There goes the neighborhood: Nextdoor social networking app in expansion mode

The company, now valued at $2B, has also gotten the attention of real estate agents

Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar and the Nextdoor app
Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar and the Nextdoor app

A mobile application that is turning neighborhood gossip and events into big business is expanding to more countries overseas.

Nextdoor Inc. has secured $123 million from investor Riverwood Capital and others, valuing the company at $2.1 billion. Benchmark, Tiger Global Management and Kleiner Perkins also participated in the latest round.

The San Francisco-based company is already operating in the U.S., and plans to use the funding round to expand into Sweden and Denmark. It’s also in the U.K., Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and Australia.

Nextdoor, which markets itself as a “private social network for your neighborhood,” allows residents to connect with each other for safety tips, events and other neighborhood functions. The service is free to users, but real estate agents and other home service providers can buy ads on the platform.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

There are more than 236,000 neighborhoods on Nextdoor, the company said in the release.

In December, the firm tapped Sarah Friar, the former chief financial officer of mobile payment company Square Inc., to be its chief executive. Chris Varelas, co-founder of Riverwood, will also join the firm’s board of directors.

Nextdoor’s latest valuation comes about roughly a year and a half after its Series G funding round, in which it secured $75 million based on a $1.5 billion valuation.