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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

#31

Post by [deleted] »

pavlov wrote: post #23
kbenson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a word. I didn't know that, until I just looked. It's a variant spelling of holistic. I actually like it better than holistic, since the base word is more recognizable. P.S. At least I assume the "ouch" was about it being a misspelling. Maybe I'm wrong.

Holistic is a strange word anyway because it's a Latin suffix tacked onto a Germanic base. At least to my ears, it sounds wrong for that reason. If someone tasked me to come up with a replacement word, I might suggest "integralist". As in "holistic approach" -> "integralist approach", etc.

[deleted]

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

#32

Post by snovv_crash »

dmoy wrote: post #12
petra wrote: post #7

What about Amazon? they had a some similar plan, to become a global logistics network. And it's highly likely they'll be a competitor to flexport ? What's Flexport's advantage in that case ?

I mean I'm not in the shipping industry, but I'd guess it'd be a long while before Amazon becomes very focused/involved in the particulars of the container shipping industry, where Flexport is focused. Amazon has a lot of other stuff on their plate to tackle. If Amazon ever becomes such a large percentage of global trade that they can actually make use of a whole fleet of container ships then maybe. But for now, just…

To be fair, the turnaround time for a plane is probably close to an order of magnitude faster than a ship.

Where ships have an advantage is in mass, not volume.

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

#33

Post by jamestimmins »

myroon5 wrote: post #25

"And while investors were happily offering it a valuation of $1 billion or more, Petersen didn’t want to get in over his head and risk a down-round later if the market stumbled." This is straight out of Silicon Valley (the show)... why wouldn't you take the best valuation for your company?

This is a super, super mature thing to do. VCs are trying to make multiples of their investments, so the higher the valuation, the bigger your company has to be in order for VCs to make their multiple. This means you have to optimize around growing as much as possible, which increases burn rate and can screw up your priorities. If you want to build a solid, long term profitable company, it gives you more flexibility to try different things and 'do it right' rather than focus entirely on growth.

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

#34

Post by _sentient »

myroon5 wrote: post #25

"And while investors were happily offering it a valuation of $1 billion or more, Petersen didn’t want to get in over his head and risk a down-round later if the market stumbled." This is straight out of Silicon Valley (the show)... why wouldn't you take the best valuation for your company?

I'm guessing this is less about trying to avoid setting too high a bar, and more about taking the term sheet that offered a lower upfront valuation but with much cleaner terms and less overall deal hair.

Either way, this is super impressive from Ryan and the rest of the Flexport team. Kudos.

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

#35

Post by kbenson »

waqf wrote: post #27
kbenson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a word. I didn't know that, until I just looked. It's a variant spelling of holistic. I actually like it better than holistic, since the base word is more recognizable. P.S. At least I assume the "ouch" was about it being a misspelling. Maybe I'm wrong.

> the base word Is it really the same word? holistic comes from Greek ὅλος , whereas whole is a word of Germanic origin. Of course that doesn't mean they aren't from the same Indo-European root — after all, whole certainly has cognates in many languages with the same meaning, such as Russian целый . But Wiktionary tells me that whole is from Proto-Indo-European ٭kóylos, whereas holistic is from PIE ٭solh₂wós. In any…

Probably not, but I was speaking much more informally. :) To be honest, I don't care whether it makes sense linguistically or not. It takes more than one hand to count the number of times I've looked up the meaning of holistic, because I encounter it in a context I care about so infrequently that I can never remember the meaning (at least I can never remember it accurately enough to not be unsure whether I have it correct. From context you can get the gist, but nuance may be lost). Wholistic works entirely better for me.

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

#36

Post by dmoy »

snovv_crash wrote: post #32
dmoy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I'm not in the shipping industry, but I'd guess it'd be a long while before Amazon becomes very focused/involved in the particulars of the container shipping industry, where Flexport is focused. Amazon has a lot of other stuff on their plate to tackle. If Amazon ever becomes such a large percentage of global trade that they can actually make use of a whole fleet of container ships then maybe. But for now, just…

To be fair, the turnaround time for a plane is probably close to an order of magnitude faster than a ship. Where ships have an advantage is in mass, not volume.

Oh yea, I'm certainly not questioning whether it made sense for Amazon to buy up some planes, because they definitely ship enough volume (even just domestically) to experiment with that.

Though I would argue ships have advantage in both mass and volume, but are significantly lacking in latency.

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

#37

Post by smhg »

geofft wrote: post #5

Is this an article from TechCrunch about how a company doing good, important, profitable work was previously called "unsexy" by TechCrunch and is continuing to do good, important, profitable work? Did anyone else call them "unsexy"? > But as the mainstream embraces startup culture and aspiring founders flood Silicon Valley, there seems to be no shortage of people willing to chase things that seem like a bad idea. ...…

Don't click on TechCrunch links. They write for a different audience.

Just read the comments over here if the topic interests you.

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

#38

Post by justonepost »

petra wrote: post #7

What about Amazon? they had a some similar plan, to become a global logistics network. And it's highly likely they'll be a competitor to flexport ? What's Flexport's advantage in that case ?

Perhaps they are looking to be acquired by Amazon, Walmart, or some other global shipping concern.

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

#39

Post by TimPC »

myroon5 wrote: post #25

"And while investors were happily offering it a valuation of $1 billion or more, Petersen didn’t want to get in over his head and risk a down-round later if the market stumbled." This is straight out of Silicon Valley (the show)... why wouldn't you take the best valuation for your company?

Often there is a part you don't see here where the lower valuation has a lower amount of money you can take. Would you rather sell 10% of the company for 80M on an 800M post-money valuation or 12.5% of the company for $125M at a 1B post-money valuation if you only need 80M to hit your growth objectives with a buffer and 2.5% of the company can likely be sold for a lot more than 45M once you need that extra money. It's also not smart to publicize you're taking less money as it makes you look more under pressure in the future and if it ends up being wrong to not take the extra cash you don't want everyone knowing you could have had $45M more in the bank. It gets even worse if the post-money valuation involves 15% vs 10% which can be viable as well.

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

#40

Post by philmcc »

tedmc wrote: post #17

I am a customer. They are my favorite to use, but I don't use them for everything because they don't get me 100% end to end with Amazon. Other companies do. I just talked with someone about this, and I hope that they get into it, even if it's just white labelled through their interface. I had no idea their founder also was involved in Import Genius, but that makes total sense. Huzzah Flexport!

I've them end to end to Amazon(Germany)FBA from China purposes...are we talking about two different things maybe?

https://www.reddit.com/r/FulfillmentByAmazon/comments/6ao7ec...

https://www.flexport.com/help/109-shipping-to-amazon

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