Close contact via an app

- Technology makes the world a lot smaller. With one press of a button you will be in contact with someone on the other side of the world. You could almost forget that you also have neighbors. The popular American Nextdoor app is designed precisely to make easy contact with the neighbors. The service is available today officially available in the Netherlands.

Three months ago, the service made its first tentative steps in our country. In the pilot phase, 93 districts signed. The conversations go nextdoor both organizing a neighborhood get-together, borrowing a drill, a runaway cat as warnings for nuisance or emergencies.

The service from Silicon Valley will thus actually nothing new. In the Netherlands are already several initiatives linking neighbors through technology. Nirav Tolia, co-founder and CEO of Next Door, says it can survive some of these initiatives in addition nextdoor. 'Peerby has much more expertise barter, maybe we can cooperate in the future. 'Even apps that focus on safety and prevention Tolia not see it as competition. 'In the United States you see that users of such applications received alerts with nearby parts through our app. '

However, the Netherlands has a number of initiatives like Nextdoor be a platform for close communication among Wazzurb, Buurtapp and Wide Area. In 2011, at the start of Nextdoor counted the US more than 40 initiatives aimed at local community. Meanwhile, more than 50 percent of all US neighborhoods connected to the app Tolia. In big cities the percentage is even 90 percent. The competition thus appears disabled.

'The service that most communication with the user knows to be the winner,' says Ruben Nieuwenhuis, director Startup Amsterdam. 'It needs to know how people are going to use the asset. 'Next Door has the advantage that they are very large in the United States. 'Because of that scale, they can improve. For starters it is getting very difficult to scale. '

Nextdoor is thereby managed according Nieuwenhuis by keeping still not working in the early stages of the business model. 'You must first bind to your users, and only then use ads or other revenue model. '

In several rounds of financing the startup in Silicon Valley raised a total of about $ 210 million. In March 2015, the company was assigned a value of $ 1.1 billion. However, it does not yet have a revenue model. 'We want to make money in the future by connecting neighbors with local businesses. 'Says Tolia. 'Right now we are in the US to test how to do that. For example by placing ads on recommendations from neighbors or by asking a fee when users go through nextdoor with a local company in the sea. '

The Netherlands is the first country outside the United States where Nextdoor is available. Nieuwenhuis was happy with that. 'Winning this kind of startups is good for the image of the Netherlands as a startup country. Tolia said to have chosen the Netherlands because Dutch use a lot of social media, willing to help others and to form a community. For example, Germans are more in accordance with the Americans on their privacy, individualized set and keep more distance. 'The word nice is not for nothing Dutch,' said Tolia.