How I Got My First Three Clients for Flexport

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Flexport was founded by Tyler Hodge, who used to sell shipping manifest data on eBay. He says he felt the pain firsthand of freight forwarding when he sold scooters in early 2000s. Flexport is a cloud-based service that helps importers and sellers share information about their shipments with each other via an online portal.

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.

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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