Every big thing started small. While the greatest successes seem inevitable in hindsight, the founders will remember when it was anything but. It’s the founder’s journey to turn a vision into a tangible product and then to turn that product into a thriving company.

That founder’s journey is especially on my mind today, as Nextdoor lists publicly for the first time. We at Unusual Ventures want to congratulate Sarah Leary, Nextdoor’s co-founder (and our friend and Partner), on this momentous milestone.

Becoming a public company isn’t the end point of a startup’s journey, but it is the end of the early chapters. The founders’ vision was willed into existence and many thousands of hours went into building an idea into an enduring organization. This accomplishment is rare and it deserves a moment of reflection and celebration. 

Sarah will be quick to emphasize that Nextdoor’s success rightly belongs to its team who built the company over a decade and the community of millions of users who enjoy it and have helped shape it into what it is. Her humility and commitment to teamwork and partnership is part of what makes her so special, but all companies are built on the backs of founders' DNA and all cultures are long shadows of the founders’ character. We are incredibly grateful to have her in our Unusual orbit as she has a rare ability to translate her own experience and learnings in a way that the next generation of founders can benefit from her. 

Founders often talk about the shift over time as their creation becomes something much bigger than them — as it comes to be shaped by entire teams and audiences who pick up the torch and carry it higher and farther than any founder could alone. Today is a good day to celebrate all of those stakeholders — Nextdoor’s founders, leaders, teams, and communities — for what they have built together. As always, the next chapter is the biggest, brightest one yet, and we are eager to see where the path will go.

Onward!