Ryan Petersen

So you got to cut costs and you got to improve your quality.

That's a kind of a hard thing.

thing to do and our culture had been suffering we brought in all these new leaders and like the core core people that built the business were like we grew an insane leaving we had grown it's a really hard business because it's so global like we shipped to and from 147 countries we have we have people all over the world like and so the board kind of looked at this problem and said like this is a problem for the founder of the business like you need to come back

Nothing against Dave per se, but it was like very clear, like, okay, you're going to cut people and tell them you care about the culture and tell them I need you to work harder to solve like customer problems and do a giant reorg back to the way we'd always been organized that led to all the growth, which was operator would take a shipment end to end and own all the tasks, own that.

And so just like the board was like, Ryan, we need, you know, you got to come back and step in and do this.

And I had already taken a job at Founders Fund as a partner.

So it was still embarrassing for me.

Like, I'm like, I just took this job and I got to go back.

Like, what am I doing?

I got to follow through on my commitments.

But it was obviously like I'm honor bound to make Flexport work, make it successful.

So I was very happy and excited to come back.

I didn't tell him until later.

I forget when, but, like, after I'd – I was the chairman, so I think I was already at Founders Fund.

He was pissed because he thought I should go be a partner at Y Combinator instead of Founders Fund first off.

But I went for a walk with him when he came back to Palo Alto one time, and he –

He asked me why I did it, why I stepped down.

I said, well, I thought I think Dave's going to be better at the job than I am.

There's a generally true.

That's why I did it.