Ryan Petersen - Where There Is Mystery, There Is Margin – [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 22]

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy, and this is Founder's Field Guide. Founder's Field Guide is a series of conversations with founders, CEOs and operators, building great businesses. I believe we are all builders in our own way, and this series is dedicated to stories and lessons from builders of all types. You can find more episodes at investorfieldguide.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:21)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:46)
My guest today is Ryan Petersen, Founder and CEO of Flexport. Flexport is a technology platform for global trade. In this conversation, Ryan takes us through the fragmented world of international freight shipping and we dive deep into the history and inefficiencies of this system. We also cover how shipping containers were standardized, how new protocols get adopted internationally and the challenges of doing business in the no man's land of international waters.
Ryan is the type of entrepreneur I enjoy talking to the most. He has incredible domain knowledge, high energy and is tackling an enormous global problem. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Ryan Petersen.
So Ryan, I think a neat place to begin this conversation just for those unfamiliar with Flexport is to ask you what the business does and then I'm going to ask you how you encountered the problem that Flexport originally designed. But first, just as a basic overview for the listening audience, what do you do in the world?

**Ryan Petersen** (3:40)
Well, Flexport is a platform for global trade and for tech enabled global trade services. Effectively, what we do is coordinate all these really complex transactions to move goods around the world. We want to live in a world where anybody on earth can trade, buy or sell things with any other person on earth, regardless of what country they're in, where they are in the world is sort of like, sometimes they had to do for atoms what the internet did for best.
Right now, it's just like a super messed up world. Find a friend who's ever tried to ship something to another country, they will tell you it's like a black box. It's really confusing. And it's not about free trade. I mean, there's a good reason why they have regulations and even tariffs in some cases, but it's more about paying free trade. How do I make this so simple?