About this episode
Ryan Petersen is the founder and CEO of Flexport . Flexport is a global freight forwarder powered by software and analytics. They are making international trade easier for over 10,000 companies in 70 countries. They were part of the YC Winter 2014 batch. *** Topics 0:23 - What is a freight forwarder? 3:08 - Selling electric scooters on eBay 15 years ago 5:53 - Ryan’s business school experience 10:23 - Amazon competing with their vendors 13:23 - Matt Susk asks - What were the most important takeaways from Columbia Business School? Would you encourage entrepreneurs to pursue a MBA? 17:03 - Tyler Hogge asks - How did you get your first three clients at Flexport? 20:03 - Being a solo founder 23:08 - Varun Khurana asks - What's your strategy for rapidly hiring the best talent in so many different global hubs? 25:53 - Challenges of scaling Flexport 27:38 - Some of Ryan’s favorite books 29:43 - Scaling culture 34:23 - Jassim Ali asks - How has the Trump policy on foreign trade affected your business so far? 39:23 - PowerDecal asks - How do you poach clients from legacy providers? 46:23 - Automation in freight forwarding 49:23 - Jason Yannos asks - If you weren't operating Flexport and had to source a new idea to work on, where would you start? 53:23 - Derisking product ideas 56:53 - Biggest lessons learned at Flexport