Former Nextdoor Employee Says CEO Tolia Sexually Harassed Her

“As a matter of policy, we will not comment regarding confidential details of the claims, investigation, or findings,” the spokesperson said.

Lindsey Liu, who worked at the neighborhood social network from 2011 to 2016, said Tolia made unwanted advances toward her, and she cooperated with a company-commissioned investigation into Tolia in 2018. Her lawyer later sent the board of directors a letter, which The Information viewed, that alleged sexual harassment and expressed frustration that an investigator hired by Nextdoor allegedly tried to undermine her claims.

Tolia announced he would leave as CEO in July 2018, but stayed in the job until December and has since remained on the board of directors. The Information has previously reported that Tolia was pushed out in part because of a dispute over whether to sell the company. The board re-appointed him to the CEO post again last month after Nextdoor struggled to grow its stock price, user base and advertising revenue. He is replacing Sarah Friar, a former finance executive at the payments firm Block.

The Nextdoor spokesperson said Tolia’s departure as CEO in 2018 was “not related to the investigation.” Tolia didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Liu, who was a junior employee, said Tolia invited her in 2015 to go to another co-founder’s house, alone, and suggested while they were there that they take edible marijuana and cuddle. She alleged that Tolia also told her, over glasses of wine, that she was his “type,” before she left the house. She said he told her: “You better get out of here before I do something I regret."

Minna King, who was Liu’s boss as Nextdoor’s former vice president of international, said Liu told her about the incident in 2016, on King’s last day at the company. “She told me [Tolia] had invited her out, brought her back to another cofounder’s house, and in a physically demanding way tried to seduce her there, and that she left. She was taken aback,” King said.

The company began investigating the incident in May 2018, less than a year after the #MeToo movement put a greater spotlight on women’s stories of sexual harassment. The Nextdoor spokesperson said the company “took the allegations very seriously and quickly launched a full investigation led by a neutral third-party investigator.”

Liu said an investigator hired by Nextdoor interviewed her three times about her experiences with Tolia. She said the investigator told her that other employees she interviewed had doubted the claims, and that the investigator asked if she was seeking financial gain.

In a letter her lawyer sent to the board in August 2018, Liu wrote: “I never asked for this. You came to me. You knocked on my door. You asked me to cooperate in this investigation. Your [lack of] belief in the inexcusable sexual harassment I experienced from Nirav doesn’t mean anything to me.”

The company declined to comment about whether board members discussed the allegation before re-appointing Tolia this year. The Nextdoor spokesperson added: “Current board members who were also on the board in 2018—and were aware of the allegations—considered the matter to be fully resolved” following the investigation and “corrective action.” Current directors who were also on the board in 2018 include early investors Bill Gurley from Benchmark, David Sze from Greylock Partners and Jason Pressman from Shasta Ventures.

The board now also includes Mary Meeker, the former Kleiner Perkins investor who now runs Bond Capital; Chris Varelas, managing partner at Riverwood Capital; John Hope Bryant, CEO of the nonprofit Operation HOPE; and Dana Evan, former chief financial officer of Verisign.

Tolia sometimes clashed with other executives over the years, according to interviews with several former employees and executives. The investigation into the sexual harassment allegation coincided with a broader review by the board into Tolia’s performance as CEO, a person familiar with the matter said.

Gurley, who was involved in the ouster of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick a year earlier, was instrumental in Tolia’s exit in 2018 and in bringing him back this year, people close to Nextdoor said. “Only a handful of Silicon Valley product founders have scaled multiple consumer Internet companies. The ‘hits’ nature of the game makes it simply too difficult to repeat,” Gurley wrote on the social media site X last month. “It's precisely because of these proven product chops that we are eager to see Nirav lead the company again.”

Tolia, who has made guest appearances on the popular business show “Shark Tank,” will officially begin his second tenure as Nextdoor CEO next month. The company’s stock has improved by about one-third since it announced he would take over from Friar. Its market capitalization is nearly $900 million, down from the $3.5 billion at which it was valued when it went public in 2021.