In this interview, Ryan Petersen challenges the stereotype that entrepreneurs are reckless risk‑takers, explaining that he prefers to take actions only when the probability of success is high. He recounts how, in 2010, he built a simple marketing website offering an online customs‑clearance service to test market demand. Within a year the site attracted 300 sign‑ups, including major firms like Foxconn, Cargill, and Saudi Aramco, even though he had no shipping capability at the time. This experiment became the seed for Flexport, and over three years he learned the complex, regulated logistics business. Petersen frames Flexport as the ultimate lean‑startup, constantly validating whether customers would buy a solution that works. He emphasizes sales as an under‑appreciated science, introducing the "yes, if" mindset: never accept a flat "no," but instead get a conditional "yes" that reveals the missing piece you must solve. He notes that only three U.S. universities offer a sales major, yet sales skills are essential for all professions, including engineers, who must engage users and understand their problems.
Chapters
There's an idea that entrepreneurs are risk takers and that's not. That shouldn't be true. I don't see myself as a risk taker. In fact, I want to make sure that before I take any risk that someone's going to, that it's going to work. I want to have a very high probability of success. So I built in. I want to say it was in 2010, well before I truly founded Flexport. I built a company. I built a website, just a marketing site offering an online service to help people clear customs. They help companies clear customs so allow you to file the paperwork needed to get a product into the country. I let that website run for a year. I was still running my other company, but I built this on the weekends. And during one year of this website operating, I got 300 companies to sign up, including Foxconn, which is the maker of the iPhone. Cargill big ad company. And then one day Saudi Aramco signed up for my website, which is the largest company in the world. The Saudi national oil company signed up for my fake website. It was just a marketing site. I didn't know how to ship anything. I just wanted to see if this existed, would someone buy. And that was in 2010 or so. And so it took me the better part of three years to get learn how to ship stuff, how to do customs, get licensed, heavily regulated industry. We had to learn a whole lot of things. I think this was even. I don't remember when that book the lean startup came out, but Plexport is the ultimate lean startup that we have been from the start. And I think we're now the world's largest lean startup that we are constantly experimenting. Would someone buy this if it worked? If we could do this, would you buy? And that's the art of sales. And sales is very underappreciated as a science, as the core driver of business. The ability to sell something, the ability to convince someone and entrepreneurial sales means that you never get a no, ever. You get a yes if and then it may end up being no because the if is impossible. But you always get a yes. If yes, I would buy from you if you could clear these oil tankers, which I couldn't do. But at least I got a yes if from Saudi Aramco. And this is really underappreciated. There are currently only three universities in the United States that offer a major in sales, probably 20% of all the jobs in this country. And an important part of every job, even if you're a scientist, you need to be able to persuade people of your ideas. And we only have three universities, Florida State, Baylor and Weber State in Utah. The only three universities that offer a major in sales. I guarantee you graduates of that program are going to make a lot of money and go on to be very successful because it is something you can study and learn. And so those of you who are engineers here in this program, don't discount the role of sales. You have to get out there and talk to users and find out, what is it? What is your problem?
