I'm involved extensively in logistics, and although I'm not Flexport's target customer nor involved in their specific space of logistics, I can easily say that they are the most exciting new thing in logistics since the container.<p>The thing is, they aren't doing anything revolutionary. They are doing the same exact things that a lot of companies have done for decades. What makes them revolutionary is 1) They are doing, in one point of contact, a variety of tasks that normally requires 3-10 points of contact. Tracking, quotes, customs, forwarding arrangements, carrier connections, contracts, and payments, all in one stop. 2) They are doing it faster, better, and cheaper than anybody else around.
"Many freight veterans and analysts are skeptical of these efforts, saying forwarding is too complex and too dependent on longstanding relationships for new online entrants to compete."<p>Because that's never been a problem technology has overcome.<p>Any industry with veterans stating this sentiment is ripe for change. Not because an online app is going to solve all the worlds ills, but because there are people resisting progress, keeping entire industries in a holding pattern.
I work for a large NVOCC/freight forwarder that has a large IT department and builds nearly all it's software in-house. My part of it has been building migrated applications for various customer service functionalities and the kinds of systems we're migrating from are beyond shockingly bad.<p>Today, moving a shipment requires the operator to go between 4-6 different applications and fill out the same information in multiple places. The data doesn't go anywhere and is often recorded in terse 3-letter codes that result from ancient databases that can't be upgraded. In fact, it's a custom database server running in an emulated environment because none of the hardware has long since stopped being supported. It's pure insanity.<p>Flexport looks like they're making a lot of the right moves and I've been following them with equal parts interest and trepidation for my company's future with competitors like that on the rise.<p>If I lived in San Francisco, I'd apply there in a heartbeat because I think this industry is overdue for some serious competition and I'd rather be the disrupter than the incumbent. So many of the processes are done manually because of 25-30 years of process cruft building up and the pain of doing it differently isn't greater (yet) than building a proper system to do it.<p>The bigger the ship, the slower it is to turn and I'm not sure the solution is more tugboats.
I guess this is the next upheaval in shipping. I think the last upheaval was with the introduction of the shipping container. A fascinating read on the subject:<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller/dp/0691136408" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/The-Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller/dp/...</a>
I spent a decade working with and writing software for LTL freight and 3PL companies on the receivables automation side and all I have to say is I hope these companies are successful.<p>There are tons of opportunities for efficiency gains all over these companies as they are some of the most low-tech back office operations I've seen. There's a definite gap between the biggest companies and the rest. These companies are notoriously conservative on all facets of their business, and they are a very tight knit industry. They all know what each other are up to, and they're leery of being the first mover on a technology.<p>This is one of many "old school" industries that are going to see some of the biggest innovation in the coming years. That will only be accelerated if we see fuel prices start to inch up again.
From this thread <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9799007" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9799007</a>
I learned how hard it is to do anything in this field.<p>None the less, if someone find a way to solve it, it's truly going to be transformative.
Flexport's hiring for basically every role under the sun<p>If the idea of revolutionizing one of the most important industries in the world interests you, reach out!<p><a href="https://learn.flexport.com/want-to-revolutionize-global-trade-flexport-is-hiring/" rel="nofollow">https://learn.flexport.com/want-to-revolutionize-global-trad...</a>
My dad ran a freight forwarding business for 25 years. They still use paper and fax. Half the office space is dedicated to cabinets of storage for paper files. Their main technology is an ancient IBM mainframe. Flexport is really going to change things.
I was the entire IT staff for Linescape (linescape.com) for its first 4 years. I was somewhat flabbergasted at the level of IT the industry was at in 2008 - 1990s at best. The industry was still trying to decide if XML was useful vs EDIFACT (straight from the 1970s) for transmitting shipping schedules. It was interesting work though, I had some very good insights into where the industry could go / was going to go and we could had made some bleeding edge improvements in terms of IT (e.g. the use of graph databases to model shipping routes and calculating various things) We could have been the first to market with a SaaS / API for dealing with shipping schedules, but management fiddled around and Maersk beat us to the punch.<p>Unfortunately the founders of Linescape have absolutely zero ethics and ripping off customers (and those working for the company) was more important than anything else. I only later found out about the criminal record of one of them which explains the reluctance to go find investment money. It was a classic cautionary tale about the startup ecosystem (vet the people you're doing business with / working for very carefully) and the lack of business ethics so prevalent (aka Uber et al) The CEO and his now ex-wife are now fighting over the company...<p>The thing was, none of the drama was necessary! We could have really made something of the company. But capitalism these days...
I fondly remember interning at major freight forwarder during university. The main input interface was paper which was them keyed into the mainframe application. Only the biggest partners have been integrated via EDI. So just putting sensible API in front of all this sounds like good idea.<p>I have been working on operations data mart most of the time (and saving cca 30 000 dollars on carrier volume discount on shipped containers) but I always felt my most appreciated contribution was stitching together few Excel macros to make Request For Quotation evaluation easier.<p>So here are my two free ocean freight startup ideas:<p>- precise container reporting for carrier disputes (10 FCL 40 footers from HKG to HAM), including error detection when port is incorrectly filled in just because it has similar code<p>- RFQ evaluator - as simple and accessible as excel, but capturing the specifics of ocean freight (tens of port pairs, container specifications, splitting price to freight, terminal and surcharges etc).<p>Did you know you could have your container shipped for free - only for cost of terminal handling (on certain routes, at certain times)? Fascinating industry.
This could be pretty huge. I've dealt with several freight forwarding companies while building a previous startup of mine and it definitely struck me as an antiquated industry (this was 2007ish). Maybe a good benchmark for "disruptable" industries is that you have to actually make a telephone call to get something done. Time to get out the yellow pages and do some research!
An oddly written story. Claims significant money invested in these companies ("$1 billion since the start of 2014") and proceeds to name only two -- Flexport and Freightos. The latter of which doesn't seem to fit the central disruption-of-established-industry theme because they sell software to the incumbents.
"Since the start of 2014, venture-capital firms have pumped over $1 billion into startup freight-forwarding companies, twice the amount invested in the five years before that..."
Here's a list of startups in the logistics market:<p><a href="https://www.freightos.com/the-ultimate-list-of-top-logistics-startups-blog/" rel="nofollow">https://www.freightos.com/the-ultimate-list-of-top-logistics...</a>
Flexport is hiring engineers: <a href="https://jobs.lever.co/flexport" rel="nofollow">https://jobs.lever.co/flexport</a><p>As an engineer starting at Flexport in a couple of weeks, here are some more interesting resources that shaped my thinking:<p>Interview with Ryan Petersen (Flexport CEO)
<a href="https://theblueprint.com/stories/ryan-petersen/" rel="nofollow">https://theblueprint.com/stories/ryan-petersen/</a><p>Office hours at startup school 2013 with pg & sama
<a href="https://youtu.be/syoqjYLDs48?t=1167" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/syoqjYLDs48?t=1167</a><p>I also happened to have recently read Zero to One.<p>Plus, Flexport has an appealing mission. Removing friction in something as basic as shipping makes pretty much everyone in the world better off.