
11 segments available
Logistics is a multi-trillion-dollar industry that quietly powers the entire global economy — and it's shockingly manual. Ryan Petersen, founder & CEO of Flexport, joins the Lightcone to break down how AI is finally touching the physical world: making shipping cheaper, speeding up global trade, and automating work that used to live inside emails, spreadsheets, and phone calls. Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:51 What is Flexport and what are they doing with AI? 03:17 When did AI tools become serious at the company 06:27 The benefit of internal hackathons 12:03 What internal AI projects have been most impactful at Flexport 14:40 What software can do better and faster in logistics 19:08 Do goods get cheaper if more logistics get automated? 21:18 The spiritual/philosophical implications of AI in society 23:51 How does AI change the model structure for companies? 26:38 Would Ryan have built Flexport differently today? 30:22 Outro Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs
"Logistics is a very scaled driven industry and so the bigger you get the cheaper you get. Our take is that we can make the price of shipping anything by ocean container shipping between 8 and 10% chea..."