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Freight startup Flexport soars from ‘unsexy’ to $800M valuation

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Re: Freight startup Flexport soars from ‘unsexy’ to $800M valuation

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that was extremely impressive. You could tell he had a lot of experience in the industry, because he knew a surprising amount off the top of his head.

"Take problem from one domain you know and make a business by being really good at solving it with something from another domain you know" is a pretty tried and true business strategy.

Which is what makes me sad being primarily a programmer. I often wish I had another career first so that I could use the programming skills to solve something there. As it is, I often feel like a loaded gun without a direction to aim in.

Re: Freight startup Flexport soars from ‘unsexy’ to $800M valuation

#73
post #49

Congrats. I remember watching Flexport get pitched to PG and Sam Altman during open 'Office Hours' at Startup School in 2013. https://youtu.be/syoqjYLDs48?t=19m30s

I don't get it, from the video, they say brokers make 3-5 billion a year, yet, they value the company at 800 million? I've never seen a startup valued at this large percentage of market size please correct me if I'm wrong

The value of a company is not equal to it's revenue - that doesn't make sense. To give an example, let's say someone offered to sell you a magic bean which caused $10 to appear magically every year. Would the bean grower sell it to you for $10? Probably not unless they needed cash immediately, since they could make $50 from the bean in 5 years.

Instead value of a company is the perpetual value of the cash flows to the buyer. The problem is for startups we have very little idea what their cash flows will be in the future. Their revenues could be anywhere, we have no idea what their costs will be (how many sales people do you need, how much R&D, etc.), etc. So because of that valuation becomes a very imprecise art.

Outside of the cash flow approach, another approach for valuing a company is to consider future buyers. Suppose you have a magic bean that returns 50 cents each year in perpetuity. However, the magic bean is called MagicBeanAI and since AI is hot you know you can sell that bean for $50 to someone else. In this case you would be willing to buy it for <$50 regardless of MagicBeanAI's cash flows. This is what happens when markets start to behave irrationally. Eventually people realize they don't have any more suckers to sell to and their MagicBeanAIs value goes to almost nothing. This is essentially a market crashl; google "tulip mania" for more examples.

Re: Freight startup Flexport soars from ‘unsexy’ to $800M valuation

#76

All they did was lower the profit. Most everything is electronic now anyway. I have a relationship with a my Logistics company. They charge approx $2800 for a 40ft container to my door from Hangzhou. The ship takes 8-10 days on the water, approx 10 days by rail (East Coast). I'm not sure these guys could save me time or money since my containers already come on one of the fastest ships. The problem is Container ships…

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Re: Freight startup Flexport soars from ‘unsexy’ to $800M valuation

#77
post #49

Congrats. I remember watching Flexport get pitched to PG and Sam Altman during open 'Office Hours' at Startup School in 2013. https://youtu.be/syoqjYLDs48?t=19m30s

I don't get it, from the video, they say brokers make 3-5 billion a year, yet, they value the company at 800 million? I've never seen a startup valued at this large percentage of market size please correct me if I'm wrong

Have you seen Uber which is value a 2-10x the entire size of the taxi market?

Re: Freight startup Flexport soars from ‘unsexy’ to $800M valuation

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Take problem from one domain you know and make a business by being really good at solving it with something from another domain you know" is a pretty tried and true business strategy.

Which is what makes me sad being primarily a programmer. I often wish I had another career first so that I could use the programming skills to solve something there. As it is, I often feel like a loaded gun without a direction to aim in.

There's a reason why so many programmers want to make new programming languages, text editors, and compilers :-)

Re: Freight startup Flexport soars from ‘unsexy’ to $800M valuation

#79
post #70
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here we have a business that is going after a huge existing market. For some perspective, Slack is valued at > 5 Billion

Here's where the market is being irrational in my opinion. I would bet that in 10 years Flexport dwarfs Slack in revenue and in growth potential.

I'd take that bet. Slack is more like Facebook meets LinkedIn.

Re: Freight startup Flexport soars from ‘unsexy’ to $800M valuation

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it is in the TV show doesn't mean it's not based on real stuff. Silicon Valley is satire and they have some of the best consultants in the business. A lot of stuff on the show is close to reality. Sometimes it gets it so close I kind of cringe because I've been through similar things in real life. The tabs vs spaces argument comes to mind. Edit: to stay on topic. As other people said, I would take a lowe…

> The tabs vs spaces argument comes to mind. Not refuting your point in the least, but that plot line made me cringe for an entirely different reason--it characterized people who use spaces as though they actually pressed the spacebar once for each space instead of letting the editor handle the work. That said, I think it was a good decision since the majority of the audience (based on my super scientific study where…

Yes, that's my biggest complaint about the show in its four-season history. The whole thing was so inaccurate it made me furious.
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