Nirav Tolia: Hyperlocal Boy Makes Good

Nirav Tolia grew up in the remote oil-town of Odessa, Tex.—yes, the same Odessa of Friday Night Lights fame. When he arrived as a freshman at Stanford University, some fellow students shuddered at the prospect of small-town life. “That must have been terrible,” he recalls them saying. Not so, says Tolia. “People knew each other and cared for each other.”

Tolia, 40, is trying to make those neighbor-to-neighbor connections more common with Nextdoor, the startup he co-founded in 2010. Nearly 1,400 communities in 46 states have signed up for the service, which is like a mashup of Facebook, Yahoo Groups, and Craigslist—a social network designed to help neighbors find a babysitter, sell a StairMaster, or simply get to know each other. Members use Nextdoor to share basic information about themselves and send messages. All the conversations are archived so it’s easy to find the name of that sought-after electrician long after someone first recommended him.