Importance of capital allocation. | 1min snip from Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Get the app

Ryan Petersen - Where There Is Mystery, There Is Margin – [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 22]

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

chevron_right

notes

NOTE

**Importance of capital allocation. **

Entrepreneurs often underestimate the importance of capital allocation. Every dollar of cash has multiple options, such as paying employees, giving it to customers, paying vendors, or using it for charity. It's crucial to be conscious of where the money should go. One way to align stakeholders is through equity and retained earnings. The hardest lesson in capital allocation is learning to reinvest in the business for long-term wealth generation.

00:00

Transcript

chevron_right

Play full episode

chevron_right

Transcript

Episode notes

My guest today is Ryan Petersen, founder and CEO of Flexport. Flexport is a technology platform for global trade. In this conversation, Ryan takes us through the fragmented world of international freight shipping, and we dive deep into the history and inefficiencies of the system. We also cover how shipping containers were standardized, how new protocols get adopted internationally, and the challenges of doing business in the “no man's land” of international waters. Ryan is the type of entrepreneur I enjoy talking to most: he has incredible domain knowledge, high energy and is tackling an enormous global problem. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Ryan Petersen.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.

If you are looking for the best place to build web apps or API backends on robust infrastructure, DigitalOcean is the place for you. They provide a fully managed solution that handles your infrastructure, operating systems, databases, and other dependencies, on their new App Platform product. App Platform makes it easy to build, deploy, and scale apps. Get started for free at do.co/founders.

-----

Founder's Field Guide is a property of Colossus Inc. For more episodes of Founder's Field Guide, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.

Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.

Show Notes

[00:03:24] - [First question] - Overview of what Flexport does

[00:04:49] - His introduction into the world of shipping

[00:06:49] - Difference between parcel and freight

[00:08:53] - Market cap of the overall shipping industry

[00:12:52] - Worst parts of the shipping world

[00:15:34] - Improving the tech behind the shipping container

[00:19:06] - Why the shipping container changed the world

[00:19:07] - The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

[00:21:27] - Teams and outsider perspectives in solving problems

[00:22:34] - How their business could make shipping more efficient and reduce costs

[00:25:24] - Where the margins and profits are made in shipping