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
