Ryan Petersen

But I tried my hardest.

I just, like, only promote from within, except for very rare cases where I just, like, really can't find the person.

And then I spend a lot more time with the new hire.

I've only hired one person, actually, from external in the last couple years.

And I spent just, like, loads of time with him.

And I told him he's not allowed to make any decisions for 90 days.

How did that play out?

It was perfect, honestly.

And he even told me, like...

Maybe I should have done more time because I remember he told me at like day 88.

But no, he told me day 91 that if I had let him, if I told him 80 days, he would have made different decisions than he made.

And like even those last 10 days, there was still like learning and taking things in.

You have to approach startups.

If you're an executive and you're joining a company, you have to approach it with extreme humility.

Like these are smart, really smart people.

Like some of the smartest people I've ever met have worked, come through the doors of Flexport or still work at Flexport.

And we've been obsessed with the problems that we're working on for a decade.

And like the idea that some big shots could have come in here.

This is no knock on any particular person.

It's just like a classic, like what are the odds that anyone could come in and know, you know, on day one, do figure out problems that we couldn't think of or solutions that we can think of.