Ryan Petersen: Building the Hidden Engine of Global Trade

My mom is a great entrepreneur. She started and sold two companies in the biotech and biochemistry space in Washington D.C. My brother and I both had our first job delivering soda. We would stack the snacks cabinet and sodas. We basically bought the items at a giant Safeway, then marked them up and sold them from a small cart.

While living in China, we discovered that shipping manifests for ocean freight are public records. These records contain a lot of interesting data. We've since learned that this public record data is available in the US and almost 20 other countries. A shipping manifest is like a plane or boat ticket for your cargo. It details which factory made the products, where they originated, who bought and sold them, the dates, and the ports. We realized this data was incredibly useful for sourcing products for our company.

In the early days, we built Import Genius, a powerful dataset allowing users to look up companies, their shipments, and suppliers. At that time, the big question was, "When will the new iPhone come out?" I believe it was the 3G iPhone, perhaps only the second iPhone ever. We had no users for our product; it was a classic example of "If you build it, they will not come." We needed to attract customers and attention. Knowing our data was interesting, I searched our dataset for Apple shipments. It's public record. I discovered they were importing a new product never seen before, called an "electric computer." This was intriguing, as all computers are electric. It was a perfect moment: rumors of the 3G iPhone were already circulating. I published a blog post speculating, "Apple has this new thing, maybe it's the 3G iPhone." It went viral. Within a week, we were generating $50,000 in monthly revenue, a rapid jump from zero. Soon after, I received a call from U.S. Customs. They said, "We just talked to Steve Jobs, and he's really upset about this. You need to explain where you got this data." They seemed to be threatening to investigate. I showed them the letter of the law, explaining that the data was public record. Later, a Customs official sent an email, thanking us for clarifying and sharing the information with Apple's team, which relieved pressure on them. This was an early lesson in gaining attention and traffic for a new product, a truly viral marketing moment.

This is a valuable business lesson: in most industries, quality actually costs less, which is counterintuitive. In logistics, for example, all costs stem from mistakes. If you file a customs entry with the wrong classification code, you'll spend weeks rectifying it with customs agencies. This can lead to licensing or regulatory issues. Getting it right the first time is far cheaper than making a single error. One mistake can negate an entire month's efficiency gains in logistics. I learned this the hard way, as our customer NPS began to suffer.

The number one lesson I've learned from Tobi, from Shopify, and Brian Chesky, who have been great advisors, is that micromanagement isn't a bad word; it's a good one. You need to stay involved in all the details. This is challenging for my company, as we are large and sprawling, but you must be hands-on. Conduct many skip-level meetings. Don't just hire executives and trust them blindly. I used to treat them like a black box, and when I heard them say this, I realized I was making a mistake at the highest level. Don't do that at any level. It's my company. Audit and inspect everything. You can't give people too much leash to run things their way. If they disagree with me, I want to debate it and hear their perspective. However, at the end of the day, I know I'll still be at Flexport in 10 years, and I don't know if that's true for anyone else. This insight comes from Chesky, and it's probably true. I hope my team stays for 10 years, but I'm positive I'll be here. So, if they truly dislike how I want to do something, that's fine, but it's my company, and they can move on. I didn't have this level of confidence before.

Our inventory shouldn't be expensive to maintain, but it depends on whether it's perishable. COVID-19 was a prime example. Hospitals lacked sufficient inventory because they operated on a "just-in-time" basis. This is a ridiculous way to manage a healthcare network, especially during a crisis when you need inventory. The issue with PPE, like masks, is its shelf life and expiration date. You can't simply fill a warehouse with these items and expect them to last indefinitely. They won't be usable in 20 years. This is a difficult problem, similar to military supplies. How much artillery should you produce and store for a potential war? You need some readily available when war breaks out; you don't want to start production then.