kind-20231231
UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
FORM 10-K
(Mark One)
For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023
OR
Commission File Number 001-40246
Nextdoor Holdings, Inc.
(Exact Name of Registrant as Specified in Its Charter)
Title of Each Class Trading Symbol Name of Exchange on Which Registered
Class A common stock, par value $0.0001 per share KIND New York Stock Exchange
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None
Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes ☐No☒
Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Act. Yes ☐ No☒
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant: (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes☒ No ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files). Yes☒ No ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definition of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.
Large accelerated filer ☒ Accelerated filer ☐
Non-accelerated filer ☐ Smaller reporting company ☐
Emerging growth company ☐
If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report. ☒
If securities are registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act, indicate by check mark whether the financial statements of the registrant included in the filing reflect the correction of an error to previously issued financial statements. ☐
Indicate by check mark whether any of those error corrections are restatements that required a recovery analysis of incentive-based compensation received by any of the registrant’s executive officers during the relevant recovery period pursuant to § 240.10D-1(b). □
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes ☐ No ☒
The aggregate market value of the voting and non-voting stock held by non-affiliates of the registrant, as of June 30, 2023, the last business day of the registrant’s recently completed second fiscal quarter, was approximately $692.4 million based upon the closing price reported for such date on the New York Stock Exchange.
As of February 23, 2024, there were 192,311,520 shares of the registrant’s Class A common stock outstanding and 201,319,374 shares of the registrant’s Class B common stock outstanding.
DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE
Information required in responses to Part III of Form 10-K is hereby incorporated by reference to portions of the Registrant’s Proxy Statement for the Annual Meeting of Stockholders to be held in 2024. The Proxy Statement will be filed by the Registrant with the Securities and Exchange Commission no later than 120 days after the end of the Registrant’s fiscal year ended December 31, 2023.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements 2
Risk Factor Summary 4
PART I
Item 1. Business 6
Item 1A. Risk Factors 12
Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments 41
Item 1C. Cybersecurity 41
Item 2. Properties 42
Item 3. Legal Proceedings 42
Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures 42
PART II
Item 6. Item 6. [Reserved] 44
Item 7A. Item 7A. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk 57
Item 8. Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data 59
Item 9A. Item 9A. Controls and Procedures 91
Item 9B. Item 9B. Other Information 91
PART III
Item 10. Item 10. Directors, Executive Officers and Corporate Governance 92
Item 11. Item 11. Executive Compensation 92
Item 14. Item 14. Principal Accountant Fees and Services 92
PART IV
Item 15. Item 15. Exhibits, Financial Statement Schedules 93
Signatures 95
See “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” — “Key Business Metrics” and “Non-GAAP Financial Measure” for the definitions of the following terms used in this Annual Report: “WAU,” “ARPU,” and “Adjusted EBITDA.”
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SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This Annual Report on Form 10-K (“Annual Report”) contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. All statements contained in this Annual Report, other than statements of historical fact, including statements regarding our or our management team’s expectations, hopes, beliefs, intentions, strategies, future operating results and financial position, potential growth or growth prospects, are forward-looking statements. Words such as “believes,” “may,” “will,” “estimates,” “potential,” “continues,” “anticipates,” “intends,” “expects,” “could,” “would,” “projects,” “plans,” “targets,” and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements.Forward-looking statements in this Annual Report may include, for example, statements about:
•our anticipated growth, including our ability to scale new neighbor growth, our ability to grow engagement by our existing neighbor base and our ability to increase monetization of our platform;
•our ability to scale our business and monetization efforts;
•the political, economic, and macroeconomic climate, whether in the advertising industry in general, or among specific types of advertisers or within particular geographies, including but not limited to the impacts related to actual or perceived instability in the global banking system, labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, a potential recession, uncertainty with respect to the federal budget and debt ceiling and a potential temporary federal government shutdown related thereto, inflation, and changing interest rates;
•our ability to expand our business operations abroad by opening new and expanding within existing neighborhoods outside of the United States;
•our ability to respond to general economic conditions;
•our ability to invest in, and the ultimate success of, technologies aimed at enhancing our business solutions and delivering additional value to customers on our platform;
•our ability to scale our business effectively;
•our ability to achieve and maintain profitability in the future;
•our ability to access sources of capital to finance operations and growth;
•the success of strategic relationships with third parties;
•our ability to maintain the listing of our Class A common stock on the New York Stock Exchange;
•changes in applicable laws or regulations, both within and outside of the United States;
•the impact of the regulatory environment and complexities with compliance related to such environment;
•the inability to develop and maintain effective internal controls;
•the impact on our business as a result of interruptions, delays, or failures resulting from earthquakes, fires, floods, adverse weather conditions, other natural disasters, power loss, terrorism, pandemics, geopolitical conflict (including the war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war), other physical security threats, cyber-attacks, or other catastrophic events;
•our ability to raise financing in the future;
•our success in retaining or recruiting, or changes required in, our officers, key employees or directors;
•our financial performance; and
•other factors detailed in Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors” in this Annual Report.
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We have based these forward-looking statements largely on our current expectations and projections as of the date of this filing about future events and trends that we believe may affect our financial condition, results of operations, business strategy, short-term and long-term business operations and objectives, and financial needs. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including those described in Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors” in this Annual Report. Readers are urged to carefully review and consider the various disclosures made in this Annual Report and in other documents we file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) that disclose risks and uncertainties that may affect our business. Moreover, we operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks emerge from time to time. It is not possible for us to predict all risks, nor can we assess the impact of all factors on our business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements we may make. In light of these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, the future events and circumstances discussed in this Annual Report may not occur and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements.
You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. The events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements may not be achieved or occur. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, performance, or achievements. In addition, the forward-looking statements in this Annual Report are made as of the date of this filing, and we do not undertake, and expressly disclaim any duty, to update such statements for any reason after the date of this Annual Report or to conform statements to actual results or revised expectations, except as required by law.
You should read this Annual Report and the documents that we reference herein and have filed with the SEC as exhibits to this Annual Report with the understanding that our actual future results, performance, and events and circumstances may be materially different from what we expect.
As used in this Annual Report, the terms “Nextdoor,” “we,” “us,” and “our” mean Nextdoor Holdings, Inc. and its subsidiaries unless the context indicates otherwise.
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RISK FACTOR SUMMARY
Our business is subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, including those described in Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors” in this Annual Report. You should carefully consider these risks and uncertainties when investing in our Class A common stock. Some of the principal risks and uncertainties include the following:
•We have a limited operating history at the current scale of our business and are still scaling up our monetization efforts, which makes it difficult to evaluate our current business and future prospects, and there is no assurance we will be able to scale our business for future growth.
•Adverse global economic and financial conditions could harm our business and financial condition.
•We currently generate substantially all of our revenue from advertising. If advertisers reduce or eliminate their spending with us, our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely impacted.
•Our business is highly competitive. Competition presents an ongoing threat to the success of our business.
•Our business is dependent on our ability to maintain and scale our product offerings and technical infrastructure, and any significant disruption in the availability of our platform could damage our reputation, result in a potential loss of neighbors and engagement, and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
•If we fail to scale our business effectively, our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely affected.
•If our efforts to build strong brand identity and reputation are not successful, we may not be able to attract or retain neighbors, and our business, operating results, and financial condition will be adversely affected.
•We plan to continue expanding our international operations where we have limited operating experience and may be subject to increased business, regulatory, and economic risks that could seriously harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.
•If we need additional capital in the future, it may not be available on favorable terms, if at all.
•Our business depends largely on our ability to attract, retain and assimilate talented employees, including senior management. If we lose the services of or fail to successfully assimilate highly skilled personnel, key employees or members of our senior management team, we may not be able to execute on our business strategy.
•We are dependent on third-party software and service providers, including the Google Ad Manager (“GAM”) platform, for management and delivery of advertisements on the Nextdoor platform. Any failure or interruption experienced by such third-parties could result in the inability of certain businesses to advertise on our platform, and adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
•We rely on third-party software and service providers, including Amazon Web Services (“AWS”), to provide systems, storage and services for our platform. Any failure or interruption experienced by such third parties could result in the inability of neighbors and advertisers to access or utilize our platform, and adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
•Technologies have been developed that can block the display of advertisements on the Nextdoor platform, which could adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
•Security breaches, including improper access to or disclosure of our data or our neighbors’ data, or other hacking and phishing attacks on our or third-party systems, could harm our reputation and adversely affect our business.
•Distribution and marketing of, and access to, our platform depends, in significant part, on a variety of third-party publishers and platforms (including mobile app stores, third-party payment providers, computer systems, and other communication systems and service providers). If these third parties limit, prohibit or otherwise interfere with or change the terms of the distribution, use or marketing of our platform in any material way, it could materially adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
•Certain of our market opportunities and key metric estimates could prove to be inaccurate, and any real or perceived inaccuracies may harm our reputation and negatively affect our business.
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•We have a history of net losses and may experience net losses in the future and we cannot assure you that we will achieve or sustain profitability. If we cannot achieve and sustain profitability, our business, financial condition, and operating results will be adversely affected.
•We may have greater than anticipated tax liabilities, which could harm our business, revenue and financial results.
•We cannot guarantee that our Share Repurchase Program will be fully consummated or that it will enhance long-term stockholder value. Share repurchases could also increase the volatility of the trading price of our stock and diminish our cash reserves.
•We may be liable as a result of content or information that is published or made available on our platform.
•Our business is subject to complex and evolving U.S. and foreign laws, regulations, and industry standards, many of which are subject to change and uncertain interpretations, which uncertainty could harm our business, operating results, and financial conditions.
•We could be involved in legal disputes that are expensive and time consuming, and, if resolved adversely, could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.
•Failure to maintain effective systems of internal controls and disclosure controls could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
•If we are unable to protect our intellectual property, the value of our brands and other intangible assets may be diminished, and our business, operating results, and financial condition may be adversely affected.
•Third parties may claim that our platform infringes their intellectual property rights and this may create liability for us or otherwise adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
•Our use of “open source” software could subject us to possible litigation or could prevent us from offering products that include open source software or require us to obtain licenses on unfavorable terms.
•We license technology from third parties, and our inability to maintain those licenses could harm our business.
•The price of our Class A common stock has been and may continue to be volatile.
•The dual class structure of our common stock may adversely affect the trading market for our Class A common stock.
•The dual class structure of our common stock has the effect of concentrating voting power with our management and other existing stockholders, which will limit your ability to influence the outcome of important transactions, including a change in control.
•We do not intend to pay cash dividends for the foreseeable future.
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PART I
Item 1. Business
Overview
At Nextdoor, our purpose is to cultivate a kinder world where everyone has a neighborhood they can rely on. Neighbors around the world turn to Nextdoor to receive trusted information, give and get help, get things done, and build real world connections with those nearby — neighbors, businesses, and public services. By fostering these connections, both online and in the real world, Nextdoor builds stronger, more vibrant, and more resilient neighborhoods. As of December 31, 2023, Nextdoor was in more than 325,000 neighborhoods around the world and in 1 in 3 households in the United States. As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2023, Nextdoor had 88 million global Verified Neighbors.1
Our Platform
The Nextdoor platform enables neighbors and organizations to build an engaged community of trusted neighbors, businesses and public services that can be depended on to exchange valuable information, goods, and services.
Neighbors use Nextdoor to engage with and stay up to date on the communities that matter to them. They can find posts, photos, and discussions in the Feed, discover nearby neighbors, Groups, businesses, events, and items through a nativized maps surface in the Discover tab, and search for specific content and organizations through our Search feature.
Nextdoor is a high-utility platform that connects neighbors with organizations and other local resources. Neighbors can discover and interact with local businesses, leave recommendations, and follow their Faves on the platform. Neighbors can utilize a truly local marketplace, For Sale & Free, to buy, sell, or give away items, and offer services such as dog walking.
In addition, Nextdoor is where neighbors can receive critical, real-time information from trusted officials. Public agencies, including government entities and service providers, turn to Nextdoor to directly, quickly, and easily reach neighbors in their community with relevant local information and alerts.
Our unique local data set includes event information, safety reports, recommendations, reviews, and discussions, as well as demographic data, interests, and behaviors of local residents. This detailed data contribute to the formation of the unique local knowledge graph that Nextdoor owns. Businesses on Nextdoor can use our real-time local data to devise advertising strategies and ensure their messages reach the most relevant and receptive audience in their immediate locality. Other artificial intelligence (“AI”) and machine learning (“ML”) applications allow us to improve notifications, drive positive interactions, optimize ad delivery, drive growth of comments and replies, and analyze data.
Our Advertising Solutions
Nextdoor offers advertising solutions designed to generate tangible value for businesses seeking to expand their reach and drive sales with unique local context that allows advertisers of all sizes to reach the right neighbor, at the right time, with the right message.
Our platform enables advertisers to achieve measurable outcomes that help advertisers build brand awareness, drive consideration and engagement, and generate sales. Ads can be leveraged on multiple surfaces on and off the platform, including Feed, Search, For Sale & Free, Right Hand Rail, and email.
We are continually improving and building upon our library of ad formats, including sponsored posts and lead generation, which feature combinations of text (static or dynamic), images (including static and animated), and URL links, and the ways in which advertisers can purchase and deliver ads across our platform.
Ad Auction
Ads on the Nextdoor platform primarily compete via an auction-based system. Our auction system selects the best ad for each available ad impression based on the likelihood of a desired action occurring and how much that action is worth to advertisers. The likelihood of the action occurring depends on a variety of factors, such as ad relevance and creative quality.
Measurement & Targeting
1 Verified Neighbors are individuals who have joined Nextdoor and completed the verification process for their account.
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Delivering and demonstrating value for our advertisers is a key focus for Nextdoor. We offer a variety of measurement solutions, including a Conversion API, that are mapped to advertisers’ goals and objectives and validate Nextdoor’s performance. Nextdoor offers both brand safety controls as well as brand safety measurement via independent third-party partners.
Utilizing our neighborhood graph, advertisers can effectively target and reach multiple high value audiences, such as homeowners, parents, and recent movers. Nextdoor’s neighborhood graph is built off high quality signals shared directly by our neighbors and partners. These signals are integrated using proprietary machine learning models that undergo continuous refinement and optimization to ensure scalability and accuracy.
Go-to-Market Approach
Nextdoor offers diverse marketing solutions for advertisers depending on size and goals. Our go-to-market approach combines the utilization of our self-service ads platform and support of a dedicated global sales force for managed campaigns. Our sales team is strategically positioned to attract and retain advertisers across all products, and provides support through all stages of the marketing cycle, including campaign planning, optimization, and performance analytics.
A Kind Platform
Nextdoor is a leading innovator in creating a welcoming platform that facilitates healthy neighborhood connections and conversations. We set clear Community Guidelines and use a combination of people, including nearly 200,0002 volunteer community moderators, and technology to encourage kind conversations and promote neighborhood vitality.
From day one, we’ve required neighbors to sign up with their real names and addresses to ensure neighborhoods are made up of real people, nearby, and we have improved on similar verification procedures for businesses. We require all new neighbors to accept our Neighbor Pledge upon joining, in order to introduce our Community Guidelines and provide personal accountability for interactions on the platform. Further, neighbors are alerted when a new neighbor joins so they can reach out with a message of connection and belonging and establish rapport.
As neighbors interact through the platform, we use a combination of human review and machine learning and predictive technology solutions, like our Kindness Reminder and Constructive Conversations Reminder, launched in 2022, to enforce our Community Guidelines, support civility, and cultivate kindness. In 2023, we gave neighbors the ability to use generative AI to help write posts that are more likely to drive positive community engagement, and integrated AI into the Kindness Remainder to suggest more constructive revisions for comments that may violate the Community Guidelines. These developments enable us to better analyze tone and context, and help authors rephrase posts and comments to receive a better response from their community.
We have always believed it is important to incorporate local context into moderation decisions, which is why we have incorporated volunteer community moderators into our moderation program, alongside Nextdoor operations staff. Volunteer community moderators are active neighbors who have access to specialized tools and resources they can utilize as they help enforce our Community Guidelines. While local community moderators review most types of guideline-violating content, reports of certain types of harmful content (e.g., misinformation, discrimination) are handled by Nextdoor operations staff to ensure our standards and policies are applied consistently.
Technology
Our investments in technology are consistently focused on creating and improving products for neighbors and organizations in the countries in which we operate around the world. We have built generative AI features that personalize the distribution of content and make posts more engaging and kind through the use of Post Assistant. We continue to use machine-learning and proprietary technology to power our product strategy of building an engaged community.
We also continue to invest in our proprietary ad platform to expand and improve our advertising solutions for businesses of all sizes. In support of our objectives of delivering advertiser value, reducing advertising effort, and enabling businesses to thrive on Nextdoor, our development roadmap is focused on unifying our self-service offerings, leveraging machine learning and AI technologies to improve ad targeting, and enhancing measurement solutions to better inform our value proposition.
Intellectual Property
Our intellectual property and core technological innovations are integral components of our business. To establish and protect our intellectual property, proprietary rights and brand, we rely on a combination of federal, state, and common-law rights in the United
2 Nextdoor Transparency Report, 2023.
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States and the rights under the laws of other countries, patents, trademarks, copyrights, domain name, trade secrets, including know-how, license agreements, confidentiality procedures, non-disclosure agreements with third parties, employee disclosure, and invention assignment agreements, and other contractual rights.
We own a trademark portfolio, including registered trademarks and applications in the United States and other countries, for the marks NEXTDOOR, , and . We have registered domain names that we use in or relate to our business, such as the <nextdoor.com> domain name and country code top level domain name equivalents. As of December 31, 2023, we had 10 issued patents in the United States. We cannot assure you that any of our patent applications will result in the issuance of a patent or whether the examination process will require us to narrow our claims. Additionally, our current and future patents, trademarks, and other intellectual property or other proprietary rights may be contested, circumvented or found unenforceable or invalid. We may not be able to obtain or maintain sufficient protection for or successfully enforce our intellectual property. We license content, technology, and other intellectual property from our partners, and rely on our license agreements with those partners to use the intellectual property. Third parties may assert claims related to intellectual property rights against our partners or us.
For additional information, please see the section entitled “Risk Factors — Risks Related to Intellectual Property.”
Human Capital
Our Culture and Core Values
Community is at the heart of Nextdoor and our community of employees is our lifeblood. Our employees have a wide range of experiences and perspectives, which fuel our purpose to cultivate a kinder world where everyone has a neighborhood they can rely on.
Our company core values are:
•Earn trust everyday;
•Invest in community;
•Customer obsessed;
•Think big;
•Experiment and learn quickly; and
•Act like an owner.
We live these core values through our approach to our people practices, summarized below.
Employees
As of December 31, 2023, we had 594 employees in the United States and in our international locations in Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ireland, France and Australia.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging
The principles of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (“DEIB”) are woven into the very fabric of our organization and guide how we recruit, retain, and develop our talent.
Our commitment to DEIB begins at the top and is underscored by the importance of making diverse perspectives a business imperative. This is reflected in the racially diverse and gendered-balanced leaders that make up our Board of Directors, management team, and employees, and who all share in our passion for contributing to and effecting change in communities globally.
We thrive on creating a dynamic, inclusive environment that aims to support and value our employees, and contributes to our award-winning company culture. We have active and engaged Employee Resource Groups (“ERG”) that are aligned around dimensions of diversity, such as gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and other shared attributes, which we believe help foster a sense of community, and a diverse and inclusive workplace. We have equipped our ERG leaders with tools and training to engage in courageous conversations with their communities. This approach is designed to foster space discussions on cultural topics that support the well-being of our employees.
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We focus our global recruitment efforts on ensuring that teams and hiring managers have the opportunity to consider qualified people from historically excluded groups for open roles. Moreover, we distribute a bi-annual employment engagement survey to measure our employees’ satisfaction at Nextdoor, including employees’ perspectives on our current state of workplace inclusivity.
Learning, Development, and Engagement
We have a dedicated Talent Management and Development team that develops and delivers company-wide people programs and learning and development experiences to help our employees grow in their careers. The programs include performance feedback and promotion cycles and recognition through our “Nextdoor Values Awards”. Our learning and development experiences focus on onboarding new hires as well as offering resources focused on skills development and compliance training.
We are committed to making Nextdoor the best place to work by engaging with, and listening to, our community of employees. We maintain ongoing connection with our team members through regular all hands meetings, our speaker series, and bi-annual engagement surveys.
Compensation, Benefits and Perks
We provide employees with competitive compensation packages that include base salaries, sales commissions for certain employees, and equity awards. Additional benefits programs (which vary by country and region) include a 401(k) Plan with a company match, healthcare, vision, and dental insurance benefits, health savings and flexible spending accounts, flexible paid time off, parental leave, and other benefits tailored to the specific needs of our employees such as family forming, caregiving and mental health resources. We also support and encourage our employees to give back to our communities by giving each employee “Volunteer Time Off” to dedicate to the causes that matter most to them.
Competition
We compete in almost every aspect of our business with companies that provide a variety of internet products, services, content, and online advertising. In addition, aspects of our platform compete with other products and services, including home services, classifieds, real estate, recommendations and search engines. Of these companies, we most directly compete with social media companies that offer local products to advertisers and users, including large companies such as Meta (including through Facebook and Instagram), Alphabet (including through Google), and other companies that provide home services, classifieds, real estate, recommendations, and search engines. We compete with these companies to attract, engage, and retain users and to attract and retain advertisers. As we introduce new products, as our platform evolves, or as other companies introduce new products and services, we may become subject to additional competition in other countries.
While our industry is evolving rapidly and is becoming increasingly competitive, we believe that we compete effectively due to our singular focus on creating and strengthening our neighborhood networks, the size and engagement of our user base, our ability to provide neighbors with trusted information from a uniquely local perspective, our value proposition to advertisers including businesses and public agencies, and our powerful network effects.
Our strengths include a strong value proposition based on real people, real conversations and real achievements; Built-in community: creating instant access for new neighbors and businesses joining the neighborhood; and, Our unique ability to connect neighbors to what matters to them. For our customers key strengths also include real people, as well as a high-intent audience with an action mindset and the ability to target neighborhoods everywhere in the countries we serve. Each of these elements reinforce each other to create a strong competitive moat.
For additional information, see the section entitled “Risk Factors — Our business is highly competitive. Competition presents an ongoing threat to the success of our business.”
Government Regulation
We are subject to many U.S. federal and state and foreign laws, regulations, and industry standards that involve matters central to our business, including laws and regulations that involve data privacy and data protection, intellectual property (including copyright and patent laws), content regulation, rights of publicity, advertising, marketing, health and safety, competition, protection of minors, consumer protection, taxation, anti-bribery, anti-money laundering and corruption, telecommunications, AI and machine learning, and securities. Our business may also be affected by the adoption of any new or existing laws or regulations or changes in laws or regulations that adversely affect the growth, popularity or use of the internet, or that significantly restrict or impose conditions on our ability to collect, store, augment, analyze, use and share data or increase consumer notice or consent requirements before a company can utilize cookies or other tracking technologies or that increase the liability of content platforms like us. These laws and regulations are constantly evolving and may be interpreted, applied, created, or amended, in a manner that could harm our business.
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We rely on a variety of statutory and common-law frameworks and defenses relevant to the content available on our service, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the “DMCA”), the Communications Decency Act (“CDA”) and the fair-use doctrine in the United States, and the Electronic Commerce Directive in the European Union. However, each of these statutes is subject to uncertain or evolving judicial interpretation and regulatory and legislative amendments. For example, in the United States, laws such as the CDA, which have previously been interpreted to provide substantial protection to interactive computer service providers, have seen recent Supreme Court challenges and there have been legislative efforts to curtail the CDA’s protections. These efforts could expose us to lawsuits in which we could incur significant costs and could seriously harm our business. In addition, various countries around the world have adopted legislation, including the Digital Services Act (the “DSA”) in the European Union, the Online Safety Act in Australia, and the Online Safety Bill in the United Kingdom, that may impose additional obligations or liability on us associated with content uploaded by users to our platform.
We receive, process, store, use, and share data, some of which contains personal information. We are therefore subject to U.S. federal, state, local, and foreign laws and regulations regarding data privacy and the collection, storage, sharing, use, processing, disclosure and protection of personal information and other data from users, employees or business partners, including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), the United Kingdom’s General Data Protection Regulation (“UK GDPR”), Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, Australia’s The Privacy Act 1988 and Australian Privacy Principles, the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), along with similar privacy laws enacted in other U.S. states. There are also a number of legislative proposals recently enacted or pending before the U.S. Congress, various state legislatures and foreign governments concerning content regulation and data protection that could affect us, These and other laws and regulations that may be enacted, or new interpretation of existing laws and regulations, may require us to modify our data processing practices and policies and to incur substantial costs in order to comply.
The costs of complying with these laws and regulations, which in some cases can be enforced by private parties in addition to government entities, are high and likely to increase in the future, particularly as the degree of regulation increases, our business grows and our geographic scope expands. Further, the impact of these laws and regulations may disproportionately affect our business in comparison to our peers in the technology sector that have greater resources. Any failure on our part to comply with these laws and regulations may subject us to significant liabilities or penalties, or otherwise adversely affect our business, financial condition or operating results. Further, it is possible that certain governments may seek to block or limit our products or otherwise impose other restrictions that may affect the accessibility or usability of any or all our products for an extended period of time or indefinitely.
We communicate with lawmakers and regulators in the countries and regions in which we do business. We have a dedicated policy team that monitors legal and regulatory developments and works with policymakers and regulators around the world to help ensure that our perspective is heard in matters of importance to us.
For additional information, see the section entitled “Risk Factors — Risks Related to Legal and Regulatory Matters.”
Corporate Information
We were initially a blank check or special purpose acquisition company called KVSB, incorporated in Delaware on January 29, 2021, formed for the purpose of effecting a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses or entities. On November 5, 2021 (the “Closing Date”), KVSB consummated the transactions contemplated by the Agreement and Plan of Merger, dated July 6, 2021, as amended on September 30, 2021 (the “Merger Agreement”), by and among KVSB, Lorelei Merger Sub Inc., a direct wholly owned subsidiary of KVSB (“Merger Sub”) and Nextdoor, Inc. (“Legacy Nextdoor”), with Legacy Nextdoor surviving as a wholly owned subsidiary of KVSB (the “Merger” and the transactions contemplated thereby, the “Business Combination”). Legacy Nextdoor was incorporated in Delaware on December 4, 2007. Following the consummation of the Business Combination on the Closing Date, KVSB changed its name from Khosla Ventures Acquisition Co. II to Nextdoor Holdings, Inc.
Our principal executive offices are located at 420 Taylor Street, San Francisco, California 94102 and our telephone number is (415) 344-0333. Our website address is https://www.nextdoor.com. The information contained on, or that can be accessed through, our website is not incorporated by reference into, and is not a part of, this Annual Report. Investors should not rely on any such information in deciding whether to purchase our Class A common stock.
Nextdoor, the Nextdoor logo, and other registered or common law trade names, trademarks, or service marks of Nextdoor appearing in this Annual Report are the property of Nextdoor. This Annual Report contains additional trade names, trademarks, and service marks of other companies that are the property of their respective owners. We do not intend our use or display of other companies’ trade names, trademarks, or service marks to imply a relationship with, or endorsement or sponsorship of us by, these other companies. Solely for convenience, our trademarks and tradenames referred to in this Annual Report appear without the ® and TM symbols, but
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those references are not intended to indicate, in any way, that we will not assert, to the fullest extent under applicable law, our rights, or the right of the applicable licensor, to these trademarks and tradenames.
Available Information
Our reports filed with or furnished to the SEC pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), are available, free of charge, on our Investor Relations website at https://investors.nextdoor.com/ as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC. The SEC maintains a website at http://www.sec.gov that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding us and other companies that file materials with the SEC electronically. Copies of our reports on Form 10-K, Forms 10-Q, and Forms 8-K, and amendments to those reports may also be obtained, free of charge, electronically through our Investor Relations website located at the web address appearing above as soon as reasonably practicable after we file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC. We use our Investor Relations website as a means of disclosing material information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. Accordingly, investors should monitor our Investor Relations website, in addition to following our press releases, SEC filings, and public conference calls and webcasts.
The content of our websites and information that we may post on or provide to online and social media channels and information that can be accessed through our websites or these online and social media channels are not incorporated by reference into this Annual Report or in any other report or document we file with the SEC, and any references to our websites or these online and social media channels are intended to be inactive textual references only.
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Item 1A. Risk Factors
Investing in our Class A common stock involves risks. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information in this Annual Report, including the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and our consolidated financial statements and related notes, before deciding whether to purchase shares of our Class A common stock. You should also carefully consider the following risk factors in addition to the other information included in this Annual Report, including matters addressed in the above section entitled “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements.” Our business, operating results, financial condition, and prospects could also be harmed by risks and uncertainties that are not presently known to us or that we currently believe are not material. If any of these risks actually occur, our business, operating results, financial condition, and prospects could be materially and adversely affected. Unless otherwise indicated, references in these risk factors to our business being harmed will include harm to our business, reputation, brand, financial condition, operating results, and prospects. In such event, the market price of our securities could decline, and you could lose all or part of your investment.
Risks Related to Our Business and Industry
We have a limited operating history at the current scale of our business and are still scaling up our monetization efforts, which makes it difficult to evaluate our current business and future prospects, and there is no assurance we will be able to scale our business for future growth.
We commenced operating the Nextdoor platform in 2011 and began supporting the platform with advertising in 2016. Our limited operating history at the current scale of our business may make it difficult to evaluate our current business and future prospects. We have encountered, and will continue to encounter, risks and difficulties frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly evolving industries, including challenges in accurate financial planning and forecasting, increasing competition and expenses as we effectively scale our business, and our ability to achieve market acceptance of our platform and attract, engage and retain users, who we call “neighbors” (which includes individuals) and organizations (which includes businesses and public agencies, including paying customers such as advertisers). You should consider our business and prospects in light of the risks and difficulties that we may encounter as a business with a limited operating history. We cannot ensure that we will be successful in addressing these and other challenges we may face in the future, and our business, operating results, and financial condition may be adversely affected if we do not manage these risks successfully. We may not be able to sustain or increase our current rate of growth, which is a risk characteristic often shared by companies with limited operating histories participating in rapidly evolving industries.
Additionally, we are still in the early stages of monetizing our platform. Our growth strategy depends on, among other things, increasing neighbors on the network, increasing engagement, developing new and improving existing products for neighbors and organizations, attracting more advertisers (including expanding our sales efforts to reach advertisers in additional international markets), scaling our business with existing advertisers, and delivering targeted advertisements based on neighbors’ personal taste and interests. Given the current macroeconomic environment, it may be more difficult for us to capitalize on our growth strategies. There can be no assurance that we will successfully increase monetization on our platform or that we will sustain or increase the current growth rate of our revenue.
Adverse global economic and financial conditions could harm our business and financial condition.
Adverse global economic and financial events and the effects thereof, such as health epidemics or pandemics, the war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war, inflation, changing interest rates, potential recessions, uncertainty with respect to the federal budget or debt ceiling and a potential temporary federal government shutdown related thereto, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, actual or perceived instability in the global banking system, supply chain issues and inventory and labor shortages, have caused, and could in the future cause, disruptions and volatility in global financial markets. These conditions have in the past and may in the future translate to cost increases to us and advertisers and lead to decreased spending by our advertisers. In addition, since the majority of our revenue is derived from advertisers within the United States, economic conditions in the United States have a greater impact on us. We may not perform well in adverse macroeconomic conditions, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition and operating results.
We currently generate substantially all of our revenue from advertising. If advertisers reduce or eliminate their spending with us, our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely impacted.
Substantially all of our revenue is currently generated from the sales of advertising on our platform in the form of online display advertisements, which include sponsored posts and local deals. Our advertisers typically do not have long-term advertising spend commitments with us. Many of our advertisers spend only a relatively small portion of their overall advertising budget with us. In
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addition, advertisers may view some of the features on our platform as experimental and unproven. Advertisers will not continue to do business with us, or they will reduce the prices they are willing to pay to advertise with us, if we do not deliver advertisements in an effective manner, or if advertisers do not believe that their investment in advertising with us will generate a competitive return relative to alternatives. Our ability to attract and retain advertisers, and ultimately generate revenue, may be adversely affected by a number of factors, including but not limited to:
•decreases in neighbor or advertiser engagement on the platform;
•slower than anticipated growth in, or lack of growth or decreases in, the number of neighbors active on the platform;
•the impact of macroeconomic conditions, whether in the advertising industry in general, among specific types of advertisers or within particular geographies, including but not limited to health epidemics or pandemics, actual or perceived instability in the global banking system, labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, a potential recession, uncertainty with respect to the federal budget or debt ceiling and a potential temporary federal government shutdown related thereto, inflation and changing interest rates;
•platform changes (such as the migration to our proprietary ad server) or inventory management decisions that change the size, format, frequency, or relative prominence of advertisements displayed on the platform;
•competitors offering more attractive pricing for advertisements that we are unable or unwilling to match;
•a decrease in the quantity or quality of advertisements shown to neighbors;
•changes to laws, third-party policies or applications that limit our ability to deliver, target, or measure the effectiveness of advertising, including changes by mobile operating system and browser providers such as Apple and Google;
•changes to demographics of our neighbors that make us less attractive to advertisers;
•an increase in neighbors who exercise opt-out rights under privacy laws to restrict the advertisements they receive;
•neighbors that upload content or take other actions that are deemed to be hostile, inappropriate, illicit, objectionable, illegal, or otherwise not consistent with the brand of our advertisers;
•adverse government actions or legislative, regulatory, or other legal developments;
•neighbor behavior or changes to the platform that may affect, among other things, the safety and security of other neighbors or the cultivation of a positive and inclusive online community;
•adverse media reports or other negative publicity involving us;
•implementing or enforcing policies, such as advertising policies, community guidelines, and other terms or service that are perceived negatively by advertisers;
•our ability to develop and improve our products for advertisers;
•limitations in, or reductions to, the availability, accuracy, utility, and security of analytics and measurement solutions offered by us or third parties that are intended to demonstrate the value of our advertisements to advertisers; and
•changes to our data privacy practices that affect the type or manner of advertising that we are able to provide, including as a result of changes to laws, regulations or regulatory actions, such as the GDPR, European Directive 2002/58/EC (the “ePrivacy Directive”), the UK GDPR, the UK Data Protection Act 2018, the CCPA, Nevada’s Online Privacy Law, the CDPA, the VCPDA, the CPRA, and other U.S. state privacy laws, or changes to third-party policies.
From time to time, certain of these factors have adversely affected our revenue to varying degrees. The occurrence of any of these or other factors in the future could result in a reduction in demand for our advertisements, which may reduce the prices we receive for our advertisements, or cause advertisers to stop or reduce their spend with us, either of which would negatively affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. Similar occurrences in the future may impair our ability to maintain or increase the quantity or quality of advertisements shown to neighbors and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
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Our ability to attract and retain advertisers depends on our ability to collect and use data and develop products to enable us to effectively deliver and accurately measure advertisements on the Nextdoor platform.
Most advertisers rely on tools that measure the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns in order to allocate their advertising spend among various formats and platforms. If we are unable to accurately measure the effectiveness of advertising on our platform, if at all, or if we are unable to convince advertisers that our platform should be part of a larger advertising budget, our ability to increase the demand and pricing of our advertising tools and maintain or scale our revenue may be limited or decline. Our ability to develop and offer products that accurately measure the effectiveness of a campaign on our platform is critical to our ability to attract new advertisers and retain, and increase spend from our existing advertisers.
We are continually developing and improving our products for advertisers and such efforts have and are likely to continue to require significant time and resources and additional investment, and in some cases, we have relied on, and may in the future rely on, third parties to provide data and technology needed to provide certain measurement data to our advertisers. If we cannot continue to develop and improve our products for advertisers in a timely fashion, those products are not reliable, or the measurement results are inconsistent with advertiser’s expectations or goals, our revenue could be adversely affected.
In addition, web and mobile browser developers, such as Apple, Microsoft or Google, have implemented and may continue to implement changes, including requiring additional user permissions, in their browser or device operating system that impair our ability to measure and improve the effectiveness of advertising on our platform. Such changes include limiting the use of first-party and third-party cookies and related tracking technologies, such as mobile advertising identifiers, and other changes that limit our ability to collect information that allows us to attribute neighbors’ actions on advertisers’ websites to the effectiveness of advertising campaigns run on our platform. For example, Apple launched its Intelligent Tracking Prevention (“ITP”) feature in its Safari browser. ITP blocks some or all third-party cookies by default on mobile and desktop and ITP has become increasingly restrictive over time. Apple’s related Privacy-Preserving Ad Click attribution, intended to preserve some of the functionality lost with ITP, would, for example, prevent uniquely identifying individuals and devices across sites for the purpose of Ad Click attribution, prevent measurement outside a narrowly-defined attribution window, and prevent advertisement re-targeting and optimization. Further, Apple introduced an App Tracking Transparency framework that limits the ability of mobile applications to request an iOS device’s advertising identifier and may also affect our ability to track neighbors’ actions off our platform and connect their interactions with on-platform advertising. Similarly, Google has announced that it plans to start phasing out third-party cookies in its Google Chrome browser, beginning in the second half of 2024, and, more recently, that it intends to limit access by mobile applications to advertising identifiers on Android devices. These web and mobile browser developers have also implemented and may continue to implement changes and restrictions in browser or device functionality that limit our ability to communicate with or understand the identity of our neighbors.
These restrictions and changes make it more difficult for us to provide the most relevant advertisements to our neighbors, as well as decrease our ability to measure the effectiveness of, re-target or optimize advertising on our platform. Developers may release additional technology that further inhibits our ability to collect data that allows us to measure the effectiveness of advertising on our platform. Any other restriction, whether by law, regulation, policy (including third-party policies), user opt-outs or otherwise, on our ability to collect and share data which our advertisers find useful or that further reduce our ability to measure the effectiveness of advertising on our platform, would impede our ability to attract, grow and retain advertisers. Advertisers and other third parties who provide data that helps us deliver personalized, relevant advertising may restrict or stop sharing this data and it therefore may not be possible for us to collect this data within the platform or from another source.
We rely heavily on our ability to collect and share data and metrics for our advertisers to help new and existing advertisers understand the performance of advertising campaigns. If advertisers do not perceive our metrics to be accurate representations of our neighbors and neighbor engagement, or there are inaccuracies in our metrics, advertisers may decrease or eliminate allocations of their budgets or resources to our platform, which could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.
If we fail to add new neighbors or retain current neighbors, or if current neighbors engage less with the Nextdoor platform, our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely impacted.
The number of neighbors that use the Nextdoor platform and their level of engagement on the platform are critical to our success. We must continue to engage and retain existing neighbors on our platform as well as attract, engage and retain new neighbors. The number of neighbors on the Nextdoor platform may not continue to grow at historical growth rates or at all, and it may even decline. In order to attract new neighbors, we must engage with neighbors in existing neighborhoods on our platform and add new neighborhoods to the Nextdoor platform, both domestically and internationally. If our neighbor growth rate slows or reverses, our financial performance will be adversely impacted unless we can increase our engagement with our existing neighbors and our monetization efforts to offset any such reduction or decrease in neighborhood growth rate.
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If current and potential neighbors do not perceive their experience with the Nextdoor platform to be useful, the content generated on the platform to be valuable or relevant or the social connections with fellow neighbors to be worthwhile, we may not be able to attract new neighbors, retain existing neighbors or maintain or increase the frequency and duration of their engagement on our platform. In addition, if our existing neighbors decrease the frequency or duration of their engagement or the growth rate of our active neighbor base slows or reverses, we may be required to incur significantly higher marketing expenses than we currently anticipate in order to acquire new neighbors or retain current neighbors.
There are many factors that could negatively impact our ability to grow, retain and engage current and prospective neighbors, including but not limited to:
•neighbors increasing their engagement with competitors’ platforms, products or services instead of, or more frequently than, our platform;
•changes in the amount of time neighbors spend across all applications and platforms, including our platform;
•failing to introduce platform enhancements that neighbors find engaging or if we introduce new features, terms, policies or procedures, or make changes to our platform, that are not favorably received by current or prospective neighbors;
•technical or other problems frustrating the neighbor experience, such as problems that prevent us from delivering our service in a fast and reliable manner;
•neighbors having difficulty installing, updating or otherwise accessing the Nextdoor platform on mobile devices through the app or web browsers;
•neighbor behavior on the Nextdoor platform changing, including a decrease in the quality and frequency of content shares on the platform;
•decreases in neighbor or advertiser sentiment due to questions about the quality or usefulness of our platform, concerns about the nature of content made available on the platform, concerns related to privacy, safety, security, well-being or other factors;
•changes mandated by legislation, government and regulatory authorities, or litigation that adversely impact our platform or neighbors;
•third parties preventing their content from being displayed on the Nextdoor platform;
•changes we may make to how we promote different features on our platform;
•initiatives designed to attract and retain neighbors and engagement are unsuccessful or discontinued, whether as a result of actions by us, third parties, or otherwise;
•we, or other partners and companies in the industry are the subject of adverse media reports or other negative publicity;
•we are unable to combat spam, harassment, cyberbullying or other hostile, inappropriate, abusive or offensive content or usage on our platform; or
•we cannot preserve and enhance our brand and reputation as a trusted neighborhood networking community.
Any decrease in neighbor growth, retention or engagement could render our service less attractive to neighbors or advertisers, and could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition. In addition, neighbor verification is a critical feature of our platform because it demonstrates that neighbors are real people and businesses in the neighborhood they desire to join. If we were to change our verification methods, that may adversely impact our ability to add new neighbors or retain existing neighbors.
Our business is highly competitive. Competition presents an ongoing threat to the success of our business.
We compete with companies that provide a variety of internet products, services, content, and online advertising. In addition, aspects of our platform compete with other products and services, including home services, classifieds, real estate, recommendations, and search engines. Of these companies, we most directly compete with social media companies that offer local products to advertisers and users, including large companies such as Meta (including through Facebook and Instagram) and Alphabet (including through Google), and other companies that provide home services, classifieds, real estate, recommendations, and search engines. We compete with these companies to attract, engage, and retain users and to attract and retain advertisers. If we introduce or acquire new products and services or evolve our platform in a way that subjects us to additional competition or as existing competitors introduce new products
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and services or evolve their platforms, we may fail to engage or retain neighbors or attract new neighbors, which could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Some of our current and potential competitors have substantially broader product or service offerings and leverage their relationships based on other products or services to gain additional share of advertising spend. They have large distributed sales forces and an increasing amount of control over mobile distribution channels. Many of these competitors’ economies of scale allow them to have access to larger volumes of data and platforms that are used on a more frequent basis than the Nextdoor platform, which may enable them to better understand their member base and develop and deliver more targeted advertising. Such competitors may not need to rely on third-party data, including data provided by advertisers, to effectively target the campaigns of advertisers, which could make their advertising products more attractive to advertisers than our platform if such third-party data ceases to be available to us, whether because of regulatory changes, privacy or cybersecurity concerns or other reasons. If our advertisers do not believe that our value proposition is as compelling as those of our competitors, we may not be able to attract new advertisers or retain existing ones, and our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely impacted.
Our competitors may develop products, features, or services that are similar to our platform or that achieve greater acceptance, may undertake more far-reaching and successful product development efforts or marketing campaigns, or may adopt more aggressive pricing policies. Some competitors may gain a competitive advantage relative to us in areas where we operate, including by more effectively responding to changes to third-party products and policies or by integrating competing platforms, applications, or features into products they control such as mobile device operating systems, search engines, browsers, or e-commerce platforms. For example, Apple introduced changes starting with iOS 14.5 that limit our ability, and the ability of others in the digital advertising industry, to track individual users and devices, and target and measure advertisements effectively. Additionally, the Apple App Store guidelines require apps that support account creation to also allow users to delete their account within the app. This change has and may continue to impact our ability to retain users. Moreover, Google recently announced that it intends to limit access by mobile applications to advertising identifiers on Android devices, likely by the end of 2024. As a result, our competitors may, and in some cases will, acquire and engage neighbors or generate advertising or other revenue at the expense of our efforts, which would negatively affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. In addition, from time to time, we may take actions in response to competitive threats, but we cannot assure you that these actions will be successful or that they will not negatively affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We believe that our ability to compete depends upon many factors both within and beyond our control, including:
•the popularity, usefulness, ease of use, performance, and reliability of our platform compared to our competitors’ products;
•the size and composition of our neighbor base;
•the engagement of neighbors with our platform and competing products;
•first- and third-party data available to us relative to our competitors;
•our ability to attract and retain advertisers who use our free or paid advertisements services;
•the timing and market acceptance of developments and enhancements to our platform or our competitors’ products;
•our safety and security efforts and our ability to protect neighbor data and to provide neighbors with control over their data;
•our ability to distribute our platform to new and existing neighbors;
•our ability to effectively monetize our platform;
•the successful implementation of platform changes, such as the migration to our proprietary ad server and introduction of AI technologies into our platform;
•the frequency, size, format, quality, and relative prominence of the advertisements displayed by us or our competitors;
•customer service and support efforts;
•marketing and selling efforts, including our ability to measure the effectiveness of our advertisements and to provide advertisers with a compelling return on their investments;
•our ability to establish and maintain publisher interest in integrating their content with our platform;
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•changes mandated by legislation, regulatory authorities, or litigation, some of which may have a disproportionate effect on us;
•acquisitions or consolidation within our industry, which may result in more formidable competitors;
•our ability to attract, retain, and motivate talented employees, particularly software engineers, designers, and managers;
•our ability to cost-effectively manage and grow our operations; and
•our reputation and brand strength relative to those of our competitors.
If we are not able to compete effectively, our neighbor base and level of neighbor engagement may decrease, we may become less attractive to advertisers and our business, operating results, and financial condition may be adversely affected.
Our business is dependent on our ability to maintain and scale our product offerings and technical infrastructure, and any significant disruption in the availability of our platform could damage our reputation, result in a potential loss of neighbors and engagement, and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our reputation and ability to attract, retain, and serve our neighbors and to scale our product offerings is dependent upon the reliable performance of our platform and our underlying technical infrastructure. We have in the past experienced, and may in the future experience, interruptions in the availability or performance of our platform from time to time. Our systems may not be adequately designed or may not operate with the reliability and redundancy necessary to avoid performance delays or outages that could be harmful to our business. If our platform is unavailable when neighbors attempt to access it, or if it does not load as quickly as expected, neighbors may not use our platform as often in the future, or at all, and our ability to serve advertisements may be disrupted, any of which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. As the amount and types of information shared on our platform continues to grow and evolve, as the usage patterns of our communities continues to evolve, and as our internal operational demands continue to grow, we will need an increasing amount of technical infrastructure, including network capacity and computing power, to continue to satisfy our needs. If we fail to continue to effectively scale and grow our technical infrastructure to accommodate these increased demands, neighbor engagement and revenue growth may be adversely impacted. Moreover, as we scale our platform and product offerings, including video and other platform features, that may place strain on our technical infrastructure, and we may also be unsuccessful in scaling our technical infrastructure to accommodate new product offerings and increased platform usage cost-effectively. In addition, our business may be subject to interruptions, delays, or failures resulting from earthquakes, fires, floods, adverse weather conditions, other natural disasters, power loss, terrorism, pandemics, geopolitical conflict (including the current war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war), other physical security threats, cyber-attacks, or other catastrophic events. If such an event were to occur, neighbors may be subject to service disruptions or outages and we may not be able to recover our technical infrastructure and neighbor data in a timely manner to restart or provide our services, which may adversely affect our financial results. In addition, the substantial amount of our employees are based in our headquarters located in San Francisco, California. If there is a catastrophic failure involving our systems or major disruptive event affecting our headquarters or the San Francisco area in general, we may be unable to operate our platform.
A substantial portion of our network infrastructure is provided by third parties, including AWS. We also rely on third parties for other technology related services, including certain AI functions. Any disruption or failure in the services we receive from these providers could impact the availability of our platform and could adversely impact our business, operating results and financial condition. Any financial or other difficulties these providers face may adversely affect our business, and we exercise little control over these providers, which increases our reliance on and vulnerability to problems with the services they provide and increases in the costs of these services.
Any of these developments may result in interruptions in the availability or performance of our platform, result in neighbors ceasing to use our platform, require unfavorable changes to our platform, delay the introduction of future products, or otherwise adversely affect our reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition.
If we fail to scale our business effectively, our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely affected.
We have experienced growth in recent years and expect to continue to invest strategically across our organization to support measured growth, while also scaling back certain areas of our business in response to changing economic conditions. Although we have experienced rapid growth historically, we may not return to prior growth rates or sustain our growth rates, nor can we assure you that our investments to support our growth or to manage expenses by scaling back other areas of our business will be successful. The effective scaling of our business will require us to invest financial and operational resources and the continuous dedication of our management team.
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We plan to continue to expand our international operations into more countries in the future, which will place additional demands on our resources and operations. The growth and expansion of our business has placed, and continues to place, a significant strain on our management, operations, and financial and technical infrastructure. In the event of further growth of our business or in the number of our third-party relationships, our information technology systems or our internal controls and procedures may not be adequate to support our operations.
Further, as we have grown, our business has become increasingly complex and requires more resources. To manage any future growth effectively, we must continue to improve and expand our information technology and financial infrastructure, our operating and administrative systems and controls, and our ability to manage headcount, capital, and processes in an efficient and appropriate manner. Failure to manage growth effectively could result in increases in costs, difficulties in introducing new products and services or enhancing the platform, loss of neighbors and advertisers, or other operational difficulties, any of which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. For example, as we expand our product offerings, including video, we may not be able to do so cost-effectively. Effectively managing our growth may also be more difficult to accomplish the longer that our employees, our advertisers, neighbors and the overall economy is impacted due to macroeconomic conditions and factors, including but not limited to the impacts related to the actual or perceived instability in the global banking system, labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, a potential recession, uncertainty with respect to the federal budget or debt ceiling and a potential temporary federal government shutdown, related thereto, changing interest rates and inflation, and the war in Ukraine and theIsrael-Hamas war.
We may not be able to successfully implement or scale improvements to our systems, processes, and controls in an efficient or timely manner. Our controls, policies and procedures, including with respect to accounting, risk management, data privacy, cybersecurity, client on-boarding, transaction monitoring, and reliance on manual controls, among other compliance matters, remain under development and may not be consistently applied or fully effective to identify, monitor and manage all risks of our business as we continue to scale rapidly. In addition, our existing systems, processes, and controls may not prevent or detect all errors, omissions, or fraud. We may also experience difficulties in managing improvements to our systems, processes, and controls or in connection with third-party software licensed to help us with such improvements. Any future growth will continue to add complexity to our organization and require effective coordination throughout our organization. Failure to manage any future growth effectively could result in increased costs, cause difficulty or delays in attracting new neighbors or retaining or increasing the engagement of existing neighbors, cause difficulties in introducing new features, impact our ability to attract and retain talent or cause other operational difficulties, and any of these difficulties would adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Additionally, from time to time, we realign our resources and talent to implement stage-appropriate business strategies, which could include furloughs, layoffs and reductions in force. For example, in November 2023, in response to changing economic conditions and in an effort to support our growth, scale and profitability objectives, reduce our operational costs and improve our organizational efficiency, we executed a restructuring plan, which included a restructuring and reduction of the current workforce by approximately 25%. The restructuring plan was substantially completed by the end of the fourth quarter of 2023. If there are unforeseen expenses associated with such realignments in our business strategies, and we incur unanticipated charges or liabilities, then we may not be able to effectively realize the expected cost savings or other benefits of such actions. Failure to manage any growth or any scaling back of our operations could have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
If we or our industry generally are unable to provide a high-quality and secure customer experience in the various locales in which we operate, our brand could suffer reputational damage and our business results could be harmed.
Our business is largely driven by and reliant on customer trust. The reliability of our service, the security of personally identifiable and other sensitive information of our customers, and a responsive and effective customer support function are each critical elements for the maintenance of this trust. For example, any significant interruption in either our internal or our partners’ systems could reduce customer confidence in our services. In addition, any breach, or reported breach, of our systems, our information security policies, or legal requirements that results in a compromise of customer data or causes customers to believe their data has been compromised could have a significant negative effect on our business. Legal claims and regulatory enforcement actions could also arise in response to these events, which would further exacerbate erosion of customer trust and potentially result in operating losses and liabilities.
If we do not successfully anticipate market needs and develop products and services and platform enhancements that meet those needs, or if those products, services, and platform enhancements do not gain market acceptance, our business, operating results, and financial condition will be adversely impacted.
We may not be able to anticipate future market needs or be able to improve our platform or to develop new products and services or platform enhancements to meet such needs on a timely basis, if at all. In addition, our inability to diversify beyond our current offerings could adversely affect our business. Any new products or services or platform enhancements that we introduce, including by way of acquisitions, may not achieve any significant degree of market acceptance from current or potential neighbors, which would
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adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. In addition, the introduction of new products or services or platform enhancements may decrease neighbor engagement with our platform, thereby offsetting the benefit of even a successful product or service introduction, any of which could adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We may not be successful in our AI initiatives, which could adversely affect our business, reputation, or financial results.
We are continuing to make investments in AI initiatives, including to recommend relevant content across our products, enhance our advertising tools, and develop new product features using generative AI. Our AI initiatives may require increased investment in infrastructure and headcount. AI technologies are complex and rapidly evolving, and we face significant competition from other companies as well as an evolving regulatory landscape. These efforts, including the introduction of new products or changes to existing products, may result in new or enhanced governmental or regulatory scrutiny, litigation, ethical concerns, or other complications that could adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition. For example, the use of datasets to develop AI models, the content generated by AI systems, or the application of AI systems may be found to be insufficient, offensive, biased, or harmful, or violate current or future laws and regulations. Moreover, AI may give rise to litigation risk, including potential intellectual property or privacy liability. In addition, market acceptance of AI technologies is uncertain, and we may be unsuccessful in our product development efforts. Moreover, our competitors may introduce AI technologies and features into their products and services that achieve greater market acceptance that ours. Any of these factors could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
If our efforts to build strong brand identity and reputation are not successful, we may not be able to attract or retain neighbors, and our business, operating results, and financial condition will be adversely affected.
We believe that maintaining and enhancing the “Nextdoor” brand and reputation is critical to retaining and growing neighbors and advertisers on our platform. We anticipate that maintaining and enhancing our brand and reputation will depend largely on our continued ability to provide high-quality, relevant, reliable, trustworthy and innovative features on our platform, which may require substantial investment and may not be successful. We may need to introduce new products, services and features or updates to our platform and features that require neighbors to agree to new terms of service that our neighbors do not like, which may negatively affect our brand and reputation.
Additionally, advertisements or actions of our advertisers may affect our brand and reputation if neighbors do not think the advertisements help them accomplish their objectives, view the advertisements as intrusive or misleading or have poor experiences with our advertisers.
Our brand and reputation may also be negatively affected by the content or actions of neighbors that are deemed to be hostile or inappropriate to other neighbors, by the actions of neighbors acting under false or inauthentic identities, by the use of our platform to disseminate misleading or false information, the use of our platform for fraudulent schemes and scams, or by the use of our service for illicit, illegal or objectionable ends. We also may fail to respond expeditiously to the sharing of illegal, illicit or objectionable content on our service or objectionable practices by advertisers, or to otherwise address our neighbors’ concerns, which could erode confidence in our brand and damage our reputation. We expect that our ability to identify and respond to this content in a timely manner may decrease as the number of neighbors grows, as the amount of content on the platform increases or as we expand our product and service offerings on our platform. Any governmental or regulatory inquiry, investigation or action, including based on the appearance of illegal, illicit or objectionable content on our platform or the failure to comply with laws and regulations, could damage our brand and reputation, regardless of the outcome.
We have experienced, and expect to continue to experience, media, legislative, governmental and regulatory scrutiny of our decisions. Any scrutiny regarding us, including regarding our data privacy, content moderation or other practices, platform changes, platform quality, litigation or regulatory action, or regarding the actions of our employees, neighbors, or advertisers or other issues, may harm our brand and reputation. In addition, scrutiny of other companies in our industry, including such companies’ data privacy, content moderation or other practices, could also have a negative impact on our brand and reputation. These concerns, whether actual or unfounded, may also deter neighbors or advertisers from using our platform. In addition, we may fail to adequately address the needs of neighbors and advertisers which could erode confidence in our brand and damage our reputation. If we fail to promote and maintain the “Nextdoor” brand or preserve our reputation, or if we incur excessive expenses in this effort, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely impacted.
Unfavorable media coverage negatively affects our business from time to time.
Unfavorable publicity regarding us, for example regarding our privacy or cybersecurity practices, terms of service, advertising policies, platform changes, platform quality, litigation or regulatory activity, the actions of our advertisers, the use of our platform for illicit or objectionable ends, the substance or enforcement of our community standards, the actions of our neighbors, the quality and integrity of content shared on our platform, or the actions of other companies that provide similar services to us, has in the past, and
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could in the future, adversely affect our reputation. For example, we have been, and may in the future be, subject to negative publicity in connection with our handling of misinformation and other illicit or objectionable uses of our platform. Any such negative publicity could have an adverse effect on the size, engagement, and loyalty of our neighbor base and advertiser demand for advertising on our platform, which could result in decreased revenue and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition, and we have experienced such adverse effects to varying degrees from time to time.
We plan to continue expanding our international operations where we have limited operating experience and may be subject to increased business, regulatory, and economic risks that could seriously harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We plan to continue expanding our business operations abroad by opening new and expanding within existing neighborhoods outside of the United States. As of December 31, 2023, the Nextdoor platform was accessible in 11 countries (including the United States) and had over 325,000 neighborhoods. We plan to enter new international markets and expand in existing markets where we have limited or no experience in marketing, selling, advertising and deploying our platform or selling advertising. Any of our limited experience and infrastructure in such markets, individuals’ lack of familiarity with us or our platform, the existence of alternative platforms in such jurisdictions that offer similar products and services or the lack of a critical mass of potential neighbors in such markets may make it more difficult for us to effectively monetize any increase in neighbors in those markets, and may increase our costs without a corresponding increase in revenues. If we fail to deploy or manage our operations in international markets successfully, comply with international regulations or effectively monetize our platform in international markets to the same degree as we are able to monetize our efforts within the United States, our business, operating results and financial conditions will be adversely affected. In the future, if our international operations increase, or more of our expenses are denominated in currencies other than the U.S. dollar, our operating results may be more greatly affected by fluctuations in the exchange rates of the currencies in which we do business. In addition, as our international operations and sales to advertisers continue to grow, we will be subject to a variety of risks inherent in doing business internationally, including:
•political, social and economic instability, including as a result of acts of war or terrorism, including the war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war;
•risks related to the legal and regulatory environment in foreign jurisdictions, including with respect to privacy and data protection, and unexpected changes in laws, regulatory requirements, and enforcement;
•potential damage to our brand and reputation due to compliance with local laws, including potential censorship and requirements to provide neighbor information to local authorities;
•enhanced difficulty in reviewing content on the Nextdoor platform and enforcing community standards across different languages and countries;
•fluctuations in currency exchange rates;
•foreign exchange controls and tax and other regulations and orders that might prevent us from repatriating cash earned in countries outside the United States or otherwise limit our ability to move cash freely, and impede our ability to invest such cash efficiently;
•compliance with multiple U.S. and international tax jurisdictions and management of tax impact of global operations;
•potentially higher levels of credit risk and payment fraud;
•difficulties integrating any foreign acquisitions;
•burdens of complying with a variety of foreign laws, including laws related to taxation, content removal, data localization, data transfer, consents, payments, and regulatory oversight;
•reduced protection for intellectual property rights in some countries;
•different regulations and practices with respect to employee/employer relationships, existence of workers’ councils and labor unions, increase in labor costs due to high wage inflation in certain international jurisdictions, and other challenges caused by distance, language and cultural differences, making it harder to do business in certain international jurisdictions; and
•difficulties in staffing and managing global operations and the increased travel, infrastructure, and legal compliance costs associated with multiple international locations.
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In addition, we must manage the potential conflicts between locally accepted business practices in any given jurisdiction and our obligations to comply with laws and regulations, including anti-money laundering laws, anti-corruption laws or regulations applicable to us, such as the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and the U.K. Bribery Act 2010. We also must manage our obligations to comply with laws and regulations related to export controls, sanctions, and embargoes, including regulations established by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control. Government agencies and authorities have a broad range of civil and criminal penalties they may seek to impose against companies for violations of anti-corruption laws or regulations, export controls, and other laws, rules, sanctions, embargoes, and regulations. Any failure by us to comply with local business practices or the laws and regulations applicable to us in the markets in which we operate may adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. Additionally, if we are unable to expand internationally and manage the complexity of our global operations successfully, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
If we need additional capital in the future, it may not be available on favorable terms, if at all.
We have historically relied on outside financing to fund our operations, capital expenditures and expansion. We may require additional capital from equity or debt financing in the future to support our growth, fund our operations or to respond to competitive pressures or strategic opportunities. We may not be able to secure timely additional financing on favorable terms, if at all. The current macroeconomic environment may make it more difficult to raise additional capital on favorable terms, if at all. If we raise additional funds through further issuances of equity, convertible debt securities or other securities convertible into equity, our existing stockholders, could suffer significant dilution in their percentage ownership, and any new securities that we issue could have rights, preferences and privileges senior to those of holders of our Class A common stock. Any debt financing that we secure in the future could involve restrictive covenants relating to our capital raising activities and other financial and operational matters, including the ability to pay dividends. This may make it more difficult for us to obtain additional capital and to pursue business opportunities, including potential acquisitions. If we are unable to obtain adequate financing or financing on terms that are satisfactory to us, if and when we require financing, our ability to grow or support our business and to respond to business challenges that we may face could be significantly limited.
We may make acquisitions, which could harm our financial condition or operating results and may adversely affect the price of our Class A common stock.
As part of our business strategy, we have made, and may in the future make acquisitions to add specialized employees and complementary companies, products or technologies, data, and enter new geographic regions. Our previous and future acquisitions may not achieve our goals, and we may not realize benefits from acquisitions we make in the future. If we fail to successfully integrate acquisitions, or the personnel or technologies associated with those acquisitions, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be harmed. Any integration process will require significant time and resources, and we may not be able to manage the process successfully. Our acquisition strategy may change over time and any future acquisitions we complete could be viewed negatively by neighbors, advertisers, investors or other parties with whom we do business. We may not successfully evaluate or utilize the acquired technology and accurately forecast the financial impact of an acquisition, including accounting charges. We may also incur unanticipated liabilities that we assume as a result of acquiring companies. We may have to pay cash, incur debt or issue equity securities to pay for any such acquisition, each of which could affect our financial condition or the value of our securities. In the future, we may not be able to find other suitable acquisition candidates, and we may not be able to complete acquisitions on favorable terms, if at all. Our acquisition strategy could require significant management attention, disrupt our business and harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our business depends largely on our ability to attract, and retain and assimilate talented employees, including senior management. If we lose the services of or fail to successfully assimilate highly skilled personnel, key employees or members of our senior management team, we may not be able to execute on our business strategy.
Our future success depends on our continuing ability to attract, train, assimilate, and retain highly skilled personnel, including software engineers and sales personnel. We face intense competition for qualified individuals from numerous software and other technology companies. In addition, competition for qualified personnel, particularly software engineers, is particularly intense in the San Francisco Bay Area, where our headquarters are located, and the change by companies to offer a remote or hybrid work environment may increase the competition for such employees from employers outside of our traditional office locations.
We may not be able to retain our current key employees or attract, train, assimilate, or retain other highly skilled personnel in the future. We have incurred, and may continue to incur, significant costs to attract and retain highly skilled personnel, and we may lose new employees to our competitors or other technology companies before we realize the benefit of our investment in recruiting and training them. As we move into new geographies, we will need to attract and recruit skilled personnel in those areas. Further, labor is subject to external factors that are beyond our control, including our industry’s highly competitive market for skilled workers and leaders, cost inflation, and workforce participation rates. Further, in November 2023, in response to changing economic conditions and
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in an effort to reduce our operational costs and improve our organizational efficiency, we executed a restructuring plan, which included a restructuring and reduction of the current workforce by approximately 25%. The restructuring plan was substantially complete by the end of the fourth quarter of 2023. This restructuring plan could negatively impact our ability to attract, integrate, retain and motivate key employees. If we are unable to attract and retain suitably qualified individuals who are capable of meeting our growing technical, operational, and managerial requirements, on a timely basis or at all, our business, operating results, and financial condition may be adversely affected.
Our future success also depends in large part on the continued services of senior management and other key personnel. We rely on our senior management team and key employees in the areas of engineering, sales and product development, design, marketing, operations, strategy, security, and general and administrative functions. Our senior management and other key personnel are all employed on an at-will basis, which means that they could terminate their employment with us at any time, for any reason, and without notice. We do not currently maintain key-person life insurance policies on any of our officers or employees.
On February 23, 2024, we announced that Nirav Tolia, co-founder of Legacy Nextdoor, will return as Chief Executive Officer, President and Chairperson of our Board of Directors. The effective date of Mr. Tolia’s position as Chief Executive Officer, President and Chairperson of the Board will be May 8, 2024 (the “Transition Date”). Mr. Tolia will initially serve as the Executive Chair of the Company, effective March 18, 2024. To support the planned orderly transition of our Chief Executive Officer, Sarah Friar will remain employed by the Company as the Chief Executive Officer, President and Chairperson of our Board of Directors until the Transition Date.If we lose the services of senior management or other key personnel, or if we are unable to attract, train, assimilate, and retain the highly skilled personnel that we need, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
Volatility or lack of appreciation in our stock price may also affect our ability to attract and retain our key employees. Our employees may be more likely to leave if the shares they own or the shares underlying their vested options have significantly appreciated in value relative to the original purchase price of the shares or the exercise price of the options, or conversely, if the exercise price of the options that they hold are significantly above the market price of our Class A common stock. If we are unable to retain our employees, or if we need to increase our compensation expenses to retain our employees, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
Our core values may conflict with the short-term interests of our business.
We consider our core values as a guide to the decisions we make, which we believe is essential to our success in increasing our neighbor growth rate and engagement and in serving the best, long-term interests of Nextdoor and our stockholders. In the past, we have forgone, and may in the future forgo, certain expansion or revenue opportunities that we do not believe are aligned with our core values, even if our decision may negatively impact our operating results in the short term. Our decisions may not result in the long-term benefits that we expect, in which case our neighbor engagement, business, operating results, and financial condition could be harmed.
Risks Related to Security and Technology
We are dependent on third-party software and service providers, including the GAM platform, for management and delivery of advertisements on the Nextdoor platform. Any failure or interruption experienced by such third-parties could result in the inability of certain businesses to advertise on our platform, and adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Currently, we are dependent on third-party software and service providers, including the GAM platform, for management and delivery of advertisements on the Nextdoor platform. As such, the continued use of third-party software and service providers, including GAM, is critical to our continued success and any service disruptions, adverse changes to the terms of use, pricing or related terms and conditions for such third-party providers’ products, or difficulties with such products, including our data usage, meeting our requirements or standards could result in the inability of certain businesses to advertise on our platform, and adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We rely on third-party software and service providers, including AWS, to provide systems, storage and services for our platform. Any failure or interruption experienced by such third parties could result in the inability of neighbors and advertisers to access or utilize our platform, and adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We rely on third-party software and service providers, including AWS, to provide systems, storage and services, including neighbor login authentication, for our website. Any technical problem with, cyber-attack on or loss of access to such third parties’ systems, servers, or technologies could result in the inability of neighbors to access the Nextdoor platform or result in the theft of neighbors’ personal information.
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Because we rely on third-party technology providers in our business, we rely on the cybersecurity practices and policies adopted by these third parties. Our ability to monitor our third-party technology providers’ cybersecurity practices is limited.
Any significant disruption, limitation or loss of our access to or other interference with our use of AWS, including as a result of termination by AWS of its agreement with us, would negatively impact our business, operating results, and financial condition. In addition, any transition of the cloud services currently provided by AWS to another cloud services provider would be difficult to implement and would cause us to incur significant time and expense and could disrupt or degrade our ability to deliver our products and services. The level of service provided by AWS could affect the availability or speed of our services. If neighbors or advertisers are not able to access our platform or encounter difficulties in doing so, we may lose neighbors or advertisers, which could harm our reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition.
We utilize data center hosting facilities operated by AWS, located in various facilities. We are unable to serve network traffic from back-up data center services. An unexpected disruption of services provided by these data centers could hamper our ability to handle existing or increased traffic, result in the loss of data or cause our platform to become unavailable, which may harm our reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition.
We rely on third parties, including email providers, mobile data networks, and geolocation providers to complete the verification process for our neighbors’ accounts. Any failure or interruption experienced by such third parties could result in the inability of neighbors to join our platform, resulting in harm to our reputation and an adverse impact to our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We rely on third parties to verify our neighbors’ accounts through several methods, including but not limited to email, SMS text message, phone calls, geolocation and mailed invitations. For example, we utilize email providers, mobile data networks, and geolocation providers to verify neighbors’ accounts. Account verification is a critical feature of our platform because it demonstrates that neighbors actually live in the neighborhood they desire to join. Any failure, interruption, or loss of access to such third parties or their software could result in the inability of neighbors to join our platform. Our reliance on third parties makes us vulnerable to any service interruptions, whether as a result of a cyber-attack, security breach, weather or other events, or delays in their operations. Additionally, alternative email providers, mobile data networks, geolocation providers or postal providers may be more costly to use than our current providers. Any disruption in the third parties could harm our neighbor growth, which in turn could make us a less attractive advertising platform and harm our reputation, and could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Technologies have been developed that can block the display of advertisements on the Nextdoor platform, which could adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Technologies have been developed, and will likely continue to be developed, that can block the display of advertisements on the Nextdoor platform. We generate substantially all of our revenue from advertising, and ad-blocking technologies may prevent the display of certain advertisements appearing on our platform, which could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition. Existing ad-blocking technologies that have not been effective on our platform may become effective as we make certain platform changes, and new ad-blocking technologies may be developed in the future. More neighbors may choose to use such ad-blocking products to block or obscure the display of advertisements on our platform if we are unable to successfully balance the amount of our organic content and paid advertisements, or if neighbors’ attitudes toward advertisements become more negative. Further, regardless of their effectiveness, ad-blockers may generate concern regarding the health of the digital advertising industry, which could reduce the value of digital advertising and harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Security breaches, including improper access to or disclosure of our data or our neighbors’ data, or other hacking and phishing attacks on our or third-party systems, could harm our reputation and adversely affect our business.
We collect, store and otherwise process personal data relating to a number of individuals such as our neighbors, employees and partners, including, but not limited to, neighbor contact details, network details, and location data. The evolution of technology systems introduces unknown and complex security risks that can be unpredictable and difficult to defend against. Cyber-attacks continue to evolve in sophistication and volume, and inherently may be difficult to detect for long periods of time. In particular, social media companies, like us, are prone to cyber-attacks by third parties seeking unauthorized access to company or user data or to disrupt their ability to provide access to their products and services.
The trend towards working from home and using private residential networks to access the Internet may further exacerbate risks associated with cyberattacks and data security breaches, because we cannot guarantee these private work environments and electronic connections to our work environment have the same robust security measures deployed in our physical offices.
We take a variety of technical and organizational security measures and other measures to protect our data. Although we have implemented systems and processes that are designed to protect our data and our neighbors’ data, prevent data loss, disable
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undesirable accounts and activities on our platform and prevent or detect security breaches, and maintain an information security policy, such measures cannot provide absolute security, and despite measures that we have or will in the future put in place, we may be unable to anticipate or prevent unauthorized access to such data. For example, computer malware, viruses, social engineering (predominantly spear phishing attacks), ransomware, and general hacking have become more prevalent in the industry, have occurred on our systems in the past, and are likely to occur on our systems in the future. In addition, we regularly encounter attempts to create false or undesirable accounts or take other actions on our platform for purposes such as spamming, spreading misinformation, or other objectionable ends. Our efforts to protect our company data or the information that we receive may also be unsuccessful due to software bugs or other technical malfunctions; employee, contractor, or vendor error or malfeasance; government surveillance; or other threats that evolve.
Some third parties, including advertisers and vendors, may store information that we share with them on their networks. If these third parties fail to implement adequate data-security practices or fail to comply with their contractual obligations and/or, where applicable, our terms and policies, neighbor data may be improperly accessed, used or disclosed. Even if these third parties take all the necessary precautions and comply with their applicable obligations, their networks may still suffer a breach, which could compromise neighbor data.
Security breaches may cause interruptions to our platform, degrade the neighbor experience, cause neighbors or advertisers to lose confidence and trust in our platform, impair our internal systems, or result in financial harm to our company.
In addition, affected neighbors, government authorities or other third parties could initiate legal or regulatory actions against us in connection with any actual or perceived security breaches or improper disclosure of data, which could cause us to incur significant expense and liability that may not be fully covered by insurance, if at all, or result in orders or consent decrees forcing us to modify our business practices. Such incidents or our efforts to remediate such incidents may also result in a decline in our active neighbor base or engagement levels and trust. In addition, such incidents could also result in the loss or misuse of such data, which could harm our business and reputation and diminish our competitive position. In addition, any of these events could have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition, market acceptance of our products or revenues and may also divert development resources and increase service and support costs.
The landscape of laws, regulations, and industry standards related to cybersecurity is evolving globally. We may be subject to increased compliance burdens by regulators and customers with respect to our platform, as well as additional costs to oversee and monitor security risks. Many jurisdictions have enacted laws mandating companies to inform individuals, stockholders, regulatory authorities, and others of security breaches. For example, the SEC recently adopted cybersecurity risk management and disclosure rules, which require the disclosure of information pertaining to cybersecurity incidents and cybersecurity risk management, strategy, and governance. This mandatory disclosure can be costly, harm our reputation, erode customer trust, and require significant resources to mitigate issues stemming from actual or perceived security breaches.
While we maintain insurance policies, our coverage may be insufficient to compensate us for all losses caused by security breaches, and any such security breaches may result in increased costs for such insurance. We also cannot ensure that our existing cybersecurity insurance coverage will continue to be available on acceptable terms or that the insurer will not deny coverage as to any future claim. The successful assertion of one or more large claims against us that exceed available insurance coverage, or the occurrence of changes in our insurance policies, including premium increases or the imposition of large deductible or co-insurance requirements, could adversely affect our reputation and our business, financial condition, and operating results.
A security breach of our system could trigger a breach of our agreements with partners that we rely on to deliver our services and expose us to significant loss.
Our agreements with third parties, including without limitation significant agreements with payment processors, credit card and debit card issuers and bank partners, contain contractual commitments we are required to adhere to related to information security and data privacy compliance. If we experience an incident that triggers a breach of such contractual commitments, we could be exposed to significant liability or cancellation of service under these agreements. The damages payable to the counterparty as well as the impact to our service could be substantial and create substantial costs and loss of business.
Distribution and marketing of, and access to, our platform depends, in significant part, on a variety of third-party publishers and platforms (including mobile app stores, third-party payment providers, computer systems, and other communication systems and service providers). If these third parties limit, prohibit or otherwise interfere with or change the terms of the distribution, use or
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marketing of our platform in any material way, it could materially adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We market and distribute our platform (including related mobile applications) through a variety of third-party publishers and distribution channels. Our ability to market our brands on any given property or channel is subject to the policies of the relevant third party. There is no guarantee that mobile platforms will continue to feature our platform, or that neighbors using mobile devices will continue to use our platform rather than competing products. We are dependent on the interoperability of our platform with mobile operating systems, networks, technologies, products, and standards that we do not control, such as the Android and iOS operating systems. Any changes, bugs, or technical issues in such systems, or changes in our relationships with mobile operating system partners, handset manufacturers, or mobile carriers, or in their terms of service or policies that degrade the functionality of our platform, reduce or eliminate our ability to update or distribute our platform, give preferential treatment to competitive products, limit our ability to deliver, target, or measure the effectiveness of advertisements, or charge fees related to the distribution of our platform or our delivery or placement of advertisements could materially adversely affect the usage of our platform on mobile devices, our business, operating results and financial condition. For example, the release of iOS 14.5 brought with it a number of new changes, including the need for neighbors using the app to opt in before their identifier for advertisers (“IDFA”) can be accessed by an app (which came into effect in April 2021). Apple’s IDFA is a string of numbers and letters assigned to Apple devices which advertisers use to identify app users to deliver personalized and targeted advertising. As a consequence, the ability of advertisers to accurately target and measure their advertising campaigns at the neighbor level will depend on the opt-in rate to grant IDFA access and if the opt-in rate is low, advertisers’ ability to target and measure advertising campaigns on the Nextdoor platform may become significantly limited. We did not observe any directly attributable negative impact on our business, operating results or financial condition, including our revenue, revenue growth rates, and operating income (loss), related to the introduction of IDFA during the year ended December 31, 2023, though we may be impacted by such changes, or other changes to third-party policies or applications in the future, and as a result, our business, operating results and financial condition, including our revenue, revenue growth rates, and operating income (loss), could, in the future, be adversely impacted by any such changes. Further, in May 2022, Apple introduced changes for the Apple mail client available on its operating systems, which have impacted, and are expected to continue to impact our ability to track individual users and devices, and measure the effectiveness of our advertisements. Moreover, Google recently announced that it intends to limit access by mobile applications to advertising identifiers on Android devices, likely by the end of 2024. As a result, advertisers may find our products less appealing and may seek alternative platforms on which to run their advertising campaigns.
Further, certain publishers and channels have, from time to time, limited or prohibited advertisements for a variety of reasons. There is no assurance that we will not be limited or prohibited from using certain current or prospective marketing channels in the future. If this were to happen in the case of a significant marketing channel and/or for a significant period of time, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
Our platform and internal systems rely on software and hardware that is highly technical, and any errors, bugs, or vulnerabilities in these systems, or failures to address or mitigate technical limitations in our systems, could adversely affect our business.
Our platform and internal systems rely on software and hardware, including software and hardware developed or maintained internally and/or by third parties, that is highly technical and complex. In addition, our platform and internal systems depend on the ability of such software and hardware to store, retrieve, process, and manage immense amounts of data. The software and hardware on which we rely has contained, and will in the future contain, errors, bugs, or vulnerabilities, and our systems are subject to certain technical limitations that may compromise our ability to meet our objectives. Some errors, bugs, or vulnerabilities inherently may be difficult to detect and may only be discovered after the code has been released for external or internal use. Errors, bugs, vulnerabilities, design defects, or technical limitations within the software and hardware on which we rely have in the past led to, and may in the future lead to, outcomes including a negative experience for neighbors and advertisers who use our platform, compromised ability of our platform to perform in a manner consistent with our terms, contracts, or policies, delayed product introductions or enhancements, targeting, measurement, or billing errors, compromised ability to protect the data of neighbors and/or our intellectual property or other data, or reductions in our ability to provide some or all of our services. For example, we make commitments to our neighbors as to how their data will be used within and across our platform, and our systems are subject to errors, bugs and technical limitations that may prevent us from fulfilling these commitments reliably. In addition, any errors, bugs, vulnerabilities, or defects in our systems or the software and hardware on which we rely, failures to properly address or mitigate the technical limitations in our systems, or associated degradations or interruptions of service or failures to fulfill our commitments to our neighbors, have in the past led to, and may in the future lead to, outcomes including damage to our reputation, loss of neighbors, loss of advertisers, loss of revenue, regulatory inquiries, litigation, or liability for fines, damages, or other remedies, any of which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Social and ethical issues may result in reputational harm and liability.
Positions we may take (or choose not to take) on social and ethical issues may be unpopular with some of our employees, neighbors, or with our advertisers or potential advertisers, which may in the future impact our ability to attract or retain employees, neighbors or
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advertisers. Further, actions taken by our customers or partners, including through the use or misuse of our products, may result in reputational harm or possible liability. Any such claims could cause reputational harm to our brand or result in liability.
Our disclosures on environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) matters, and any standards we may set for ourselves or a failure to meet these standards, may influence our reputation and the value of our brand. For example, we have elected to share publicly certain information about our ESG initiatives and information, and our commitment to the recruitment, engagement and retention of a diverse board and workforce. In addition, the SEC has also proposed additional disclosure requirements regarding, among other ESG topics, the impact our business has on the environment. Moreover, California recently adopted two new climate-related bills, which require companies doing business in California that meet certain revenue thresholds to publicly disclose certain greenhouse gas emissions data and climate-related financial risk reports. California also recently enacted the Voluntary Carbon Market Disclosures Act, which requires companies that operate within the state to make certain climate-related claims and to provide enhanced disclosures around the achievement of such claims. Our business may face increased scrutiny related to these activities and our related disclosures, including from the investment community, and our failure to achieve progress in these areas on a timely basis, or at all, could adversely affect our reputation, business, and financial performance. To the extent the SEC proposals become effective for our company, we will be required to establish additional internal controls, engage additional consultants, and incur additional costs related to evaluating our environmental impact and preparing such disclosures. If we fail to implement sufficient internal controls or accurately capture and disclose, among other things, our environmental impact, our reputation, business, operating results and financial condition may be materially adversely affected.
Risks Related to Financial and Accounting Matters
Our operating results may fluctuate significantly, which makes our future results difficult to predict.
Our quarterly and annual operating results have fluctuated in the past and may fluctuate in the future. Additionally, we have a limited operating history with the current scale of our business, which makes it difficult to forecast our future results and subjects us to a number of uncertainties, including our ability to plan for and anticipate future growth. As a result, you should not rely upon our past quarterly and annual operating results as indicators of future performance. We have encountered, and will continue to encounter, risks and uncertainties frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly evolving markets, such as the risks and uncertainties described herein. Our operating results in any given quarter can be influenced by numerous factors, many of which are unpredictable or are outside of our control, including, but not limited to:
•our ability to generate revenues from our platform;
•our ability to acquire, retain, and grow our neighbors and neighbor engagement on our platform;
•ability to attract and retain advertisers;
•ability to recognize revenue or collect payments from advertisers in a particular period;
•fluctuations in spending by our advertisers due to macroeconomic conditions, seasonality, episodic regional or global events, or other factors;
•changes in domestic and global business and macroeconomic conditions, including actual or perceived instability in the global banking system, potential recession, uncertainty with respect to the federal budget and debt ceiling and a potential temporary federal government shutdown related thereto, local and national elections, the continued rise of inflation, changing interest rates, and the war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war;
•fluctuations in internet usage generally;
•the number, prominence, size, format, quality and relevancy of advertisements shown to neighbors;
•the success of technologies designed to block the display of advertisements;
•changes to third-party policies or applications that limit our ability to deliver, target, or measure the effectiveness of advertising, including changes by mobile operating system and browser providers such as Apple and Google;
•the pricing of our advertisements;
•the timing, cost of and mix of new and existing sales and marketing and promotional efforts;
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•the availability of our platform and app on mobile devices and other third-party platforms;
•changes to our platform or the development and introduction of new products or services by our competitors;
•changes in advertising industry association rules and standards that limit our ability to deliver, target or measure the effectiveness of advertising, such as the Network Advertising Initiative, and Interactive Advertising Bureau;
•neighbor behavior or platform changes that may reduce traffic to features of the platform that we monetize;
•system failures, disruptions, breaches of security or privacy, whether on our platform or on those of third parties, and the costs associated with any such breaches and remediation;
•negative publicity associated with our platform, including as a result of content on our platform, security breaches and neighbor privacy concerns that may result in advertisers reducing or eliminating their spend with us;
•health epidemics, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, influenza, and other highly communicable diseases or viruses;
•the timing of incurring additional expenses, such as increases in sales and marketing or research and development;
•adverse litigation judgments, settlements, or other litigation-related costs;
•changes in the legislative or regulatory environment, including with respect to privacy and cybersecurity, or actions by governments or regulators, including fines, orders, or consent decrees; and
•changes in U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.
The impact of one or more of the foregoing and other factors may cause our operating results to vary significantly. As such, quarter-to-quarter comparisons of our operating results may not be meaningful and should not be relied upon as an indication of future performance. If our quarterly and annual operating results fall below the expectations of investors or securities analysts, the price of our Class A common stock could decline substantially. If we fail to meet or exceed the expectations of investors or securities analysts, then the trading price of our Class A common stock could fall substantially, and we could face costly lawsuits, including securities class action suits. Furthermore, any quarterly or annual fluctuations in our operating results may, in turn, cause the price of our Class A common stock to fluctuate substantially.
In addition, we believe that our rapid historical growth may understate the potential seasonality of our business. As our revenue growth rate slows, we expect that the seasonality in our business may become more pronounced and may in the future cause our operating results to fluctuate. For example, advertising spending is traditionally seasonally strong in the fourth quarter of each year and we believe that this seasonality affects our quarterly results, which generally reflect higher sequential revenue growth from the third to fourth quarter compared to sequential revenue growth from the fourth quarter to the subsequent first quarter. In addition, global economic concerns continue to create uncertainty and unpredictability and add risk to our future outlook. An economic downturn in any particular region in which we do business or globally could result in reductions in revenue, as our advertisers reduce their advertising budgets, and other adverse effects that could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Certain of our market opportunities and key metric estimates could prove to be inaccurate, and any real or perceived inaccuracies may harm our reputation and negatively affect our business.
The estimates discussed herein are subject to significant uncertainty and are based on assumptions that may not prove to be accurate. The key assumptions underlying our estimates include our ability to scale new neighbor growth, our ability to grow engagement by our existing neighbor base and our ability to increase monetization of our platform. These assumptions involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, those described in this “Risk Factors” section, which could cause actual results to differ materially from our estimates. Unfavorable changes in any of these or other assumptions, most of which are beyond our control, could materially and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition and result in our estimates being materially different than actual results. Market opportunity estimates, whether obtained from third-party sources or developed internally, are subject to significant uncertainty and are based on assumptions that may not prove to be accurate. In particular, our estimates regarding our market penetration in new and existing markets are difficult to predict.
We regularly review key business and other metrics, including WAUs, Verified Neighbors and ARPU and other measures to evaluate growth trends, measure our performance, and make strategic decisions. These key metrics are calculated using internal company data derived from our analytics platform and have not been validated by an independent third party and there are inherent challenges in such measurements. For example, in 2021, Apple introduced changes for the Apple mail client available on its operating systems,
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which have limited, and are expected to continue to limit, our ability to track individual users and devices, and measure user engagement with our emails containing monetizable content for users that use the Apple email client. These changes have affected our ability to calculate WAUs, a key business metric. Because of the introduction of these changes, we are required to rely on estimates based on past user behavior and behavior of users engaging with our monetizable content on email clients other than the Apple email client in order to determine the portion of our WAU figure relating to users that engage solely with emails with monetizable content, which may impact the effectiveness of our analytics platform, as well as the accuracy of our WAU calculations. If we fail to maintain an effective analytics platform, our key metrics calculations may be inaccurate, and we may not be able to identify those inaccuracies. Our key business metrics may also be impacted by compliance or fraud-related bans, technical incidents, or false or spam accounts in existence on our platform. We regularly deactivate accounts that violate our terms of service, and exclude these accounts from the calculation of our key business metrics; however, we may not succeed in identifying and removing all such accounts from our platform. If our metrics are incorrect or provide incomplete information about neighbors and their behavior, we may make inaccurate conclusions about our business.
We regularly review and may adjust our processes for calculating our estimates to improve their accuracy. Our estimates may differ from estimates published by third parties or from similarly titled metrics of our competitors due to differences in methodology. If investors or analysts do not perceive our estimates to be accurate representations of our business, or if we discover material inaccuracies in our estimates, our reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely affected.
We have a history of net losses and may experience net losses in the future and we cannot assure you that we will achieve or sustain profitability. If we cannot achieve and sustain profitability, our business, financial condition, and operating results will be adversely affected.
We have experienced significant net losses each year since we began operations in 2007, including net losses of $147.8 million, $137.9 million and $95.3 million for the years ended December 31, 2023, 2022 and 2021, respectively. We have an accumulated deficit of $766.0 million as of December 31, 2023. We anticipate that our operating expenses and capital expenditures will increase in the foreseeable future as we continue to invest in acquiring additional neighbors, increasing engagement on our platform, increasing monetization on our platform, expanding our platform and operations internationally, attracting and retaining team members, developing and enhancing our platform, marketing and sales, and enhancing our infrastructure. Our expansion efforts may prove more expensive than we anticipate, and we may not succeed in increasing our revenues sufficiently to offset these higher expenses. While we consistently evaluate opportunities to reduce our operating costs and optimize efficiencies, including, for example, through our workforce reduction in November 2023, we cannot guarantee that these efforts will be successful or that we will not re-accelerate operating expenditures in the future in order to capitalize on growth opportunities. Given the significant operating and capital expenditures associated with our business plan, we expect to continue to incur net losses for the foreseeable future and cannot assure you that we will be able to achieve profitability. If we do achieve profitability, it cannot be certain that we will be able to sustain or increase such profitability.
Our ability to use our U.S. federal and state net operating losses to offset future taxable income may be subject to certain limitations which could subject our business to higher tax liability.
As of December 31, 2023, we had gross U.S. federal net operating loss (“NOL”) carryforwards of approximately $413.6 million and gross state NOL carryforwards of approximately $280.8 million, which if not utilized, will begin to expire for federal and state income tax purposes beginning in 2028. To the extent that we continue to generate taxable losses, unused losses will carry forward to offset future taxable income, if any. Under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, as modified by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, unused U.S. federal NOLs generated in tax years beginning after December 31, 2017, will not expire and may be carried forward indefinitely, but the deductibility of such federal NOLs in taxable years beginning after December 31, 2020, is limited to 80% of current year taxable income.
Under Section 382 of the Code, and corresponding provisions of state law, if a corporation that undergoes an “ownership change,” which is generally defined as a greater than 50 percentage point change (by value) in its equity ownership by certain stockholders over a three-year period, the corporation’s ability to utilize its pre-change NOL carryforwards to offset its post-change income or taxes may be limited. Though we recently completed a Section 382 study that supports that our use of NOLs will not be subject to limitation, it is possible that the limitation could still apply.
We may experience ownership change(s) in the future as a result of subsequent shifts in our stock ownership, some of which may be outside our control. Therefore, it is possible that such an ownership change could limit the amount of NOLs we can use to offset future taxable income. Our current NOL carryforwards, and any NOL carryforwards of companies we have acquired, may be subject to limitations, thereby increasing our overall tax liability. Our NOL carryforwards may also be impaired under similar provisions of state law. We have recorded a full valuation allowance related to our U.S. federal and state NOL carryforwards and other net deferred tax assets due to the uncertainty of the ultimate realization of the future benefits of those assets. Our NOL carryforwards may expire
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unutilized or underutilized, which could prevent us from offsetting future taxable income. Any future changes in U.S. tax laws in respect of the utilization of NOL carryforwards may further affect the limitation in future years. In addition, there may be periods during which the use of NOL carryforwards is suspended or otherwise limited at the state level, which could also impact our ability to utilize NOL carryforwards. As a result, even if we attain profitability, we may be unable to use all or a material portion of our NOLs, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and cash flows.
Our financial results may be adversely affected by changes in accounting principles generally accepted in the United States and our financial estimates may be different from our financial results.
GAAP is subject to interpretation by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the SEC and various bodies formed to promulgate and interpret appropriate accounting principles. A change in these principles or interpretations could harm our revenue and financial results, and could affect the reporting of transactions completed before the announcement of a change.
If currency exchange rates fluctuate substantially in the future, our operating results, which are reported in U.S. dollars, could be adversely affected.
As we continue to expand our international operations, we will become more exposed to the effects of fluctuations in currency exchange rates. A substantial majority of our revenues to date have been denominated in U.S. dollars and, therefore, we have not historically been subject to foreign currency risk. In addition, as we continue to expand internationally, we expect to incur increased expenses for employee compensation and other operating expenses at non-U.S. locations in the local currency. Fluctuations in the exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and other currencies could result in the dollar equivalent of such expenses being higher. This could have a negative impact on our operating results. Although we may in the future decide to undertake foreign exchange hedging transactions to cover a portion of our foreign currency exchange exposure, we currently do not hedge our exposure to foreign currency exchange risks.
We may have greater than anticipated tax liabilities, which could harm our business, revenue and financial results.
We operate in a number of tax jurisdictions globally, including in the United States at the federal, state and local levels, and in many foreign countries, and plan to continue to expand the scale of our operations in the future. We are subject to review and potential audit by a number of U.S. and non-U.S. tax authorities. A change in law or in our global operations could result in higher effective tax rates, reduced cash flows and lower overall profitability. In particular, our intercompany relationships are subject to complex transfer pricing regulations administered by taxing authorities in various jurisdictions. Significant judgment is required in determining our worldwide provision for income taxes and other tax liabilities.
We are subject to various indirect non-income taxes, such as payroll, sales, use, value-added and goods and services taxes in the United States and various foreign jurisdictions, and we may face indirect tax audits in various U.S. and foreign jurisdictions. In certain jurisdictions, we collect and remit indirect taxes. However, tax authorities may question, challenge or disagree with our calculation, reporting or collection of taxes and may require us to collect taxes in jurisdictions in which we do not currently do so or to remit additional taxes and interest, and could impose associated penalties and fees. A successful assertion by one or more tax authorities requiring us to collect taxes in jurisdictions in which we do not currently do so or to collect additional taxes in a jurisdiction in which we currently collect taxes, could result in substantial tax liabilities, including taxes on past sales, as well as penalties and interest, could discourage neighbors from utilizing our platform or could otherwise harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Although we do not currently incur significant tax costs due to our history of operating losses, our tax liabilities may increase if our profitability increases in the future. In addition, our effective tax rate may change from year to year based on changes in the mix of activities and income allocated or earned among various jurisdictions, tax laws and the applicable tax rates in these jurisdictions (including future tax laws that may become material), tax treaties between countries, our eligibility for benefits under those tax treaties and the valuation of deferred tax assets and liabilities. Such changes could result in an increase in the effective tax rate applicable to all or a portion of our income, which would negatively affect our financial results. In August 2022, President Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (“IRA”). The IRA includes a 15% corporate alternative minimum tax for companies with modified GAAP net income in excess of $1 billion, a 1% excise tax on certain stock repurchases, and numerous environmental and green energy tax credits. Currently, we are not subject to the corporate alternative minimum tax and we do not expect the new law to have a material impact on our results of operations.
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We cannot guarantee that our Share Repurchase Program will be fully consummated or that it will enhance long-term stockholder value. Share repurchases could also increase the volatility of the trading price of our stock and diminish our cash reserves.
On May 31, 2022, our Board of Directors authorized and approved a share repurchase program (the “Share Repurchase Program”) pursuant to which we may repurchase up to $100.0 million in aggregate of shares of our Class A common stock, with the authorization to expire on June 30, 2024, or such shorter period if $100.0 million in aggregate of shares of our Class A common stock have been repurchased. As of December 31, 2023, we had $22.8 million available for future share repurchases under the Share Repurchase Program. On February 21, 2024, the Company’s Board of Directors authorized and approved an increase of $150.0 million to the Share Repurchase Program and extended the expiration date to March 31, 2026. Although our Board of Directors has authorized this Share Repurchase Program, the program does not obligate us to repurchase any specific dollar amount or to acquire any specific number of shares of our Class A common stock. The actual timing and amount of repurchases remain subject to a variety of factors, including stock price, trading volume, market conditions and other general business considerations, all of which may be negatively impacted by macroeconomic conditions and factors, including rising interest rates and inflation. The Share Repurchase Program may be modified, suspended, or terminated at any time, and we cannot guarantee that the Share Repurchase Program will be fully consummated or that it will enhance long-term stockholder value. The program could affect the trading price of our Class A common stock, increase volatility and diminish our cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities, and any announcement of a termination of this program may result in a decrease in the trading price of our stock.
Risks Related to Legal and Regulatory Matters
We may be liable as a result of content or information that is published or made available on our platform.
We are subject to many U.S. federal and state and foreign laws and regulations that involve matters central to our business, including laws and regulations that involve data privacy and protection, intellectual property (including copyright and patent laws), content regulation, the use of AI, rights of publicity, advertising, marketing, health and safety, competition, protection of minors, age verification, consumer protection, taxation, anti-bribery, anti-money laundering and corruption, economic or other trade prohibitions or sanctions or securities law compliance. Although content on our platform is typically generated by third parties, and not by us, we may be sued or face regulatory liability for claims relating to personal information, content or information that is made available on our service, including claims of defamation, disparagement, intellectual property infringement, breach of our privacy commitments, breach of privacy and data security laws, or other alleged damages could be asserted against us. In addition, the availability of copyright protection and other legal protections for intellectual property generated by certain new technologies, such as generative AI, is uncertain. The use of generative AI and other forms of AI may expose us to risks because the intellectual property ownership and license rights, including copyright, of generative and other AI output, has not been fully interpreted by U.S. courts or been fully addressed by U.S. federal or state regulation, as well as in foreign jurisdictions. Our systems, tools and personnel that help us to proactively detect potentially policy-violating or otherwise inappropriate content cannot identify all such content on our service, and in many cases this content will appear on the Nextdoor platform. This risk may increase as we develop and increase the use of certain features, such as video, for which identifying such content and obtaining appropriate consents is challenging. Additionally, some controversial content may not be banned on the Nextdoor platform and, even if it is not featured in advertisements to neighbors, it may still appear in the Feed or elsewhere. This risk is enhanced in certain jurisdictions outside of the United States where our protection from liability for content published on our platform by third parties may be unclear and where we may be less protected under local laws than we are in the United States. Further, if law and/or policy-violating content is found on the Nextdoor platform, or we do not give appropriate notice or obtain appropriate consents, we may be in violation of the terms of certain of our key agreements, which may result in termination of the agreement and potentially payment of damages in some cases. We could incur significant costs in investigating and defending such claims and, if we are found liable, damages. If any of these events occur, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be harmed.