In this episode of Catch-Up With David, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon sits down with Sarah Friar, chief executive officer of Nextdoor, at the firm’s annual Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco. They discuss her experience growing up in Northern Ireland, her journey to Silicon Valley where she first entered into the startup world as chief financial officer and face of Square and her commitment to expanding opportunities for both local and women-run businesses. Friar, who joined Nextdoor last year, describes the company’s mission to build stronger communities, “what’s different about Nextdoor versus maybe other social media sites is you actually don’t know the people that you’re joined and connected to. So very few people in the U.S. today know their neighbor. But by bringing people together in an online way you’re actually helping to create the conduit for them to get together in an offline way.” As Friar aims to grow the platform and connect neighbors around the world, she’s tapping into the lessons learned from past experiences to settle into her new role, “I think the number one lesson across all those experiences is people first,” explains Friar, “you get your people right, everything else just works. Everything else falls into place.”
Goldman Sachs
Published on Mar 4, 2019
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Goldman Sachs
Published on Apr 12, 2019
On infusing technology into the business: “Some people think that technology changes very quickly on you. I actually don’t believe that. I believe you can see technology changing over a period of time. You may not have figured it out. You may not have not seized it…. It’s not the fault of technology. It’s coming.… So technology is not the issue. It’s your openness to embrace it and your ability to comprehend and yet make quick decisions, but after listening.”
On the cyber threat: “There’s so much in this technology. What could hold it back is the danger of it being misused. The danger of the data being misused is now transparent to everybody…. Unfortunately people take convenience over security; take the ‘cool’ factor over this and they assume that we’re keeping them safe and secure – ‘we’ the device manufacturer, ‘we’ the bank, ‘we’ the company, ‘we’ the government – somebody ‘we,’ not them, we. That is a near and clear and present danger.”
