111–120 of 160 posts
Looks like he is running for Governor in Texas. https://x.com/davehclark/status/1699574686848352532?s=46&t=B...
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I sat with the Flexport logistics teams for months on end. I watched them move hundreds of shipments. Maybe they concealed all the secret sauce for when I got up to the go the bathroom but nothing I saw was particularly notable. They had rules like "make sure the ISV is filed at least 3 days before expected arrival" and "if the origin agent hasn't picked up the can after more than 2 days, call Joe at the destination…
Then why has it not yet been done? Has God touched Flexport on the shoulder and said "We deem Ye worthy to redeem the freight forwarding industry?" It seems to me that if it's so easy as you describe, and yet it hasn't been done, than maybe it's not so easy after all. Perhaps not impossible. Perhaps doable. But perhaps not that easy. People who work in the industry are not stupid. They don't want to do unnecessary bu…
Why hasn’t anyone done it? What specific things have kept Flexport and everyone else from automating more things?
I think those are very interesting questions.
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May I ask what are you doing now? Do you still see room in the space? Would love to collaborate ( have an Eng background and affinity for sales)
Huge. Gobs of opportunity. One failing of Flexport is it's trying to tackle too much at once. There's a lot of depth to each of the steps and you could build a very solid business out of automating many of them. I seriously looked at a few things in the compliance space and I still think there's a huge opportunity. Sales in the space is generally very difficult as decision makers are slow moving and conservative. But…
Because I can name at least two times that's happened. The big guys' main concern is being able to keep a unified view of who's shipping what, where, and to whom worldwide. They don't own planes, ships or trucks, so their rep rests on stuff delivered on time to the right place and always knowing where it is.
I'm sure there's some juicy details behind the curtains, but people are too professional to air it publicly. Here's some fun but baseless theories: 1) Typical big-company guy fails to adapt to startup life. A year ago, Flexport's tech team was 400 people. That's minuscule compared to what Dave's used to at Amazon. He came in, insisted on a bunch of unnecessary hiring, bloated the tech team with deadwood, internal kin…
hopefully by now companies realize parachuting in ex-AMZN employees is a recipe for disappointment, esp in terms of cost relative to work output
hopefully by now companies realize parachuting in ex-AMZN employees is a recipe for disappointment, esp in terms of cost relative to work output
I’ve worked for one at Cruise who got “parachuted” like you put it and he was generally well respected as he definitely cleaned up the house there as the company scaled massively - I’d consider working for him again. That is to say it works for some companies but probably not everyone and ymmv depending on who you parachute.
Slight difference in expectations depending
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This is a very nice sentiment but the truth is that the established forwarders operate in a way that is could be greatly optimized. Established forwarders (and Flexport) have teams of people that "move" shipments by applying an SOP (basically a written algorithm for advancing the shipment to signals that come in from a variety of sources (an origin factory various carriers like truckers, airlines and shipping lines,…
> I've pulled back the curtain on logistics and the wizard is just a regular guy. I agree, but land at a different conclusion. I dabbled in logistics a bit at one startup and the thing I found true is that every warehouse and receiving dock did things a little different and sometimes that thing was computer software and other times it was a person with sticky notes all over the walls of their tiny office by the bay d…
Skip to 2 minute mark https://youtu.be/dXfFvdvi7Z0?feature=shared
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This practice of bringing in former reports or buddies is very common in the industry, both in startups and established companies. You just have to look at the About us / Management/ Leadership page on the company web site and correlate a few names, current positions and positions in former companies, to get it.
I feel conflicted about the matter. I understand the appeal of bringing in people you know; they are a known quantity and involve less risk-taking than hiring an unknown person. I can see it going super well if the new people brought in are liked and the culture from the older company is good. In our case, it was the opposite and tanked the team morale.
In my experience, the new top guy brings in his old lackeys because they complemented him, and made him look good, in the context of the top guy's previous company.
Hence they often turn out to be one dimensional, rather than rounded contributors - e.g great at bringing in projects on time even though everyone hates working with them, or great at technical due diligence/sniffing out skunk projects even though the new company's best work is in skunk projects.
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Lines up with the sentiment about Flexport being a tech retirement home
Pretty provincial attitude probably propagated by some overpaid MAANG bro who doesn't realize that there's an entire industry of tech folks out there who aren't making $300K/yr TC. So if you are making that . . . a little humility is in order.