Flexport is the first international freight forwarder and customs brokerage built around an online dashboard. It has raised $304M as of 2017, including $110M in its latest Series C round. In April 2015, Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, told Bloomberg News, "There will be more international trade because of Flexport and international trade is a very big thing for there to be more of." The Economic Times of India said of Flexport, "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." In a 2017 interview to Forbes, Flexport's CEO Ryan Petersen said the company started opening their own warehouses for consolidating cargo customer shipments located in Hong Kong and L.A. with plans "to have a global network where we can load and unload cargo". Petersen also is a contributor to TechCrunch and is a founder of Import Genius.
Founding
Flexport was started by Ryan Petersen, a UC Berkeley and Columbia Business School graduate in March 2013. Prior to this, he ran an Internet business together with his brother, David Peterson and friend, Michael Kanko, having to deal with import and export of various objects from China to the US. After gathering over 380 million of shipping documents that were in public record, indexing them and making them searchable, they founded ImportGenius, a subscription service for importers and exporters, that was launched in 2008. In 2013, Peterson left ImportGenius to focus on simplifying international trade and customer experience for transporting of large-scale goods using software and automation.
Growth
In May 2015, the company told Chinese media outlet 36kr.com that they were on pace to generate $60M in sales for 2015. It had more than 600 customers in 2016. It has increased revenue by 25% every month in the 30 months since Flexport was founded, according to Petersen. As of 2017, Flexport has raised $94 million in venture capital from such investors as Peter Thiel’sFounders Fund, First Round Capital and Google Venture. In July 2016, it had 420 employees in seven offices, including Atlanta, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and Shenzhen, and was worth $365 million. In August 2018 Flexport was named the 8th fastest growing company in USA with a three year growth of 15911%. In 2019, Flexport was named to the 2019 CNBC Disruptor 50, CNBC's annual list of private companies that are transforming the economy, and Inc.'s Best Workplaces.
