to lift people up.
 If they never think of me as one of the inspirations behind that, that's okay. That's not what's important. But if I find a way to ignite that feeling in them, that's what I want. Because that's what Bill did for me. And that's what he did with so many of the people. He ignited the feeling of not only wanting to be successful in business, but
 He ignited that feeling of wanting to be a better person, not just a better CEO, but a better person. And so the same way with my children, yes, I want them to be successful. I want them to be ambitious. I want them to achieve things. But ultimately, I want them to inside
 want to make the world a better place. And that doesn't need to come from me explicitly in their minds, but I want them to have it. I always say my job as a storyteller is to help someone light their own pilot light, right? And just turn it up a bit. Find that inspiration and spark inside them. 100% and just turn it up a little bit. I want to end with this.
 call from Bill Campbell on your 30th birthday. Bill Campbell. Happy birthday. Happy 30th birthday. I'm not sure it's a milestone. If it was, I'd probably have two of them. I am delighted that you've made it to 30. And I know that the next big step is there for all of us to try to get you married. But seriously, I wanted to wish you happy birthday. I don't think I have ever worked with a better entrepreneur. You have...
 enormous intelligence, great leadership ability, a real full understanding of what you're trying to accomplish in your company. You have a good amount of customer understanding, but the most important thing that I've enjoyed over this last year and a half has been working with somebody that has such high character, such great, great integrity. I enjoy every time I'm with you.
 And I feel like I learned as much from you as you do from me. Happy 30th. You deserve it, boy. Enjoy. And that was more than 20 years ago. And that was Bill. That was Bill. As special as anyone.
 Thank you for coming to help us all. I think my takeaway would be find a bill or be the bill for someone. And he would be very proud if that were his legacy, and it is. And all of us can do the thing that he did, which is to support someone else in becoming the best version of themselves. Thank you for this conversation. Thank you for having me.
 I want to stay and to tell you whatever. I'm Nirav Tolia, and the person who believed in me was Bill Campbell.