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Ryan Petersen

Founder & CEO, Flexport · 0 appearances on the record.

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founderexecutiveinvestor@typesfast ↗LinkedIn ↗flexport.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Ryan Petersen is the founder and CEO of Flexport, a digital freight forwarder and supply chain platform that integrates logistics management, customs brokerage, and tracking software. Before founding Flexport in 2013, he co-founded the global shipping intelligence company ImportGenius.

11statements → 8claims → 0claims resolved → —average certainty → —average debate potential → 17said about them ↓

3 not checkable as stated how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 6 assertions · 2 opinions · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 5 are resolved, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Ryan argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Flexport achieved in five years the revenue Expeditors reached in fifteen
“In five years, we did, it took them their first 15 years to get to our revenue number”
Ryan Petersen May 27, 2020 ▶ 16:08 Flexport: How to Build a Truly Global Business From Day One with CEO Ryan Petersen

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Global trade has grown 4% annually for over 800 years
“It has grown four percent annually for over 800 years, which is a nice slide to present to investors.”
Ryan Petersen May 27, 2020 ▶ 6:05 Flexport: How to Build a Truly Global Business From Day One with CEO Ryan Petersen

Everything Ryan Petersen said on the Official SaaStr Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Not checkable as stated
Brands failing to match Amazon's two-hour delivery will eventually go bankrupt
“And if you don't fix it, if you don't solve it, if you're not able to at least get parity to Amazon's value proposition of two-hour delivery, you will go bankrupt.”
Ryan Petersen May 27, 2020 ▶ 21:30 Flexport: How to Build a Truly Global Business From Day One with CEO Ryan Petersen
Opinion
Traditional freight forwarders rip off customers and hike prices mid-transit
“That sort of anyone who ever imported a container from another country saw that this is a nightmare, saw that it's way too much paperwork, that the freight companies are trying to rip you off, no one can tell you where your stuff is, the regulations are really…”
Ryan Petersen May 27, 2020 ▶ 5:10 Flexport: How to Build a Truly Global Business From Day One with CEO Ryan Petersen
Opinion
Traditional freight forwarding is just inefficient email forwarding of unstructured PDFs
“In the old world, it's a relay race of unstructured data. It should be called, we call it freight forwarding is the name of our industry. It should be called freight email forwarding. And because it's just a human looks at this PDF and says who else needs to k…”
Ryan Petersen May 27, 2020 ▶ 8:59 Flexport: How to Build a Truly Global Business From Day One with CEO Ryan Petersen
Assertion Supported
Flexport achieved in five years the revenue Expeditors reached in fifteen
“In five years, we did, it took them their first 15 years to get to our revenue number”
Ryan Petersen May 27, 2020 ▶ 16:08 Flexport: How to Build a Truly Global Business From Day One with CEO Ryan Petersen
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Drone deregulation will enable two-minute consumer deliveries
“You're going to have two minute delivery with drones as soon as it's deregulated. Two minute delivery, you just push a button and boom, like Snickers bar right at your seat. That'll happen.”
Ryan Petersen May 27, 2020 ▶ 20:19 Flexport: How to Build a Truly Global Business From Day One with CEO Ryan Petersen
Assertion Contradicted
Global trade has grown 4% annually for over 800 years
“It has grown four percent annually for over 800 years, which is a nice slide to present to investors.”
Ryan Petersen May 27, 2020 ▶ 6:05 Flexport: How to Build a Truly Global Business From Day One with CEO Ryan Petersen
Disclosure
Flexport reached $471M in revenue and 1,000 employees in five years
“We've raised now three hundred and fifty four million dollars in venture capital. We've grown to a thousand employees in five years. We did, we closed last year, I'm proud to say it, five four hundred and seventy one million dollars in revenue in our fifth yea…”
Ryan Petersen May 27, 2020 ▶ 7:24 Flexport: How to Build a Truly Global Business From Day One with CEO Ryan Petersen
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Door-to-door freight shipments involve up to 18 distinct companies
“In that world, there's no company that can do it from door to door. So what you actually have to do to solve this problem is get as many as we've got, I've seen shipments with 18 companies involved.”
Ryan Petersen May 27, 2020 ▶ 8:38 Flexport: How to Build a Truly Global Business From Day One with CEO Ryan Petersen
Assertion Supported
Ocean freight still relies on physical paper flown across oceans
“When you ship an ocean container across the world, and pretty much look around every single thing that you see got here by ocean container, when you ship one of these things across the world, there's actually a piece of paper that travels in parallel. And that…”
Ryan Petersen May 27, 2020 ▶ 0:03 Flexport: How to Build a Truly Global Business From Day One with CEO Ryan Petersen
Assertion Partly supported
43 US government agencies regulate imported products
“With, there are 43 government agencies in the United States alone that take an interest and regulate imported products.”
Ryan Petersen May 27, 2020 ▶ 15:04 Flexport: How to Build a Truly Global Business From Day One with CEO Ryan Petersen
Assertion Supported
The Sears catalog was discontinued the year before the internet was invented
“The Sears catalog, by the way, is the most sad story ever. It was disbanded in 1993, the year before the internet was invented.”
Ryan Petersen May 27, 2020 ▶ 19:43 Flexport: How to Build a Truly Global Business From Day One with CEO Ryan Petersen

The other half of the tape: Ryan Petersen's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 14 times in 1 episode on the Official SaaStr Podcast. 3 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Sam Blond 7Ben Braverman 7

Statements about Ryan Petersen, by other people (3)

Assertion Supported
Braverman: Ryan Petersen's ImportGenius printed cash selling structured data
“Ryan had this company, Import Genius, that basically took public data Structured it, made it available for third parties, made it searchable, and they just sold access to it for like a hundred bucks a month per seat, and the business absolutely printed and sti…”
Ben Braverman Jan 27, 2023 ▶ 5:14 CRO Confidential: Sales Recruitment and Hiring Managers With Ben Braverman
Disclosure
Braverman invested life savings in Flexport before joining as CRO
“What did I actually use to make my decision Like first to invest my life savings in Blacksburg, and then ultimately to make the bet to like, okay, let's, let's put every waking hour every day into this thing, go work for Ryan full time as CRO.”
Ben Braverman Jan 27, 2023 ▶ 3:51 CRO Confidential: Sales Recruitment and Hiring Managers With Ben Braverman
Assertion Supported
Braverman: Paul Graham identified Flexport as breakout before official YC acceptance
“Paul Graham had already identified Ryan and Flexport as a breakout from YC before he went into YC, and you know that because he got called on stage at startup school by Paul before he was officially accepted into YC.”
Ben Braverman Jan 27, 2023 ▶ 31:54 CRO Confidential: Sales Recruitment and Hiring Managers With Ben Braverman

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
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0112023episodes it came up in
007.50.51512023episodesmentions per episode
2023 14 mentions in 1 episode

Played on the show (1)

Episodes where a recording of Ryan Petersen was played rather than Ryan taking part, or where the tape carries an address with nobody putting questions to them. Listed because the words are on the record, kept out of every score on this page because they were not said on this show. We read this off the tape: who was spoken to, who was asked something, who answered whom.

EpisodeDateOn tapeWhat it is
Flexport: How to Build a Truly Global Business From Day One with CEO Ryan Petersen May 27, 2020 21m aired address
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