Thread
I'm thrilled to announce that Dave Clark will be Flexport’s next CEO.
Dave Clark (@davehclark) officially starts on Sep 1, 2022 to become the CEO of Flexport and a member of our board. We will be Co-CEOs for six months after he joins. I'll then step into an Executive Chairman role and Dave will continue to be Flexport’s CEO.
Dave’s most recent role was CEO of Worldwide Consumer at Amazon. But he isn’t just any executive – he is a builder and an entrepreneur at heart.
During his 23-year tenure at Amazon, he worked his way from Amazon’s MBA rotational leadership program all the way to CEO of Worldwide Consumer. In the process, he and his teams built much of their legendary fulfillment, logistics, and transportation network.
Flexport is on its way to becoming one of the world’s most important technology platforms for supply chain and logistics. Given the scale of the opportunity ahead of us, Flexport doesn't need another executive. We need another entrepreneur.
And we couldn’t have found a more qualified and entrepreneurial leader than Dave. He will be my partner for the next and most exciting phase of Flexport’s journey.
Where’s Flexport today? We're already the best way for companies to place orders to their factories and get those goods delivered by air freight, ocean freight, truck or rail to more than 112 countries.
We also provide a complete suite of tech-enabled global trade services, including container tracking, customs compliance, insurance, inventory financing, carbon calculation, carbon offsetting, and humanitarian relief donations.
We grew our revenue from $2M in 2014 to $3.3B in 2021. Our forecast for this year is close to $5B in revenue. That’s ~2500X growth in 8 years!
And unlike most venture-backed companies, we're profitable! While we've raised more than $2.3B in venture capital, we still have most of it in the bank even as we continue to invest more than $100M per year in building the best supply chain technology.
We have a world-beating team who every day are building truly differentiated products and services for the tech-enabled future of global trade and logistics.
So why am I transitioning to Executive Chairman when things are going so well? It's simple: The more we learn about our markets--and learning about the world economy is the best part of working at Flexport--the more we realize the opportunity in front of us is enormous.
I'm now to the point where the only fear I have left for Flexport is that we're not living up to our potential.
We create products that power the circulatory system for global trade, and customers are asking us to do more—to offer new products and services to meet their needs.
To realize all this opportunity, Flexport must build the most productive and efficient operation in global freight forwarding and supply chain management. We need to offer the highest quality and lowest cost supply chain services.
Dave is better than the things we need to win at the next stage. My partnership with him means that we now have the full skillset and experience necessary to achieve this mission and we are committed to working together to make Flexport the best supply chain company in the world.
The fact there are so many problems left to solve in global trade and international supply chains means you can be sure I'm not going anywhere. I love Flexport and plan to work here the rest of my life.
There will be no better platform for me to work on solving humanity's biggest problems. And to be honest, with Dave at the helm, I suspect I may work even more hours as I get to focus on the areas that give me energy while partnering with one of the world's best operators.
If you remember your physics, velocity is different from speed: velocity is a vector. What we're optimizing for is speed in the right direction.
Dave and I share a crystal clear vision for what the company can be, and we're 100% committed to staying aligned on the path to getting there. Together, we will accelerate Flexport’s velocity toward our vision in the most exciting chapter of our journey.
As Dave said when I was interviewing him, "In 5 years, Flexport will be known, hands down, as the best supply chain company in the world."
Mentions
See All
Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom
·
Jun 8, 2022
Great thread! Love it.