Dorsey is the issue. As long as Sarah was the face of SQ, and Dorsey its figurehead, the investing community was fine. With the uncertainty of her successor and the fear of Dorsey mucking things up, investors are jittery.
I don’t disagree.
🆁🅶🅱
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What SQ should have done was just make her CEO…whats-his-face could have just sat as Dir of the
Board. Like Musk, he probably didn’t see that he should get out of his own way.
A big Amen to that. But for someone like Dorsey, this is far from surprising. He’s every bit as “likeable” as Musk, that’s for sure. I bet nearly every Square employee would have followed Friar just about anywhere she led, which I don’t think I could say for Jack Dorsey.
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She saw an opportunity for something she has been wanting for a long time. Wall Street is just giving her most of the credit for running Square day to day. They be right, but I think the momentum will carry thru without her just fine.
I’m disgusted with the reporting that was floated the days prior to this announcement about how Square is of the same magnitude of a disruption company as the FANG stocks have been. Day after day I was seeing Square is not being fairly valued and should be considered just as amazing as the growth FANG stocks have seen.
Then this bombshell happens. I think the market makers were just creating a buying frenzy so they could unload shares knowing this was coming.
I bought more today though.
“Two years from now if you ask, “Who is Sarah Friar?” the answer will be a blank look, and then “Oh yeah, she used to be the CEO of Square. I wonder what happened to her.”
Freudian slip Saul? 
So yea I can argue the other side. Why would she leave SQ right now to go to a smaller company? Was she unhappy at SQ? Does she see something negative down the road for SQ that she decided to jump ship now?
I don’t think we will ever know the entire story, but I don’t like that she left this seemingly great CFO job to join a small company that seemingly doesn’t have the bright future that SQ seems to have.
Maybe she knows something we don’t.
I don’t own SQ. I have a limit order in at 60, but thinking I should stay away and wait until the possibility of more info is revealed.
Chris
I won’t speculate about Friar’s reason for leaving or for joining NextDoor (which I belonged to for about six months and was very unimpressed with). However, I strongly doubt that her leaving had anything to do with the credit risk Square is now taking on. If what everyone says about Friar is true, and her counsel was so highly valued by Dorsey, shouldn’t we assume that if she saw the credit risk issue as something Square shouldn’t take on that she would have put her foot down and talked Dorsey out of it? Presumably she is the architect of the program, so if she is thought so highly of why shouldn’t we assume it has her blessing.
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I’m a Nextdoor subscriber. It’s pretty much a neighborhood bulletin board/blog. Traffic revisions, road closures, garage sales, power outages, local politics, lost dog/cat, coyote sightings, references for yard worker, painter, handyman, etc. You can private message a neighbor or public/private reply to a post.
I’m not sure how they determine “neighborhood.” It can’t be by zip code, I live on a hill which was underwent residential development mostly in the 50s. There have been some tear downs so newer, bigger, modern houses dot the area. It was actually two separate developments (hence, two neighborhood pools), but they have long since merged into one. One elementary school. No commercial district. Most of the posts relate to the hill, but it’s not unusual to see posts that reach into nearby neighborhoods as well.
I never thought of it as a commercial venture, I just assumed it was provided and supported by the city as a means for local neighborhoods to do exactly the kind of stuff I just related. I’ve not clue how or if they intend to monetize it. I’ve seen some posts by nearby businesses, but they’re infrequent and usually something like someone offering piano lessons or similar. I’ve never seen a banner ad or anything that looks like a paid advertisement. No where close to Craigslist. No filters (so far as I know), you just receive everything posted and ignore/delete the stuff of no interest.
Taking a CEO position at Nextdoor seems like a big step down from CFO at Square. One can only assume that Ms. Friar made that move intentionally. She’s young, maybe she sees a lot of growth potential in the future that completely eludes me. I can say if it becomes highly commercial I’ll unsubscribe. I think a lot of people would abandon it if it becomes Twitteresque or burdened with advertising. But that’s just me. I’m old. Maybe younger folks wouldn’t care as almost every “free” service is an advertising platform.
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Right now Sarah Friar is famous and admired (by me as well). She could have become the CEO of any major growth company that was looking for a new CEO. Instead the decision she made makes me wonder about Sarah’s judgment. I went to the website for that company she’s joining. It seems a piddling little company with a 10th of the promise of Square. Even with her as CEO it doesn’t seem it has anywhere significant to go. Go and look for yourself. Two years from now if you ask, “Who is Sarah Friar?” the answer will be a blank look, and then “Oh yeah, she used to be the CEO of Square. I wonder what happened to her.” I looked further into her background and saw that she held responsible major positions at Goldman, then was Senior VP of Finance & Strategy at Salesforce. Then her CFO position at Square. What is someone with that background doing, taking a job at a no-name neighborhood organization company? It makes no sense at all.
This quote from Brittlerock captured what I was trying to say:
I’m a Nextdoor subscriber. It’s pretty much a neighborhood bulletin board/blog. Traffic revisions, road closures, garage sales, power outages, local politics, lost dog/cat, coyote sightings, references for yard worker, painter, handyman, etc. You can private message a neighbor or public/private reply to a post… …Taking a CEO position at Nextdoor seems like a big step down from CFO at Square. One can only assume that Ms. Friar made that move intentionally. She’s young, maybe she sees a lot of growth potential in the future that completely eludes me. I can say if it becomes highly commercial I’ll unsubscribe. I think a lot of people would abandon it if it becomes Twitteresque or burdened with advertising. But that’s just me. I’m old. Maybe younger folks wouldn’t care as almost every “free” service is an advertising platform.
Saul
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Taking a CEO position at Nextdoor seems like a big step down from CFO at Square. One can only assume
that Ms. Friar made that move intentionally. She’s young, maybe she sees a lot of growth potential in
the future that completely eludes me.
Consider the possible marketing or “goodwill” benefit of having someone like Sarah Friar leading your company. She’s a known (and seemingly untarnished) variable with a pretty solid track record. It may be that Nextdoor gets more out of the move than Sarah herself (although I’m sure she’ll be compensated accordingly) – Nextdoor may have an easier time with next rounds of financing, or a future IPO, or acquisition of other entities based in part on her being part of the equation.
Also agree that there may be something bigger to come that we haven’t seen yet…
Several folks brought up some thought-provoking points on this thread that got me re-thinking NextDoor (and Sarah Friar’s decision to leave SQ to become the NextDoor CEO).
I posted on a related thread my thoughts on NextDoor which were similar (though not as well stated) as what @Brittlerock said above and what Saul requoted. However, I then started to consider the position that @CMFTeduyn posted (about Facebook being too national, Twitter being too filled with nonsensical rants, and his wife only having a NextDoor account) and think that Sarah Friar likely is a genius. She IS going to make something of this company.
Here’s the thing: though these social media outlets do generate some revenue from click advertisements and Sponsored Posts (I think that this is the case for NextDoor, because when I log in to my account, it’s endless local insurance agents posting for folks to reconsider their coverage), I believe that the real money maker in social media is the selling of data. I believe that that is the big market – selling blocks of personal information and focused marketing data to various entities. (Please correct me if you know more about this.) What NextDoor has (that Facebook and Twitter do not) is localized, community-based data sets. That’s genius!
They can mine those data sets; and with those regionally-focused data sets, they likely can make a fortune. For example, they mine for community conversations about solar panels. Then, the see a trend that the installation of solar panels is a hot topics in these 30 communities across the nation. Tesla’s Solar City pays NextDoor money to know which communities are talking about solar panels, and they send their sales force out to those targeted communities to make sales. That’s one example. Think about it!
Currently you only can join NextDoor when a neighbor invites you. You have to verify yourself and your location when you sign up (I don’t remember the full logistics, but in order to get properly associated with your neighborhood, you have to give enough data so that it makes the proper association). So unlike Facebook, you’re more likely a real person and you’re more likely representing yourself more truthfully. I am so-and-so, and I live in x-and-such neighborhood. Then you have a person with specific preferences (likes and dislikes, social concerns, stated needs for products, etc.) in a specific geographic location. Your data combined with your neighbors data makes for a wealth of marketable data to be mined and sold off to various companies. Wow!
I’m also interested in the demographic. Like @CMFTedyun’s wife, it’s also the only social media account that I hold. I dislike social media. I refuse to participate. However, I have a NextDoor account! My point is that it’s reaching an audience that other social media platforms are not reaching.
The genius of it is not in what it provides to an account holder (lost dog notifications, plumber recommendations, police blotter info, etc.) but in what the account holder provides to the application
- marketable data! And data that connects more reliably to a demographic and an identified geographic location than any other social media platform. Genius!
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