Ryan Petersen ships Uber plan to the sea

Ryan Petersen came up with a quality-control feint when he was working in China for his brother's import business. During a factory tour he’d excuse himself to go to the bathroom, to see if there was tap water or flush toilets.

No? He'd scratch the plant from his list of potential manufacturers, because it lacked sufficient industrial finesse. Petersen says he learned a lot of similar tricks in the two years he lived in Shanghai and Kunming.

He also picked up Mandarin, and a serious frustration with what he views as the unnecessarily hassle-heavy business of freight forwarding. Nine years, an MBA and one successful business later, Petersen, 34, is chief executive officer of Flexport.

His billboard description: It’s the world’s first licensed customs brokerage built around a modern web application.

“The world wants software to manage their business,” Petersen said. “They’re used to using software to do everything and then all of a sudden they’ve got to move their freight.”Flexport, which has raised $6.6 million from investors including Google Ventures and actor Ashton Kutcher’s fund, is another startup looking to arm in on an established industry.



Uber Technologies is changing the way people move around cities; Flexport wants to do the same with stuff in the holds of container ships in oceans.

Flexport connects customers with carriers, and software takes care of customs, tariffs and other logistics. A web-based dashboard lets a US importer comparisonshop by typing in variables — Port A on this day or Port B on this one, railcar versus tractortrailer — and displays pricequotes from transport companies. Flexport, Petersen says, cuts down on paperwork and headaches for importers, like booking sites do for travellers.

It’s one of the first freight-forwarding outfits to digitise international shipping, making it easy to move goods through customs and around the world.