The Exchanges

Q made it into a useful business that generates millions of dollars a year profit. It seems like your brother also did that same business model, right, in a different space with BuildZoom. Can you explain maybe what is the underlying, you know, framework of how to think about business ideas like that, that might, that might succeed? Because it seems like there's a pattern, that there's multiple ideas like that.

A That yeah, BuildZim was born out of the frustration of finding a contractor. BuildZim is my older brother, David's company, one of his companies. And he was my co-founder with Import Genius and my boss for a while. And yeah, he was sort of my mentor in startup world. Uh, Built-in was born out of the frustration of finding a contractor to work on your house and underlying, it is this public data set of building permits are largely public record, but hard to access. And we had a lot of experience of doing that with import genius. So we built a search engine on building permits and lets you look up any, wherever you are, any house, you can see who the contractors were that built on that, that worked on it, which is pretty useful as a homeowner, by the way, as a tool, see who, who built the problem. If you have a problem, go find that person. They probably can help you with it. Um, But also you're doing due diligence on contractors. No, you know, being able to talk to the actual homeowners who worked, like who worked with them, making sure that the reviews are actually for people that hire this contractor. Like there's a great data set out there. So they built, they built a nice little business on top of that data set. I think that government data is a big opportunity. The government has tons of public records on all kinds of stuff and no real incentive to organize it in ways that …

AI assessment note: “I think that government data is a big opportunity. The government has tons of public records”

Q months ago, and they found one manifest, and so if people don't know how this works, what you guys did was basically you took public data about the shipping manifest, and then you organized and structured it so you could see for any business who's their supplier, and for any supplier, who are all the businesses they work with? Is that right? Is that the right way of describing it?

A Yeah, that's what Import Genius does. It's still, it's still, we haven't raised prices much either. It's still about the same as you said, 99 or 199. We might have raised it a tiny bit, but, um, importgenius.com Is the business that I started in, you know, if I, you mentioned Alibaba, cause that's, I started that business out of frustration. I was living in China for a while and I would use Alibaba to find a factory that would show up at the factory and they weren't expecting people to just show up and it'd be like fake factory. Like he was just a middleman. You know, or like one time they, I did give them a couple of advanced days, but I showed up and they were like very clearly like faking it. Like this was not a bunch of guys in a warehouse with no equipment or anything. So

AI assessment note: “Yeah, that's what Import Genius does.”

Q feel like everybody's got a great Paul Graham story of, like, there was a, you know, these, there's these, like, crucible moments in every startup, or there's these moments of uncertainty, and Paul either brings either a certain level of confidence or clarity or a question or a bit of advice that was, was helpful early on. Do you, do you feel like there was one of those for you?

A I think Paul's got, his superpower is like not, he only sees what's possible and like how valuable or big could this thing be if everything works and he ignores every other outcome that's possible. And that is probably the right way to do seed investing, you know, in a power law world to find like that. And so he always saw, if Flexport really worked, the outcome is so outsized and enormous given the industry size and their, and importance. Then, and, and then he could help us sell that story to other investors, to candidates. He would send emails early days to like top engineers saying really great things about us. Quotes like the one you mentioned to different press and stuff like that. He's also been a really big supporter of Flexport.org, which is our humanitarian relief logistics division that, that helps nonprofits doing refugee camp logistics or other sorts of Disaster recovery logistics. He's been, he's donated billions of dollars to us there and helped us get the word out about all that stuff. So he's a huge supporter of Flexport.

AI assessment note: “he always saw, if Flexport really worked, the outcome is so outsized”

Q A venture partner at Founders Fund. Uh, your LinkedIn says, looking for a generational company to back. Um, how's that going?

A Great. I mean, I, Founders Fund, I've been a very loyal part of the Founders Fund network for a while. They, they were our first Series A investor. They lent our A and our B and participated, I think, in every other round that we've done, basically. And, uh, when they asked me to join, it was kind of a no-brainer for me. I mean, it took me a little while. I said no a bunch of times. I shouldn't say no-brainer, but the only fund I would consider joining, because I think they're really unique in their Refusal to follow the herd, um, and to think for themselves. But, uh, I, I joined actually full-time as a general partner, and then I came back to Flexport. I, I took about six months where I was the, uh, chair, executive chairman. And, uh, then I realized I had to come back and be the CEO again at Flexport. And so I kind of scaled my role way back at Foundershwan, but I'm still part of the team.

AI assessment note: “I kind of scaled my role way back at Foundershwan, but I'm still part”

Q they're unique in how they do things. I've, I've interacted with them a bunch too. And felt that. But I'm always interested, like, what's the cause of that effect? So like, what, what is the example of something that they do differently on the input side that leads to the output of being, uh, you know, sort of independent thinkers or contrarian or willing to make bets that others don't?

A Well, a lot of it, it just comes from Peter being refusing, like, he's just like, that's his whole life thesis is that people are mimetic and they will chase the same outcome, the same goal, the same object, the same mimetic desire. Everybody wants the same thing. And if you can avoid that, there's a huge arbitrage opportunity. If you can go look where other people aren't looking. And so a lot of, it just comes, I would say probably it's just from Peter. But they've, they've really trained it into the team. It's, how does that manifest itself? It's a very high paying job. Founders one actually has a vendor compensation structure. It's almost all tied to the outcomes, the performance, but like a lot of VCs just make super huge. You'd be surprised how high the salaries are at a lot of the, at other VCs. Um, so they make a lot of money in a job that can't really be measured except on a 10 year time horizon. Even on that, it could be luck. And so, and, and you don't have like an overseeing, like a boss breathing down your neck, like you can do it from anywhere, kinda. Nobody's, every time I email a VC, they seem to be in France. So it's, it's a, it's a job that like is kind of a dream where you just, so what's the incentive structure there for? Like, just don't get fired. And it's hard to fire you for performance because it takes a long time for these things to mature. And again, i…

AI assessment note: “Founders one actually has a vendor compensation structure. It's almost all tied to the outcomes”

Q What's your tip if somebody's in their twenties and they're, they're kind of intrigued by this, like the adventure path, what would you tell them? Like, how would you tell them to think about this now that you've done it?

A Well, I, I think it's really about your values, you know, and, and really introspecting. You can select your values too. Well, a lot of people just kind of go through life without Thinking about this. I, I did. And my value without knowing it consciously, my number one value in life until I was about. 25 or 26 was adventure. And I just wanted to like try all kinds of go all over the world. And remember this was pre iPhone. So it was like pretty adventurous. Like I didn't have GPS in my pocket or translation apps or any, I mean, I just had to like figure stuff out, walking around, asking people for directions and hoping they'd be nice to me, which they were. But it was definitely an adventure. I, I, and so at that time, that was my value was like chasing adventure. That's not for everybody, but if it is like, it's pretty easy to achieve going to cheap places. It's a lot less adventurous these days. I mean, you show up, you call, now you go to China, you call Uber or DD or DD, I guess. And, uh, you got Google trends, you got maps, you got translation apps. It's like a little too easy. Um, I, I once rode my bicycle from China to Vietnam. And no map. The map we had was all wrong, which is even worse than no map almost. And we just had to figure it out and we slept at people's houses at certain times. Like it was like, yeah, old school adventures.

AI assessment note: “I think it's really about your values, you know, and, and really introspecting.”