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Petersen: Tech media unfairly targets startup founders instead of incumbent mega-corporations

Ryan Petersen · Unicorn Founder on Unseen Arbitrages, the Paradox of Wealth + Charlie Munger Wisdom · Nov 11, 2024 · at 48:05

Ryan Petersen, founder and CEO of Flexport, reflects on tech reporting and the disconnect between media narratives and the underdog reality of early-stage and scaling founders.

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“All reporters play a very important function of like holding the powerful accountable, but like founders, you're not that power, but we're kind of suffering through like, you know, we're up against some very powerful forces in the world. Like we feel like we're the ones like trying to, you know, speak truth to power and fight for the little guy and stuff. And then meantime, the narrative within the media has been like, oh, the tech that, you know, the founders are the ones that we have to hold accountable. We're like, what about this? Multi-billion dollar, trillion, almost tens of billion dollar mega corporation that I compete with.”

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