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Good morning.
In our Leadership Next podcast today, my cohost Ellen McGirt interviews Sarah Friar, CEO of Nextdoor.com. That’s a business I barely knew before the pandemic. But now it’s become a critical source of intelligence–where to find scarce items, who’s providing the best home services during lockdown, and, especially, what new wild animals have been spotted in the neighborhood.
I won’t spoil all the suspense, but Sarah said a couple of things during the interview that I want to share here. She grew up in Northern Ireland, which she said gave her a strong sense of “both the blessing and the curse of strong communities.” And she sees Nextdoor as a way to “ultimately cultivate a kinder world.”
She also sees it as a good business–it was valued at $2.1 billion after last year’s fundraise–and therein lies the magic that motivates us at Leadership Next. If she had taken the non-profit route to community building, she would have been “eternally stymied by being small.” But “if you get a good business model working, it kicks into gear and allows you to really bring those dreams to life.”
Ellen also talked to Sarah about the controversy Nextdoor.com found itself in recently when moderators removed posts related to Black Lives Matter. It’s a fascinating conversation about the challenges of moderating information platforms, which you can listen to here.
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
EU stimulus
Following their longest-ever summit – more than four days long – the EU's national leaders finally agreed on the terms of the union's €750 billion ($860 billion) COVID-19 stimulus package. In the end, €390 billion will be disbursed in the form of grants, with €360 billion coming as low-interest loans. With almost a third of the cash being earmarked for fighting climate change, this is the biggest green stimulus package in history. Fortune
Markets up
The above news has sent European markets soaring – the DAX rose 2%, and the pan-European Stoxx 600 rose by more than 1.2%. U.S. futures look rosy too. Financial Times
IndiGo cuts
Another week, another bad-news story from the pandemic-struck aviation sector. This time it's India's largest carrier, IndiGo, which will cut a tenth of its staff–that's around 2,400 people. CEO Ronojoy Dutta: "It is impossible for our company to fly through this economic storm without making some sacrifices, in order to sustain our business operations." BBC
Prime Day
Amazon has delayed this year's U.S. Prime Day to… sometime later this year? The ecommerce giant says it will share "more details soon" about its blockbuster summer sales event, which usually happens in mid-July. Third-party sellers have been told to use the week of October 5 as a "placeholder date" but there's no official confirmation yet. CNBC
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Hong Kong
Tech startups are already starting to move data and people out of Hong Kong – or are at least drawing up plans to do so – following the imposition of China's sweeping national security law on the island. "If we follow the law in Hong Kong, we may violate other countries' regulations," said Oursky co-founder Ben Cheng. Police there can now ask companies handling data to delete or restrict access to content deemed to endanger national security. Fortune
Uber algorithms
The taxi drivers who have been suing Uber over workers' rights in the U.K. (Uber's final appeal starts today) have now also launched a data-protection complaint against the firm in Amsterdam, site of its international HQ. The complaint says Uber does not give its drivers all the personal data it holds on them if they ask, and claims it is also breaking Europe's tough GDPR rules by not explaining the logic its algorithms use to allocate rides. Fortune
Ant Group
Some analysts think that Alibaba affiliate Ant Group, which yesterday announced plans to float in both Shanghai and Hong Kong, may be more valuable than some of Wall Street's biggest banks. The financial outfit offers mobile payments (Alipay), wealth management, business loans and insurance–and now it's focusing on financial technology products for enterprise customers. CNBC
Convention needs
The Republicans need their upcoming party convention to be a big event, but the Democrats are planning to lay low, writes Fortune's Nicole Goodkind. Why's that? Because the Democrats are already leading and can benefit from keeping stage time–which might otherwise highlight internal divisions–to a minimum, while President Trump could potentially use the GOP event to break through a news cycle that is not helping him one bit. Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.
