Flexport releases onslaught of AI tools in a move inspired by ‘founder mode’

Freight reduction and logistics company Flexport rolls one Suite of new products and functionsMany of whom use AI, in what the company says will be the first in a series of semi-annual announcements of this kind.

If that looks like Airbnb’s approach for seasonal product announcements, it is because it was the inspiration for the new approach to Flexport.

“Brian Chesky said I had to do it,” said Flexport founder Ryan Petersen in an interview, referring to the Airbnb CEO. “He gave this great conversation that Paul Graham wrote an essay aboutcalled ‘Founder Mode’, I was there that day and he gave good advice. ”

The next product release comes in “Late Summer”, says Flexport.

Petersen told WAN that moving to a “release” cadence offers two major benefits twice a year. One, he said, is, “There is nothing above the power of a deadline.” The other is more about marketing.

“We have developed a lot of great technology over the years, but it comes out a bit step by step. There is not much fanfare and buzz and the opportunity to tell the story in ways that customers can see what you have done, what you have built, “Petersen told WAN.

Flexport says that it is launching more than 20 products on Monday, many of which already used internally, all driven by a combination of AI from OpenAi, Anthropic and AWS. The big product promotion then comes back to Petersen’s first year as CEO of Flexport, completed after the dismissal of former Amazon director Dave Clark in an attempt to get “get [Flexport’s] house in order. “

One of the new products is Flexport Intelligence, with which companies can get information about their shipments using natural language prompts. Another, called Control Tower, gives customers “real -time visibility and control over their entire logistics network, even on freight that is not managed by Flexport,” the company said.

Previously these were things that Flexport employees did for its customers. Leaning on AI to perform these tasks and essentially mediate that relationship is a major change for the company – especially because one of the reasons why Petersen was fired Clark was because he thought the company had devalued his customer relationships.

“This is something we are really aware of. I am still a huge believer in ‘people first’, ‘said Petersen. He said that the new products will offer “the best of both worlds”, because companies will still have the opportunity to call a flexport team member – ideally someone she knows well – and gets help if they have it if necessary Or prefer.

To this end, Petersen said that he expects that embracing AI Flexport will help grow his ranks, not to replace employees.

“I think the company – and I think it will be we – but the company that does best to automate this work will have no fewer employees. You will have more because you will grow so quickly. If you are cheaper than other people, you need more people than ever to do service, sales, consulting, technology, development, etc., “he said.

Another effort that Flexport announced on Monday is the inclusion of AI-driven voting agents in some of its own workflows.

Petersen emphasized that Flexport carefully introduces this option. At the moment the company is testing this with the truck drivers and warehouses that use the logistics platform. The AI ​​-speech agent calls on drivers to tell them that loads are available to be collected in their area and calls on warehouses to verify basic details such as hours of operation.

Petersen said that this helps with these simple conversations, but that Flexport is still closing these transactions through the regular workflow on its platform. He said that he is “hesitant” to hurry to include speech agents in other parts of Flexport’s things until the possibilities and reliability improve.

“My standard quality bar to make these things that is customer -oriented is really high,” he said. “I think there is a future where customers will be happy to talk to an AI if it is really good at answering their question.”

That does not mean that Petersen is planning to move slowly with AI in general. He even said that he likes the speed with which Flexport was able to experiment.

“Our teams can watch every place [customer] Pain and find a process that can be better done by an LLM or other form of machine learning, and just do it. And the next day, it’s live, it is used by thousands of companies without signing or beg people, “he said.