Nextdoor, the neighborhood-based social network, said Tuesday it planned to become a public company later this year by merging with an investment vehicle created by one of its venture backers, Khosla Ventures.
The merger with Khosla Ventures Acquisition Co. II, after which Nextdoor plans to trade under the ticker symbol KIND, should be completed in the fourth quarter, the companies said.
The deal is particularly notable given Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar's extensive Wall Street experience. She worked at Goldman Sachs for 11 years, rising to the rank of managing director, before joining Square as its chief financial officer and taking that company public. She served on the board of New Relic, joining shortly before its IPO, and is a director at Slack, which went public through a direct listing in 2019.
The deal will value Nextdoor at $4.3 billion. The company said it would use funding raised in the deal, which includes $270 million in a PIPE investment and $416 million in the Khosla vehicle, after expenses to expand Nextdoor internationally. The company's growth into new neighborhoods has gone at a slow pace, according to statistics provided by the company. By 2019, Nextdoor served 236,000 neighborhoods, and in 2021, it serves 275,000.
Friar, company co-founders Prakash Janakiraman and Sarah Leary, and Benchmark investor Bill Gurley are contributing some of their personal stakes in the company to create the nonprofit Nextdoor Kind Foundation.
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