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This is a very nice sentiment but the truth is that the established forwarders operate in a way that is could be greatly optimized. Established forwarders (and

This is a very nice sentiment but the truth is that the established forwarders operate in a way that is could be greatly optimized. Established forwarders (and Flexport) have teams of people that "move" shipments by applying an SOP (basically a written algorithm for advancing the shipment to signals that come in from a variety of sources (an origin factory various carriers like truckers, airlines and shipping lines, governments, etc). Paying people to do this work is expensive, and the people, while very good, go home at night, take vacations, make mistakes and are generally human. The technology that enables this process at legacy forwarders is as you say archaic, but it is archaic in _design_ as well as execution. It assumes that human beings will be sitting behind a keyboard pushing buttons and making phone calls based on what it says. In my opinion, there is nothing about any of these processes that in aggregate be worse if they were automated, and no fundamental issue with automating them. Moving freight is about as complex as any other inter-business process in that the input is some signal (usually an email but potentially a phone call or a fax) and the output is also usually an email or a phone call. The internal logic to that process is not particularly complex either. So there exists a massive opportunity to provide roughly the same service that existing forwarders do at a much lower cost basis. The requirement to do so is to aggressively automate operations. There's also an secondary opportunity to provide better quality of service (more transparency, more programmatic logic related to movement of goods) to customers (supply chain professionals at F500) but I think that's both harder to do and customers are less sure about how they might take advantage of that better service. Quite frankly, I don't buy the argument that "grizzled logistics veterans" hold the secret sauce to make this work. I was told probably a dozen times that what I was doing was impossible to automate but when I dug into it, what we were trying to do was a bog-standard business process dressed up in domain-specific jargon and 'tradition' (e.g. we can't do it that way since we've always done it this way). I'm not saying that I'm some logistics savant and there's a vast amount of expertise I don't know. What I am claiming is that I've pulled back the curtain on logistics and the wizard is just a regular guy. Source: Former Flexport employee

sharkweek 3y ago
> I've pulled back the curtain on logistics and the wizard is just a regular guy. I agree, but land at a different conclusion. I dabbled in logistics a bit at one startup and the thing I found true is that every warehouse and receiving dock did things a little different and sometimes that thing was computer software and other times it was a person with sticky notes all over the walls of their tiny office by the bay door who was on 2-3 phone calls at a time screaming at/being screamed at by people moving goods around the city/state/country/world. Logistics has a ton of room to optimize and I’m sure we’ll continue to see billion dollar startups roll out every year solving some part of it, but in the day-to-day operations of supply chain, change is so incredibly hard. The middle layer of management always seemed so risk averse to making any changes that had the slightest risk of disrupting their existing workflow because if one day they goof something up it quickly spiraled down the chain.
- psunavy03 3y ago
  All of this.
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  In the show The Wonder Years, the dad works in freight logistics. Watching him go into his office and slowly get more insane as the day goes on is how they explain why he’s a grumpy guy. Skip to 2 minute mark https://youtu.be/dXfFvdvi7Z0?feature=shared https://youtu.be/dXfFvdvi7Z0?feature=shared
psunavy03 3y ago
You're not technically wrong, but it's also a much more complex and ever-changing problem set that you're giving it credit for. If it was so easy, Flexport stock would be the next Amazon. What they have going for them is a tech stack that doesn't have 40 years of accumulated crap. But your description of what goes on at the branch level smacks of someone who has a CS degree and thinks that this means they can engineer the world. Dave Snowden of Cynefin fame has some choice words regarding software engineers who don't realize that human endeavors have what he calls "messy coherence," and think they can optimize the "messy" out of it, forgetting that they're dealing with humans. There's a lot of ways Flexport could capitalize on the silliness of some of its competitors. But its competitors are also not staffed by idiots, and if it was so easy to automate everything, it would have been automated 20 years ago.
- tschwimmer 3y ago
  I sat with the Flexport logistics teams for months on end. I watched them move hundreds of shipments. Maybe they concealed all the secret sauce for when I got up to the go the bathroom but nothing I saw was particularly notable. They had rules like "make sure the ISV is filed at least 3 days before expected arrival" and "if the origin agent hasn't picked up the can after more than 2 days, call Joe at the destination warehouse and tell him that it will be late." Designing these rules are not something that computers can handle particularly well (though Generative AI might change even that), but applying them consistently is something that computers do way better than humans (for the reasons that I mentioned in my previous comment). Yes, there will be exceptions. That's okay, we can also build in logic to handle exceptions. The fundamental process flow we're trying to automate here is not self-driving cars. It's not cognition, perception, or reasoning. It's not even really complex decision making. The inputs (while not perfect) are actually pretty well quantized. People love to handwave and say that it's so hard and that it's naive to try and reduce it down to a computer program, but I've never had anyone compellingly explain __why_. For what it's worth, this is not a minimization of the work done by my former colleagues and similar professionals. My colleagues were smart, hardworking, mission driven and gritty. It's just that the work that they did could be more effectively done by computers. That's all. For what it's worth, I don't have a computer science degree. I studied one of those useless underwater basketweaving majors. That must explain the overall sense of confusion.
moneywoes 3y ago
May I ask what are you doing now? Do you still see room in the space? Would love to collaborate ( have an Eng background and affinity for sales)
- tschwimmer 3y ago
  Huge. Gobs of opportunity. One failing of Flexport is it's trying to tackle too much at once. There's a lot of depth to each of the steps and you could build a very solid business out of automating many of them. I seriously looked at a few things in the compliance space and I still think there's a huge opportunity. Sales in the space is generally very difficult as decision makers are slow moving and conservative. But the opportunity to provide value in many places is real. I'd focus more on the supply chain guys at the big CPG companies vs the forwarders if I were to do it again. What am I doing now? Seems like the same thing everyone else is - Working at BigCo for more money and less stress :). Not looking to change at the moment but urge folks to look into the space for sure. It's a lot of fun and very gratifying. Pure software is more boring in comparison.
  - psunavy03 3y ago
    Honestly, I think if someone could get really really good at one niche aspect of the problem and not do it in some obscure stack that's hard to integrate with a bog-standard early-2000s-at-best tech stack, they'd be snapped up in a heartbeat by one of the major players still trying to migrate. Because I can name at least two times that's happened. The big guys' main concern is being able to keep a unified view of who's shipping what, where, and to whom worldwide. They don't own planes, ships or trucks, so their rep rests on stuff delivered on time to the right place and always knowing where it is.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Two mistakes here in your thinking: - The 2000s stack, honestly doesn't exist anymore. And where it does, it does so for reasons no start-up can work around. this is the field of specialist consultants. - Doing only one thing really good is not enough anymore in that field. not even close. And the bar for good is already so much higher than seem to appreciate.

sharkweek 3y ago

> I've pulled back the curtain on logistics and the wizard is just a regular guy. I agree, but land at a different conclusion. I dabbled in logistics a bit at one startup and the thing I found true is that every warehouse and receiving dock did things a little different and sometimes that thing was computer software and other times it was a person with sticky notes all over the walls of their tiny office by the bay door who was on 2-3 phone calls at a time screaming at/being screamed at by people moving goods around the city/state/country/world. Logistics has a ton of room to optimize and I’m sure we’ll continue to see billion dollar startups roll out every year solving some part of it, but in the day-to-day operations of supply chain, change is so incredibly hard. The middle layer of management always seemed so risk averse to making any changes that had the slightest risk of disrupting their existing workflow because if one day they goof something up it quickly spiraled down the chain.

psunavy03 3y ago
All of this.
monero-xmr 3y ago
In the show The Wonder Years, the dad works in freight logistics. Watching him go into his office and slowly get more insane as the day goes on is how they explain why he’s a grumpy guy. Skip to 2 minute mark https://youtu.be/dXfFvdvi7Z0?feature=shared https://youtu.be/dXfFvdvi7Z0?feature=shared

psunavy03 3y ago

You're not technically wrong, but it's also a much more complex and ever-changing problem set that you're giving it credit for. If it was so easy, Flexport stock would be the next Amazon. What they have going for them is a tech stack that doesn't have 40 years of accumulated crap. But your description of what goes on at the branch level smacks of someone who has a CS degree and thinks that this means they can engineer the world. Dave Snowden of Cynefin fame has some choice words regarding software engineers who don't realize that human endeavors have what he calls "messy coherence," and think they can optimize the "messy" out of it, forgetting that they're dealing with humans. There's a lot of ways Flexport could capitalize on the silliness of some of its competitors. But its competitors are also not staffed by idiots, and if it was so easy to automate everything, it would have been automated 20 years ago.

tschwimmer 3y ago
I sat with the Flexport logistics teams for months on end. I watched them move hundreds of shipments. Maybe they concealed all the secret sauce for when I got up to the go the bathroom but nothing I saw was particularly notable. They had rules like "make sure the ISV is filed at least 3 days before expected arrival" and "if the origin agent hasn't picked up the can after more than 2 days, call Joe at the destination warehouse and tell him that it will be late." Designing these rules are not something that computers can handle particularly well (though Generative AI might change even that), but applying them consistently is something that computers do way better than humans (for the reasons that I mentioned in my previous comment). Yes, there will be exceptions. That's okay, we can also build in logic to handle exceptions. The fundamental process flow we're trying to automate here is not self-driving cars. It's not cognition, perception, or reasoning. It's not even really complex decision making. The inputs (while not perfect) are actually pretty well quantized. People love to handwave and say that it's so hard and that it's naive to try and reduce it down to a computer program, but I've never had anyone compellingly explain __why_. For what it's worth, this is not a minimization of the work done by my former colleagues and similar professionals. My colleagues were smart, hardworking, mission driven and gritty. It's just that the work that they did could be more effectively done by computers. That's all. For what it's worth, I don't have a computer science degree. I studied one of those useless underwater basketweaving majors. That must explain the overall sense of confusion.

moneywoes 3y ago

May I ask what are you doing now? Do you still see room in the space? Would love to collaborate ( have an Eng background and affinity for sales)

tschwimmer 3y ago
Huge. Gobs of opportunity. One failing of Flexport is it's trying to tackle too much at once. There's a lot of depth to each of the steps and you could build a very solid business out of automating many of them. I seriously looked at a few things in the compliance space and I still think there's a huge opportunity. Sales in the space is generally very difficult as decision makers are slow moving and conservative. But the opportunity to provide value in many places is real. I'd focus more on the supply chain guys at the big CPG companies vs the forwarders if I were to do it again. What am I doing now? Seems like the same thing everyone else is - Working at BigCo for more money and less stress :). Not looking to change at the moment but urge folks to look into the space for sure. It's a lot of fun and very gratifying. Pure software is more boring in comparison.
- psunavy03 3y ago
  Honestly, I think if someone could get really really good at one niche aspect of the problem and not do it in some obscure stack that's hard to integrate with a bog-standard early-2000s-at-best tech stack, they'd be snapped up in a heartbeat by one of the major players still trying to migrate. Because I can name at least two times that's happened. The big guys' main concern is being able to keep a unified view of who's shipping what, where, and to whom worldwide. They don't own planes, ships or trucks, so their rep rests on stuff delivered on time to the right place and always knowing where it is.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Two mistakes here in your thinking: - The 2000s stack, honestly doesn't exist anymore. And where it does, it does so for reasons no start-up can work around. this is the field of specialist consultants. - Doing only one thing really good is not enough anymore in that field. not even close. And the bar for good is already so much higher than seem to appreciate.