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Freight startup Flexport soars from ‘unsexy’ to $800M valuation
- thebiglebrewski 9y agoWow. Nice
- soneca 9y agoBeing unsexy is the new sexy for some time now.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- make3 9y agoI'm so fucking sexy then :p
- traviswingo 9y agoSorry for the downvotes - it’s early and the caffeine and adderall is kicking in. Your joke was funny.
- make3 9y agono worries :D
- traviswingo 9y agolol -4 so far for my comment...
- fireworks10 9y agoCongrats. I remember watching Flexport get pitched to PG and Sam Altman during open 'Office Hours' at Startup School in 2013. https://youtu.be/syoqjYLDs48?t=19m30s https://youtu.be/syoqjYLDs48?t=19m30s
- paulcnichols 9y agoReally inspiring.
- jamestimmins 9y agoWow that was extremely impressive. You could tell he had a lot of experience in the industry, because he knew a surprising amount off the top of his head.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago"Take problem from one domain you know and make a business by being really good at solving it with something from another domain you know" is a pretty tried and true business strategy.
- jamestimmins 9y agoMakes perfect sense, I just hear so many people looking for problems in other areas outside their domain that it seems rare.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoWhich is what makes me sad being primarily a programmer. I often wish I had another career first so that I could use the programming skills to solve something there. As it is, I often feel like a loaded gun without a direction to aim in.
- saalweachter 9y agoThere's a reason why so many programmers want to make new programming languages, text editors, and compilers :-)
- keganunderwood 9y agoI too want to work in tooling. Sadly, we are just animals and want features faster rather than having a low memory footprint (don't know how I'd do it to be honest but I'm sure desktop apps should be leaner than they are now). I mean even gnome feels pretty bloated to be honest. I think the problem is we are too accepting. We should put our foot down and say no. No to two clipboards on the same system. No to Eudora or whatever running in the background even though you haven't set up an email account with it. No to apps having ability to access the Internet or run at boot or run in background by default. The problem is if I try to implement this, my best hope is to fracture everything further and realistically I will fail and have no users.
- geofft 9y agoIs this an article from TechCrunch about how a company doing good, important, profitable work was previously called "unsexy" by TechCrunch and is continuing to do good, important, profitable work? Did anyone else call them "unsexy"? > But as the mainstream embraces startup culture and aspiring founders flood Silicon Valley, there seems to be no shortage of people willing to chase things that seem like a bad idea. ... how does this company possibly seem like a bad idea? I mean, if you find writing websites in $web_framework_of_the_month more exciting (or "sexy", whatever that's supposed to mean, I don't need to know about your tech fetishes) than delivering business value, that seems like your sense of excitement is off, not that they're doing something unexpected.
- trollopTheJope 9y agos/article/advertisement/g
- smhg 9y agoDon't click on TechCrunch links. They write for a different audience. Just read the comments over here if the topic interests you.
- seanlinehan 9y agoWe're hiring! Product + Design: https://www.flexport.com/careers/department/design https://www.flexport.com/careers/department/design Engineering: https://www.flexport.com/careers/department/engineering https://www.flexport.com/careers/department/engineering
- jdhn 9y agoAny chance that you'd be willing to hire a remote product designer?
- seanlinehan 9y agoRight now we don't have any remote opportunities but perhaps in the future.
- jdhn 9y agoUnderstandable, thanks for answering!
- andy_ppp 9y agoYou never know but I'm in Japan bootstrapping startups and definitely need a product designer. My email is in my profile.
- eat_veggies 9y agoAre you considering summer interns?
- dmnd 9y agoYep! Check my sibling comment. I must have been writing it when you were writing this one.
- dmnd 9y agoFlexport is also hiring engineering interns! Contact me via my profile here, or apply directly: https://www.flexport.com/careers/job/221999 https://www.flexport.com/careers/job/221999 You can learn more about what's involved on our engineering blog at https://flexport.engineering https://flexport.engineering.
- petra 9y agoWhat about Amazon? they had a some similar plan, to become a global logistics network. And it's highly likely they'll be a competitor to flexport ? What's Flexport's advantage in that case ?
- xemdetia 9y agoI don't know of any part of Amazon that lets you just ship a container full of copper bars to your loading dock. They are more competing with other bulk shippers than what Amazon would be trying to provide.
- dmoy 9y agoI mean I'm not in the shipping industry, but I'd guess it'd be a long while before Amazon becomes very focused/involved in the particulars of the container shipping industry, where Flexport is focused. Amazon has a lot of other stuff on their plate to tackle. If Amazon ever becomes such a large percentage of global trade that they can actually make use of a whole fleet of container ships then maybe. But for now, just to put things in perspective, Amazon only a year ago started up a cargo plane operation with ~20 planes. Depending on the kind of plane, that's around 1000-1500 cubic meters, 400-500 metric tons for their whole fleet of cargo planes. For comparison, a single cargo ship (not even the biggest ones) caries >50,000 cubic meters and >150,000 tons. So we're talking orders and orders of magnitude difference when you account for a whole fleet. I'd wait to see whether or not amazon expands their air freight more after using it to capacity before guessing that they'd get into the container industry. But again, outsider perspective, so I could be way off, would welcome some info from someone more knowledgeable.
- baybal2 9y ago>If Amazon ever becomes such a large percentage of global trade that they can actually make use of a whole fleet of container ships then maybe. By the time Amazon becomes a large percentage of global trade, Alibaba will already be in double digits. And remember who has more shipping data to run algos on. In addition, Alibaba already owns an own 3PL operation, and an "Order a container shipment in 1 minute" from 1688
- pinko 9y agoFrom the article: "Flexport wholistically analyzes all its data to optimize shipping routes and simplify relationships with ports, truck drivers and anyone else that touches a container". wholistically? ouch.
- kbenson 9y agoIt's a word. I didn't know that, until I just looked. It's a variant spelling of holistic. I actually like it better than holistic, since the base word is more recognizable. P.S. At least I assume the "ouch" was about it being a misspelling. Maybe I'm wrong.
- pavlov 9y agoHolistic is a strange word anyway because it's a Latin suffix tacked onto a Germanic base. At least to my ears, it sounds wrong for that reason. If someone tasked me to come up with a replacement word, I might suggest "integralist". As in "holistic approach" -> "integralist approach", etc.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- waqf 9y ago> the base word Is it really the same word? holistic comes from Greek ὅλος, whereas whole is a word of Germanic origin. Of course that doesn't mean they aren't from the same Indo-European root — after all, whole certainly has cognates in many languages with the same meaning, such as Russian целый. But Wiktionary tells me that whole is from Proto-Indo-European ٭kóylos, whereas holistic is from PIE ٭solh₂wós. In any case, the initial w in whole is an innovation in Early Modern English without etymological justification, so a more logical choice to emphasize the similarity would be to revert to the spelling hole.
- kbenson 9y agoProbably not, but I was speaking much more informally. :) To be honest, I don't care whether it makes sense linguistically or not. It takes more than one hand to count the number of times I've looked up the meaning of holistic, because I encounter it in a context I care about so infrequently that I can never remember the meaning (at least I can never remember it accurately enough to not be unsure whether I have it correct. From context you can get the gist, but nuance may be lost). Wholistic works entirely better for me.
- tedmc 9y agoI am a customer. They are my favorite to use, but I don't use them for everything because they don't get me 100% end to end with Amazon. Other companies do. I just talked with someone about this, and I hope that they get into it, even if it's just white labelled through their interface. I had no idea their founder also was involved in Import Genius, but that makes total sense. Huzzah Flexport!
- philmcc 9y agoI've them end to end to Amazon(Germany)FBA from China purposes...are we talking about two different things maybe? https://www.reddit.com/r/FulfillmentByAmazon/comments/6ao7ec/few_questions_about_flexport/ https://www.reddit.com/r/FulfillmentByAmazon/comments/6ao7ec... https://www.flexport.com/help/109-shipping-to-amazon https://www.flexport.com/help/109-shipping-to-amazon
- Kagerjay 9y agoI didn't know about them being related to import genius I used both flexport and import genius too
- DenisM 9y agoMuch needed publicity for the whole "unsexy" supply chain startup industry. We're in that space too, and we're hiring in Seattle. Ask away, or contact through my profile
- Nydhal 9y agoWhat kind of experience are you looking for a software developing position? Any internships opportunities for a CS indergrad with a statistics minor?
- DenisM 9y agoYes. We will take aptitude over experience. In particular, a commitment to master the craft. Mastery has many parts to it: understanding the domain area with its parts and participants, understanding what our company can and should offer to the ecosystem, seeking out the best way you can contribute to that offering (and to the customers), studying the elemental parts that factor into decisions to be made. We don't expect you to come in like that, we do expect that you will commit to getting there. This job I would say is 80% coding and 20% "research". So coding is a major part, but I can take the skill growth velocity over the skill itself. For example, one way to understand the domain is to take "Supply Chain Management" course from MIT [1]. I am taking it now (first assignment dropped two days ago), not sure yet if it's any good though. [1] http://scm.mit.edu/micromasters http://scm.mit.edu/micromasters
- dmnd 9y agoFlexport is hiring engineering interns too. Our stack is React & Rails, though we don't require any specific experience. All you need is an ability to chew through difficult software problems and an interest in having real-world impact with your code. Contact me via my profile if you're interested, or apply directly at the link below. https://www.flexport.com/careers/job/221999 https://www.flexport.com/careers/job/221999
- rashkov 9y agoAny opportunities for a New York based engineer? Been watching your job posts on here for a few years now, always wanted to apply but seems to be entirely in SG
- myroon5 9y ago"And while investors were happily offering it a valuation of $1 billion or more, Petersen didn’t want to get in over his head and risk a down-round later if the market stumbled." This is straight out of Silicon Valley (the show)... why wouldn't you take the best valuation for your company?
- vertex-four 9y agoLikely because the lower valuation comes with better terms or lower expectations.
- qyv 9y agoDoes best mean "highest" or "most accurate"?
- jamestimmins 9y agoThis is a super, super mature thing to do. VCs are trying to make multiples of their investments, so the higher the valuation, the bigger your company has to be in order for VCs to make their multiple. This means you have to optimize around growing as much as possible, which increases burn rate and can screw up your priorities. If you want to build a solid, long term profitable company, it gives you more flexibility to try different things and 'do it right' rather than focus entirely on growth.
- _sentient 9y agoI'm guessing this is less about trying to avoid setting too high a bar, and more about taking the term sheet that offered a lower upfront valuation but with much cleaner terms and less overall deal hair. Either way, this is super impressive from Ryan and the rest of the Flexport team. Kudos.
- TimPC 9y agoOften there is a part you don't see here where the lower valuation has a lower amount of money you can take. Would you rather sell 10% of the company for 80M on an 800M post-money valuation or 12.5% of the company for $125M at a 1B post-money valuation if you only need 80M to hit your growth objectives with a buffer and 2.5% of the company can likely be sold for a lot more than 45M once you need that extra money. It's also not smart to publicize you're taking less money as it makes you look more under pressure in the future and if it ends up being wrong to not take the extra cash you don't want everyone knowing you could have had $45M more in the bank. It gets even worse if the post-money valuation involves 15% vs 10% which can be viable as well.
- hourislate 9y agoAll they did was lower the profit. Most everything is electronic now anyway. I have a relationship with a my Logistics company. They charge approx $2800 for a 40ft container to my door from Hangzhou. The ship takes 8-10 days on the water, approx 10 days by rail (East Coast). I'm not sure these guys could save me time or money since my containers already come on one of the fastest ships. The problem is Container ships leave on weekends. If you don't get your shipment to the dock by early Friday it isn't going. You have to wait until next week for it to leave. On another note he did found import genius which presented everyone's customs / shipping information for anyone else to see in a nice format. I would bet he leveraged the data to figure out how to approach the logistics industry. It gave him an advantage over his competitors that were old school. Probably mined the customs database he fed into Import Genius. It has all shipping records for almost every country in the world. Glad to see someone shaking up the industry. Smart guy...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- nightski 9y agoWhat is the story behind why they have embraced the "unsexy" label? Do they have some sort of complex? Logistics can be an incredibly sexy problem for a variety of technical and even mathematical reasons.
- ams6110 9y agoI think because freight forwarding and brokering across borders is decidedly "unsexy" to most people.
- nightski 9y agoSure, that is fair. I probably didn't word it correctly. I mean if you keep repeating that it is "unsexy" people will probably believe it to be true. Why choose to send that message instead of hey we are this sexy logistics company? It's a minor detail, so I don't mean to make too big of a deal out of it. Just seems odd.
- zjaffee 9y agoIt's because tons of unsexy companies had tried doing it the other way, to the point where so many companies have done it that it's started to leave a bad taste in peoples mouth. People are starting to get into the whole, we aren't sexy but we are solving meaningful problems thing lately.
- saalweachter 9y agoI think there's also a certain amount of marketing. You don't want everything to be "sexy"; you want some things to be boring, unnoticed, and just work. Saying you're making shipping sexy is just saying "we're going to ignore the core logistics of reliably getting your stuff where it's going as quickly as possible", which is going to scare away customers.
- LyndsySimon 9y agoI have no idea how they see it, but I would like to point out that they're not the first to intentionally market themselves that way. UPS used the slogan "What can brown do for you?" for a while. Interestingly, they're in a related space.
- baybal2 9y agoAs of now, Flexport is just a front-end to few other online shipping companies. One of many gazillions companies doing the same. If you ask who can be sold for a lot of moneys, it will be them: all 'seals of approval'(Thiel, YC, big banks waiting in line to underwrite for them), buzzwords, star team, and so much money and resources that they can't possibly screw up operationally If you ask who will be dominating the market in 3 year term, it WILL be Alibaba's satellite companies, because they already are the biggest on the market, and will only have more opportunities coming as Alibaba will try to plug them as an add-ons to more services. Another worthy thing to mention is that 'one click shipping' is one thing, and 'Wholly APIsed third party logistics, warehousing, packing, packaging, and inventory management' is another, completely qualitatively different and much higher added value. The importance of that 'Wholly APIsed 3PL, inventory, and SCM' is that you can basically decouple nearly all physical processes from an average online store (and there are a lot of those online stores as you can guess) Nor Alibaba, nor SV startups ever touched that 'APIsed 3PL/SCM' thing, and the current leaders on this front come from Singapore and, if my memory does not betray me, India.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- petra 9y agoYou should also add low interest financing to that list, as alipay does for vendors who sell on the alibaba platform. Btw who is this Singaporean"APIsed 3pl/scm" leader ? Although in a sense , what the big deal, if flexe(very scalable warehousing and fulfillment provider) has an API, flexport can just easily integrate it.
- baybal2 9y agoAnchanto
- brosky117 9y agoRyan Peterson was on the Startup School Radio. Seems like a really nice guy. I’m happy for them! https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/startup-school-radio/id992277217?mt=2&i=1000370858116 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/startup-school-radio/id9... https://m.soundcloud.com/akharris/startup-school-radio-ep-21-ryan-petersen-ooshma-garg https://m.soundcloud.com/akharris/startup-school-radio-ep-21...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ijafri 9y agoThey have great teams and exactly know what they are doing, they took the freight industry by storm, through innovation and great user-experience. Their user-experience actually has started to re-define the old fashioned international freight industry.
- JamesAdir 9y agoInteresting that Ryan has an MBA from Columbia business school, contrary to the typical founder in the valley.
- volkk 9y agoCan you expand on what you mean? What does the typical founder have? Is this better? Worse?
- pbreit 9y agoMuch of SV is wary of MBAs. But I don't think that view extrapolates to founders since they are a different breed than employees.
- pas 9y agoA friend of mine has an MBA, still works as a software dev.
- staticautomatic 9y agoI see people say this online a lot, but everywhere I look there are startups full of MBA's in SF and SV.
- tryingagainbro 9y agoEventually you will need the MBAs to "straighten you out." I'm sure Harvard, Stanford, Columbia etc would be forced to close their schools if they provided no value to their students, as no one would hire them. In SV they are derided and part of it, IMO, it's because all the investors want a brilliant guy with no sense of organizing. Investors will provide that, for an extra xx% :)
- throwayit 9y agoI guess it depends on how you define typical. 30% of unicorns are founded by an MBA and 80% of unicorns have an mba on their exec team: https://qz.com/176063/most-mbas-dont-found-billion-dollar-startups-but-they-certainly-build-them/ https://qz.com/176063/most-mbas-dont-found-billion-dollar-st...
- pbreit 9y agoHow is the article so off on "revenue" ("expects revenue of $500 million this year")? According to Forbes they do 7,000 shipments per month averaging $2k in value of which Flexport takes 15%. That's $2.1m/month ($25m annual run rate). Possibly they meant some sort of Gross Shipping Costs.
- timfrazer 9y agoThis is one of my favourite companies in the valley. I worked in the industry shipping food/wearable tech for 10+ years and using their service was a game changer for me after using many many other 3PL's.
- josefdlange 9y agoLove it. Logistics and supply chain verticals are ripe for the taking by young, scrappy, and smart companies. We're one of them -- and looking for more like-minded people to join us. If you're interested, hit me up at the email in my profile. I've loved working in the logistics space, because there are so many resources already available. It's a matter of pulling them together into a package of convenience and quality, which is a fun prospect. Still, lots of complex problems and unique constraints in the space that make for a challenging and ultimately rewarding domain to develop software for.
- RalphJr45 9y agoI share your opinions about Logistics and supply chain, especially the curation of available resources. I have sent you an email, thanks.
- mankash666 9y agoCan someone please explain why Flexport’s software is being played up as “irreplaceable by the incumbents”? If they’ve proved it’s benefits, only a matter of time before the incumbents have an in-house version.
- danzig13 9y agoSpeaking of bad and boring verticals to explore, any aspect of manufacturing software - CAD, CAM, PLM - please would some Silicon Valley types look into it?
- kecoco0207 9y agoDo you know there is actually a way to invest in these highly valued startups? For example, EquityZen is a platform that lets people to invest in private pre-IPO companies. EquityZen: https://equityzen.com/?utm_source=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Fitem%3Fid%3D15312755&utm_medium=Hacker%20News&utm_campaign=Hacker_News&utm_term=news https://equityzen.com/?utm_source=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombin...