When Ryan Petersen announced he was stepping down as the CEO of Flexport to become a partner at Founders Fund, he probably wasn’t expecting to return to the shipping logistics startup just months later following a succession snafu. Succession is hard ...

Founders: It’s never too early to start planning for your succession

Shopify reports Q3 earnings early Thursday. SHOP stock has gained 32% this year but has retreated from a 52-week high of 71.53 set on July 14.

Shopify To Report With Flexport Deal, Temu, Shein Apps In Focus

If Convoy’s tech goes to Flexport, it would join some of the freight forwarder’s new offerings. Flexport recently launched two new supply chain tools —an end-to-end supply chain platform for SMBs called Revolution, as well as a $149 per month membership program, Flexport+.

Flexport Could Scoop Up Convoy’s Tech

SEATTLE — A Seattle-based startup is facing a class-action lawsuit from a group of former employees who say they were not given proper notice by the company before more than 500 layoffs were announced last week.

Class-action lawsuit filed by former employees of Convoy after mass layoffs

Convoy, the Seattle-based, Bezos-backed freight brokerage that closed last week, may sell its technology to a logistics startup, according to media reports.

Failed Seattle trucking firm Convoy sued over layoffs, may be selling off tech

More details are emerging about where Convoy’s assets may end up. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Flexport is in talks to buy the technology of Convoy, the Seattle-based trucking marketplace startup that abruptly shut down last week.

Flexport reportedly working on deal to acquire Convoy’s trucking tech

Flexport would hire a small team of Convoy employees and take on its technology stack. That could keep the trucking startup’s app functioning for customers. The post Flexport in conversations to buy Convoy’s technology stack appeared first on FreightWaves.

Flexport in conversations to buy Convoy’s technology stack

The deal would move the digital-focused freight forwarder into the domestic trucking market.

Flexport Is in Talks to Buy Failed Freight Firm Convoy’s Technology

In the volatile world of startups, where success and failure often hang in a precarious balance, the ability to adapt and make strategic decisions is crucial.

Startup Stakeholders See Early Returns From Secondary Shares

The technology platform for global logistics.

Flexport

2023 was quite a ride for the trucking industry. We faced rising fuel prices, economic roller coasters, freight recessions, driver shortages, and a battle with inflation, which just wouldn't quit. It's been tough out there. As the founder of a startup with dispatch services in the U.S., I've got a front-row seat to the challenges facing our industry. My company aggregates over 100,000 loads daily, so I've seen firsthand how these trends are impacting carriers. My conclusion: To survive, a trucking company needs to know what’s coming, be flexible, and use modern tools. Here’s how to adapt to the trends that will shape the U.S. trucking industry. Use Data to Avoid Losses Everyone in the industry is feeling the squeeze. The trucking industry is facing its toughest challenge since 2008. Truckstop reported that in 2023, 77% of owner-operators had to book shorter routes due to rising costs, while 65% had booked fewer loads altogether. The American Transportation Research Institute ranks the economy as the biggest industry challenge, followed closely by truck parking availability and fuel prices. At the beginning of 2023, our inner data of aggregated loads predicted potential industry issues. I realized that margins would fall, and many operators would go bankrupt. That happened to Convoy, Yellow Corp, and other big players who were shutting down and laying off staff en masse. To be among the survivors, we took a risk to change our business model and focused on using AI tools. Being able to predict what’s coming helped my startup generate profit for three months last year. Now, we are once again close to breaking even. Carriers who don't use analytics will continue to run loads at a loss. With data analytics, truckers can identify the most efficient routes, predict load volumes, delivery times, market trends, seasonal fluctuations, and many other factors.  Previously, this information was only available to large companies. Now even small carriers can gain insights with tools like Truckerpath, DAT, or Cargofy (disclaimer: I'm biased, it's my startup). Switch to a Subscription Model It’s the era of the carriers who offer Logistics-as-a-Service. Looking to cut costs, e-commerce and other companies are seeking LaaS tools to manage their transportation services through cloud-based platforms. Instead of handling the logistics themselves, they prefer to outsource it to a third party. And this is where you can come into play. I saw firsthand how well it works. Launching a subscription-based model in 2023 allowed us to generate a more stable revenue stream. However, the benefits of LaaS extend beyond financial stability. By adopting a subscription model, carriers improve their efficiency by implementing transportation management systems (TMS), accounting software, and data analytics. They can better analyze financial data, gain insights about shippers’ debts, and manage contracts –– all in one place. Also, carriers can offer value-added services to shippers, such as real-time tracking and visibility. Start Using AI As Much as Possible AI tools increase truck drivers' revenue by an average of 17% per year, our internal analytics shows. By analyzing big data on supply-demand dynamics, seasonality, and freight availability, AI algorithms can guide truckers toward high-paying loads that minimize empty miles. Predictive matching helps carriers dismiss loads that lead to deadhead miles and wasted time. AI is also transforming the role of truck dispatchers. Instead of making numerous phone calls to find viable loads, they use AI and get pre-matched opportunities with calculated rates. With AI’s help, an individual dispatcher can now efficiently handle 2-3 times as many trucks. I don’t believe AI will fully replace the human interaction required for negotiations. But, it dramatically reduces manual work and empowers dispatchers to secure better loads in a fraction of the time. Trim Your Team (Sorry) The trucking industry has seen its fair share of ups and downs when it comes to employment. When times are good, companies hire thousands of workers, but when the market takes a turn, layoffs can be just as common. The  American Trucking Associations reported that, in 2022, a whopping 8.4 million people worked in trucking-related jobs across the economy. 3.54 million of those people were truck drivers. In 2023, many large companies such as Flexport, Uber Freight, Flock Freight, and Lipsey Logistics had to trim their teams. As the founder of a trucking startup, I also had to make the tough choice to downsize my team by 30%. This decision was not taken lightly, but it was essential to ensure the company's survival. Otherwise, my company would go bust, and I’d have to dismiss 100% of my staff. 2023 was quite a ride for the trucking industry. We faced rising fuel prices, economic roller coasters, freight recessions, driver shortages, and a battle with inflation, which just wouldn't quit. It's been tough out there. As the founder of a startup with dispatch services in the U.S., I've got a front-row seat to the challenges facing our industry. My company aggregates over 100,000 loads daily, so I've seen firsthand how these trends are impacting carriers. My conclusion: To survive, a trucking company needs to know what’s coming, be flexible, and use modern tools. Here’s how to adapt to the trends that will shape the U.S. trucking industry. Use Data to Avoid Losses Use Data to Avoid Losses Everyone in the industry is feeling the squeeze. The trucking industry is facing its toughest challenge since 2008. Truckstop reported that in 2023, 77% of owner-operators had to book shorter routes due to rising costs, while 65% had booked fewer loads altogether. The American Transportation Research Institute ranks the economy as the biggest industry challenge, followed closely by truck parking availability and fuel prices. 77% 77% 77% biggest industry challenge , biggest industry challenge biggest industry challenge At the beginning of 2023, our inner data of aggregated loads predicted potential industry issues. I realized that margins would fall, and many operators would go bankrupt. That happened to Convoy, Yellow Corp, and other big players who were shutting down and laying off staff en masse. To be among the survivors, we took a risk to change our business model and focused on using AI tools. Being able to predict what’s coming helped my startup generate profit for three months last year. Now, we are once again close to breaking even. Carriers who don't use analytics will continue to run loads at a loss. With data analytics, truckers can identify the most efficient routes, predict load volumes, delivery times, market trends, seasonal fluctuations, and many other factors.  Previously, this information was only available to large companies. Now even small carriers can gain insights with tools like Truckerpath, DAT, or Cargofy (disclaimer: I'm biased, it's my startup). Carriers who don't use analytics will continue to run loads at a loss. With data analytics, truckers can identify the most efficient routes, predict load volumes, delivery times, market trends, seasonal fluctuations, and many other factors.  Previously, this information was only available to large companies. Now even small carriers can gain insights with tools like Truckerpath, DAT, or Cargofy (disclaimer: I'm biased, it's my startup). Switch to a Subscription Model Switch to a Subscription Model It’s the era of the carriers who offer Logistics-as-a-Service. Looking to cut costs, e-commerce and other companies are seeking LaaS tools to manage their transportation services through cloud-based platforms. Instead of handling the logistics themselves, they prefer to outsource it to a third party. And this is where you can come into play. I saw firsthand how well it works. Launching a subscription-based model in 2023 allowed us to generate a more stable revenue stream. However, the benefits of LaaS extend beyond financial stability. By adopting a subscription model, carriers improve their efficiency by implementing transportation management systems (TMS), accounting software, and data analytics. They can better analyze financial data, gain insights about shippers’ debts, and manage contracts –– all in one place. Also, carriers can offer value-added services to shippers, such as real-time tracking and visibility. Start Using AI As Much as Possible Start Using AI As Much as Possible AI tools increase truck drivers' revenue by an average of 17% per year, our internal analytics shows. By analyzing big data on supply-demand dynamics, seasonality, and freight availability, AI algorithms can guide truckers toward high-paying loads that minimize empty miles. Predictive matching helps carriers dismiss loads that lead to deadhead miles and wasted time. AI is also transforming the role of truck dispatchers. Instead of making numerous phone calls to find viable loads, they use AI and get pre-matched opportunities with calculated rates. With AI’s help, an individual dispatcher can now efficiently handle 2-3 times as many trucks. I don’t believe AI will fully replace the human interaction required for negotiations. But, it dramatically reduces manual work and empowers dispatchers to secure better loads in a fraction of the time. Trim Your Team (Sorry) Trim Your Team (Sorry) The trucking industry has seen its fair share of ups and downs when it comes to employment. When times are good, companies hire thousands of workers, but when the market takes a turn, layoffs can be just as common. The American Trucking Associations reported that, in 2022, a whopping 8.4 million people worked in trucking-related jobs across the economy. 3.54 million of those people were truck drivers. American Trucking Associations American Trucking Associations American Trucking Associations In 2023, many large companies such as Flexport, Uber Freight, Flock Freight, and Lipsey Logistics had to trim their teams. As the founder of a trucking startup, I also had to make the tough choice to downsize my team by 30%. This decision was not taken lightly, but it was essential to ensure the company's survival. Otherwise, my company would go bust, and I’d have to dismiss 100% of my staff.

2024 Will Be Tough for the U.S. Trucking Industry: Here’s How Carriers Can Adapt

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way people search for jobs, but it is still possible to find a rewarding tech job. To make your job-hunt successful, utilize multiple strategies at the same time. Let’s take a look at the most effective ones. Invest Time in Updating and Improving Your Resume—It’ll Pay Off Most job-seekers don’t do an update and improve their resume so that you will be ahead of the curve. On average, you have seven seconds to catch the eye of a recruiter or hiring manager. Follow if you want to make your technical resume stand-out. Besides, there are a variety of resume enhancement services available that can significantly assist you in achieving that goal. these tips Make a List of Companies You’d Like to Work for and Then Connect with Their HR People Develop a list of (HelloFresh, Spotify, Smartly.io, Klarna, Flexport, etc.). Then, hop on LinkedIn and search for your target company. Find someone from the hiring team to send your resume. Ideally, this should be someone who recruits for your desired position. Otherwise, reach out to one of the team members, state what position has caught your attention, and ask to connect you with the appropriate person. potential employers Usually, you’ll be able to find recruiters’ contact info on their LinkedIn profiles. If not, do a quick Google search (e.g., name-of-the-recruiter@company.com) to find the necessary email address. A Quick Tip: Go the extra mile and write a code sample for your target company, and send it together with your resume, a link to your active GitHub profile/personal website/tech blog, and a cover letter to the relevant person (many tech companies still require a cover letter). Alternatively, use LinkedIn to find your old friends and connections that are currently working for the companies you’re looking to get a job at and ask if it’s possible that you can be referred to their company. Fill Out Your LinkedIn Profile Completely , both in and out of the tech industry, use LinkedIn to find and vet candidates. If your LinkedIn profile is 100% complete, you’re more likely to be on the radar of recruiters. 90% of recruiters Users with complete profiles are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities through LinkedIn. Pay special attention to your profile because it’s the text that gets displayed in search results for both LinkedIn and Google. headline Put effort into writing a , as it’s one of the first things recruiters/hiring managers see when they visit your profile. will help you craft an effective one. strong, engaging summary These tips Make sure your profile, especially your headline and “About” (summary) section, contains the right . Recruiters strongly rely on Boolean searches and keywords when looking for potential candidates for their job openings. Here’s an example of a Boolean search string used to source Python developers: keywords (programmer OR developer) AND python AND (mysql OR postgresql) AND (django OR flask) AND (chef OR puppet OR sentry) Network! Don’t Rely Only on Online Job Searches A great way to connect with interesting people from within your field is by participating in online and offline meetups, workshops, conferences, and the like. Even if this doesn’t lead to a job right away, they may be useful in the future. Add the people you meet on LinkedIn. Networking is important for a number of reasons. The first, of course, is that it’s an important way to find out about job openings. A great many jobs are never posted publicly. If you’re strictly relying on publicly posted ads, you’d be missing out on a high percentage of opportunities. Source: LinkedIn’s Get Hired newsletter Find relevant LinkedIn, Facebook, , , or other online communities to join. Online communities are also places where you can make useful connections. Moreover, virtually all of them have a section/channel that’s dedicated to employment opportunities. Slack Gitter Make connections, build relationships with those connections—and then “sell” your resume. Search for Job Listings on Various Websites. Apply Directly Through Company Websites. Search for job vacancies by using traditional job search websites, niche job boards, social networking sites, etc. However, when it comes to applying for jobs, try to do it on company websites. When you apply for a position on the company website, your resume goes directly to the recruiter/hiring manager of that company. Moreover, it can be noticed by more than one team member. Of course, the success of your job-hunt depends on a multitude of factors. These aspects, including the time of day you apply for a job. However, I do believe the above tips, in conjunction with a strong resume, will help you find your next challenging role in tech faster.

5 Successful Strategies for Finding a Job in Tech

This article presents the business context and a technical deep dive of our serverless approach to data pipeline deployment. Our approach is as handoff: framework for serverless data pipeline orchestration. open-sourced Business Context: Helping businesses bring any data anywhere More and more companies have started to leverage cloud applications and their data in order to make their operation lean and effective. For example, D2C (direct to consumer) companies produce niche household products and ship directly to their customers instead of relying on a traditional retail distribution channel. In doing so, a D2C company may use a marketing automation platform like Marketo or Pardot, run ads on Facebook and Google, and manage the supply chain with Flexport: All of these applications produce customer experience data. It is a common practice to extract data from cloud services and load them into a data warehouse (DWH). By combining data sources and analyzing them together, the business continuously improves the quality of the customer experience. We are a technology-leveraged service company offering custom ETL/ELT solutions. ETL stands for Extracting, Transforming, and Loading of data. ELT workflows are becoming popular. Data are extracted and loaded into the data warehouse before transformation is executed by a massively parallel modern DWH engine. The demand for implementing data pipelines is growing at an unprecedented pace. Data replication services such as Fivetran and StitchData provide data connectors for popular cloud applications such as Salesforce and Zendesk. However, those companies cannot support the long-tail of cloud applications in the Software as a Service (SaaS) market. If a cloud application is not supported, a business needs a custom data engineering job, but not every company can afford to developing an internal data engineering team. That is why like ours are becoming the new option: With a fraction of the cost of hiring a data engineer, businesses can install the tailor-made data pipeline service. fully-managed ETL services While we serve our customers with active monitoring and maintenance, we decided to open-source the core framework as a contribution to data engineering community. In the rest of the article, we will share the technical solution that made our service possible. Technical challenges and solution If you are the director of data engineering for your company’s internal operations, it makes sense to set up an Apache Airflow or subscribe to a managed service by Astronomer or Cloud Composer by Google Cloud Platform. Instead, we are a lean team helping others to perform the data integration of cloud applications in the long tail. Simultaneously serving the data pipelines for many different clients change the technical requirements a lot. The most important part is to provide separate CPU, memory, and storage capacities for each client. We wanted to achieve this with maximum flexibility. When we started we only had a few data pipelines to manage, but we expected the number to rapidly grow. AWS Lambda vs. Fargate We went for a serverless approach. Our first prototype used Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda. It was quick to implement. The pay-as-you-go pricing was very attractive. We didn’t have to pay for idling the virtual machine or deal with peak-time auto-scaling challenges. But we soon realized that Lambda’s 15 minutes processing time limit is not enough for some tasks. So we switched to Fargate, another pay-as-you-go serverless platform by AWS. It has no time limit and the life-cycle management and scaling of computing resource is fully managed by the platform. Compared to Lambda, Fargate’s deployment process is much more complex. Lambda could be deployed just by writing a script file. Fargate deployment involves Docker image creation, pushing the image to Elastic Container Registry, creating resources such as Virtual Private Cloud and Security Groups, defining the Fargate task, managing the Policy, and so on. Birth of handoff: A serverless data pipeline orchestration framework The painful Fargate deployment process gave us the idea to implement a command-line interface (CLI) that we later named “handoff”. handoff simplifies the deployment steps for AWS Fargate. We may also provide a multi-cloud capability in the future: handoff unifies the commands to deploy to AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and so on. handoff describes the data pipeline logic in a YAML file. The first thing is to describe the installation of the modules required by the pipeline logic: project.yml: version: 0.3 description: Fetch foreign exchange rates installs: - venv: extractor command: pip install tap-exchangeratesapi - venv: loader command: pip install target-bigquery-partition As you can see, handoff is created primarily for Python. You can install modules in separate virtual environments if needed: handoff automatically generates multiple virtual environments. In local testing, you can install modules by running: handoff workspace install --project <project_dir> --workspace <workspace_dir> The pipeline logic is described as groups of tasks. In a task group, each command can be linked as a Unix pipeline: tasks: - name: fetch_exchange_rates description: Fetch exchange rates and load on BigQuery pipeline: - command: tap-exchangeratesapi args: --config files/tap-config.json venv: extractor - command: "target-bigquery --config files/target_config.json" venv: loader The pipeline is particularly useful in deploying memory-efficient tasks such as the ELT task by singer.io framework. The following command runs the task locally: handoff run -p <project_dir> -w <workspace_dir> local Doing more than a simple data replication task handoff also implements simple control flows such as for-each and fork. You can also define a task beyond simple ETL. Look how we automate the task of fetching stock market data, make a GIF animation, and post it on Twitter: Deployment features We estimate authoring pipeline logic is just 20% of the ETL development. To run the pipeline in production, we need to implement management of: Run-time configuration Secret keys Scheduling Logging Monitoring Containerization …and the list goes on. handoff’s project.yml helps to keep those organized and it is intuitive to understand. Here is an example of project.yml: vars: - key: gcp_project_id value: "handoff-demo" - key: dataset_id value: exchangerate envs: - key: GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS value: files/google_client_secret.json deploy: cloud_provider: aws cloud_platform: fargate resource_group: handoff-etl container_image: tap-rest-api-target-bigquery task: usgs-earthquakes schedules: - target_id: 1 description: Run everyday at 00 :00:00Z envs: - key: __VARS value: 'start_datetime=$(date -Iseconds -d "00:00 yesterday") end_datetime=$(date -Iseconds -d "00:00 today")' cron: '0 0 * * ? *' The commands to execute the containerization and the deployment are also simple and intuitive: handoff project push -p <project_dir> handoff container build -p <project_dir>
handoff container push -p <project_dir> handoff cloud bucket create -p <project_dir>
handoff cloud resources create -p <project_dir>
handoff cloud task create -p <project_dir> handoff cloud schedule create -p <project_dir> # Push project configuration, supporting files, and secrets to AWS # Build a Docker image and push to ECR # Create resource group, bucket, task... # Schedule a task handoff simplifies development and deployment. Without handoff, you would have to author CloudFormation templates, deal with boto3 commands to transfer files to S3, figure out a way to encrypt and store the secrets, configure the CloudWatch for logging and metrics, etc. For a full handoff tutorial, please visit https://dev.handoff.cloud We made handoff so every engineer having a similar challenge can use it. We also welcome collaborators to improve this new framework. a public project on GitHub What’s next? As we mentioned earlier, we may support deployment to other cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. Unifying the deployment commands for multi-cloud would be very useful in quickly switching platforms. We also prototyped a web UI built on top of the CLI: The web UI could be running as a stand-alone application on your local machine. It will spin up a local web server. You can interact with handoff via the web UI and the backend connects to cloud resources. It can also be hosted on a server for enterprise use cases. Conclusion AWS Fargate lets us create a cost-effective and scalable solution for ETL deployment. However, it hasn’t been a popular approach due to the complex deployment process. handoff, a serverless data pipeline orchestration framework simplifies it. handoff also manages the various aspects of the orchestration such as security and monitoring. We made handoff an open-source project so that the data engineering community can benefit from it and collaborate for further innovation. About the author is CEO and data scientist at , a boutique consulting firm focused on data engineering, analytics, and data science. ANELEN’s mission is to help innovative businesses make smarter decisions with data science. ANELEN is the provider of . Daigo Tanaka ANELEN handoff.could ETL/ELT service Also published on: https://blog.handoff.cloud/handoff-Serverless-Data-Pipeline-Orchestration-Framework/

Introducing Handoff: Serverless Data Pipeline Orchestration Framework

Leveraging Marqeta to Build a Payment Service in Spring Boot: A How-To Guide

W.W.V.D? Even before the pandemic hit, global supply chains contained an estimated $176 billion of inefficiencies . There is an innovation opportunity begging for venture attention. It lies in an industry with deep-rooted inefficiencies but of integral importance to our global supply chains - the maritime sector. Once glorified as a frontier of discovery, the ocean has found itself overlooked by innovators, side-lined in favour of less-established transportation empires. And it’s not hard to understand why. To an impatient global population looking for faster gratification, the maritime industry gathered dust while technological advancements blossomed all around. Yet the ocean still offers unchartered territory: innovation within the supply chain for greater efficiency, and a ripening opportunity to further reduce global emissions. The maritime industry is worth investing in. Backed by a trusted legacy, centuries-old oceanic logistics could be the most exciting modernisation opportunity. Start by prioritising global supply chains Toilet paper had more media coverage and better travel miles in 2020 than anyone would’ve guessed. When the pandemic hit, toilet paper sales in the US alone went up by , and startups with a focus on the challenge scored investments from the likes of . 845 per cent Mark Cuban, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary, and Hadi Partovi While most rolled their eyes at the hoarding practices of a few, an oft-overlooked aspect of our globalised world has come into view: supply chains. These timely investments in localised sustainable products are admirable. However, supply chains offer a time-sensitive opportunity to invest in technological advancement. This type of investment can have an inordinate impact on a global scale. With consumers restricted in lockdowns to no-contact online shopping, and the seas becoming the only dependable means of transporting goods, demand exponentially increased alongside delays in delivery. The relatively unexamined interdependent global supply chain has suddenly become an unignorable problem of international importance. It would be a missed opportunity if venture does not turn its attention to maritime inefficiencies ripe for innovation. Not only can we invest in enhancing existing infrastructure but we can re-invigorate the sector with new perspectives. Asia has been quick to recognise this. In June of this year, , along with six appointed co-investment partners including Rainmaking, announced plans to inject $36 million into more than 50 maritime technology startups. When realised, the impact will be substantial, especially when you consider , with more than 130,000 vessel calls annually. Bridging East and West, it sits at the centre of trade routes connecting 600 ports in over 120 countries. Enterprise Singapore’s SEEDS Capital Singapore is already the busiest port in the world in terms of shipping tonnage The inefficiencies are so great that huge gains can be made early The are undeniable. But existing inefficiencies were easier for consumers and investors to ignore while an absence of serious disruptions (such as a planet-spanning pandemic) meant minimal additional strain on the legacy systems. global economic significance of having dependable and efficient shipping supply chains The last half-decade has seen an enhanced focus on sustainability across all sectors. With there’s a juicy prospect of reducing 11 per cent of the 2.2 per cent of global greenhouse emissions contributed by maritime through better port orchestration. This is huge and absolutely an attainable goal. 80 per cent of global trade volume moving by sea Additionally, up to three-quarters of accidents in the maritime sector can be attributed to human error. It’s clear there is plenty of room for improvement. Applying modern digital disruption to legacy infrastructure could overhaul and refresh the industry. We’ve already seen US-based Flexport become the first maritime unicorn - who’s next? And, perhaps more relevant to my venture peers, who will be backing it? With few competitors and these areas for improvement as just the starting points, there are clearly huge rewards for those bold enough to venture into this space. The maritime industry is an attractive play for entrepreneurs. Maritime is open to innovation, in fact, it always has been It’s easy to accept the fallacy that the maritime industry is too big to change. After all, . hitting the emergency brakes can take as long as twenty minutes for a fully laden cargo ship Change the perspective, however, and you can see the established processes and extensive regulations as a solid foundation. Startups can inject innovation when supported by the trusted expertise that exists in this legacy industry. But time is of the essence. Since hitting rock bottom in February, just six months later China’s domestic aviation industry is almost back to normal operating levels. show activity at worldwide ports similarly returning to a normalized pre-COVID-19 level. With such swift recovery speeds on the horizon, maritime innovation is ripe for the taking now, before the industry grinds back to its business as usual modus operandi. August figures With the right approach, we can create more streamlined supply chains which could go beyond reigniting the global economy - those who dare could also play an active role in a sustainable recovery by lowering emissions. As international trade starts stretching its sleepy muscles there really is no time like the present. As China’s shown, normalization will happen fast. Who will be backing maritime’s rehabilitation?

Toilet Paper Mania Leaks Supply Chain Opportunity: What Will Venture Do?

Our Student Journey This blog post is long, long overdue! If you've been following my blog series previously, you will recall that I first wrote about Lambda School in April of 2018 . when my wife and I got accepted into their Full-Stack Web track To put it mildly, it was an incredible experience. But to be more accurate about it, . it was a wild, and intense ride I then wrote more about Lambda and . here here We started our journey by learning basic and advanced JavaScript, and then we moved on to React and Redux (among many others) in the Front-End, and then Node.js, Express, and MongoDB (among many others) in the Back-End. And then came the proud moment when, as part of our first major project, ! It was a huge achievement on our part because we had virtually no programming background prior to Lambda. we were actually able to Build a React Web App from scratch I then wrote more about my experience , wherein I advocated for Feynman’s principle that one of the best ways to learn how to code is to teach it. And then, quite uncharacteristic of me, I suddenly started writing about data and databases! I say “uncharacteristic” because I’m actually a fiction writer. I like writing short stories and creating characters, so it was quite a departure for me to gush about “ ”. The truth is, I really fell in love with MongoDB and how stuff in the back-end side of things worked. here MongoDB, Mongoose, and the Fun Thing That is Data And then came the day when I was able to finally ! ship my very first full-stack web application We then moved on to the Computer Science portion of our curriculum and on top of studying Data Structures and Algorithms, we also learned other languages like Python and C. Being the Janeite that I was, . It was a lot of fun. I Created a Super Old-School Text-Based Jane Austen Game Using Python I then wrote about and waxed poetic with my mini-manifesto . online security Text Editors (and Codes) Are Things of Beauty And then I suddenly stopped writing. What happened? Well, . only the craziest, unlikeliest thing A Crazy, Unlikely Thing Lambda School offered me a job! I say “crazy” and “unlikely” because, well, the very idea was just so highly improbable (as to seem almost impossible) that I never even entertained it. But happen it did. And the main reason why it took me this long to write about it (I officially joined the company last November 26) is that everything was just so overwhelming and surreal for me. To this day, I’m still in disbelief. It still thrills me to say that I am now part of Lambda staff as a Student Success Coordinator. In Lambda School, we have this tradition wherein our recently-hired alumni would share selfies of themselves with their job offers in one of our Slack channels, just to show to everyone that they’re proud of their achievement, and also to encourage the student body in general to keep on working hard to reach their ultimate goal of landing a Software Engineering, Data Science, or UX Design job. I’ve always dreamed of doing the same thing. I, too, wanted to share my selfie with everyone once I got a job after Lambda. But I never got to do it because I was hired early and students-turned-staff don’t normally do that. But, just so I could fulfill this dream of mine, and to show you how super proud I am of being part of Lambda, I’ll do it now. Here’s a selfie of me with my job offer: Do you know what the first cool thing was that I received when I got hired? This: My very own Lambda email! How awesome is that? Being hired by Lambda is a dream come true for me on so many levels: First, because I’ve long been a huge admirer of the school. I discovered it back in 2017 when it was just a fledgling startup. I found out about it through Y Combinator on Twitter. Second, because I’m a huge fan of Y Combinator, Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, and Sam Altman. I’ve always admired, and have been drawn to, people who are super smart. That’s what drew me to Paul Graham in the first place. His essays were smart, elegant, and engaging. And that’s what led me to YC and the amazing founders behind it. Third, because Lambda School is a Silicon Valley-based company. I’ve always been mystified by anything related to Silicon Valley, in part because of pop culture and the fact that I’m an outsider looking in, and also because I’ve read biographies on Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and the so-called PayPal Mafia. Fourth, because Lambda School is in , which means they’re among the greatest companies to work for today, along with Stripe, Reddit, OpenAI, Flexport, Coinbase, Pinterest, Tinder, Airtable, and many others. Fifth, because Lambda School is one of . Y Combinator’s list of Breakout Companies YC’s top companies of 2019 The Reason That Trumps All the Others But the more important reason why this is a dream come true for me is this: I should know because I’m one of those people. These are just some of the things that I’ll always be grateful for: Because Lambda School is changing people’s lives for the better every single day. In the first place, it opened its door to my wife and me and gave us a chance to apply. The program was not open to non-US residents (i.e., the no-upfront-fee option was not available to international applicants). It only temporarily allowed international students to apply as an experiment. Second, it chose to accept us, invest in our education, and gave us the chance to prove ourselves. And that investment wasn’t cheap, either. If we had paid in full, it would’ve amounted to a little over a million, in Philippine Peso currency. Third, it gave us the opportunity to work with and learn from people from different geographical, educational, and cultural backgrounds. Fourth, it imparted knowledge and skills to us that made us valuable in the job market. And lastly, it helped us improve our technical, leadership, and interpersonal skills. Life Saver And then there was also this: We were literally standing on the brink of poverty nearly 2/3 into the curriculum. One day, all we had left in our bank account was PHP 322.96. That’s $6.33. We didn’t know where to go to for financial support. It just so happened that around that time, Lambda was in the process of hiring Project Managers (what we now aptly call “Team Leads”) for the new sections that were starting that month. A friend of ours encouraged us to apply. And, because we wanted to boost our technical and professional competencies and skills, and also because we could use a bit of financial help, my wife and I decided to apply. Fortunately, we both got in! She was offered to lead a team in one of the newer cohorts, while I was offered the Section Lead position in a new job search support program that the school was piloting for its alumni at the time. So Lambda quite literally saved our lives. I wish I could tell you more about how our PM hiring process went. We had a few interviews and they, too, were a lot of fun. But that will only make this article even longer, so I’ll skip it for now and write about it some other time. Suffice it to say that we really enjoyed our experience as PM and SL. We met a lot of smart and skillful students and fellow PMs. It was a great privilege to work with, and learn from, them. Then, around November, I was offered to join the staff. Of course, I more than readily accepted it! Working for the school has been quite amazing so far. Every single day you get to meet a lot of super-smart, skilled, and talented people! Lambda only hires the very best and most exciting people to work with, so the kind of folks that I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with these past several months are some of the very best in their respective fields and areas of expertise. I learn every single day from them. And, of course, this extends to non-staff, as well: Team Leads and Section Leads who are just brilliant in their own roles. It’s also a privilege to work with them. And then there are the perks. There are so many, but my favorite is our stipend for Continuous Education, which just shows how much the company values the intellectual and professional development of its employees. I usually spend it on books. These are just some of the titles I’ve acquired so far: The One Thing The one thing, though, that really makes working for Lambda so fulfilling is the fact that it’s really helping people realize their dreams of landing a developer or designer job. Many of our graduates have already been hired by some of the world’s top tech companies: Amazon, Google, Twitter, Microsoft, IBM, Capital One, Cisco, eBay, Walmart, Divvy, Comcast, Wayfair, Podium, and many others. And we’re just getting started! What’s Next I’ll be celebrating my first year as a Coordinator in Lambda School next month, and in order to mark this occasion, I’ll be doing the following in the next few weeks: Revisit the things I’ve studied as a student. That means re-learning the entire Full-Stack Web curriculum. I’m still enthralled by Feynman’s quote that in order to master something, one has to teach it. So that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Since I want to master Software Engineering, I’m going to go over JavaScript, React, Redux, Node.js, Express, Computer Science, and etc., once again and teach them to other people. As a Coordinator, I didn’t get to code a lot in my spare time, so I’m going to change that. My ultimate goal is to reach the point wherein I can actually create software and ship products on my own and with a team. I will vlog, write blog articles, and perhaps even create podcasts, about my experience and teach others how to code through those media. I will also volunteer to speak at conferences and tech events or meet-ups in my area. So stay tuned for more stuff from me.

The Crazy Thing That Happened to Me in Lambda School

On the path of business and life, opportunities come about that can lead us in all sorts of directions. It is up to us to decide which path to take, and sometimes, you have to take risks and venture into the unknown in order to truly find the proper path for you. For example, Ashley Scorpio left an accomplished career as a political aide in Canadian Parliament to work in startups, and now she is a top executive at one. The decentralized artificial intelligence application, Effect.AI, made the decision to migrate off the NEO blockchain and move their operations to EOS instead. Investor Geoff Lewis evaluates up and coming technology companies for his job and figures out which ones will be successful and cause the most disruption for the better. Vera Kopp already had a veteran career as an actress and model, but saw the power of influencers and used her experience to start a platform that would help amplify them. Ben Braverman has been an executive at several startups that have been acquired and is now part of one of the fastest growing companies in the United States, Flexport. Learn more about all of these decision-makers in this week’s Everipedia Internet Culture Roundup! A picture of Ashley Scorpio Ashley Scorpio This past week, the Everipedia office was lucky enough to have Ashley Scorpio to come and visit. The political aide turned digital strategist spent seven years on Parliament Hill in Canada’s capital of Ottawa, working in positions for the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Parliamentary Secretary for International Trade, and others. It was during this time that Scorpio gained experience in digital strategy, which would later transfer her skills over to the world of startups in late 2015. Currently, Scorpio is the Chief Marketing Officer at the blockchain startup Hypernet. Geoff Lewis pictured on Twitter Geoff Lewis Geoff Lewis is a seasoned investor who has seen a number of projects rise and fall. The mantra of his newest fund, Bedrock Capital, is “in search of narrative violations” which shows the contrarian nature of his investment strategy. Having previously been a partner at Peter Thiel’s Founder’s Fund, there might be a chance that he picked it up from there. Lewis has been a lead investor in a number of companies including Lyft, Wish, Tilray, Nubank, RigUp, and the Lambda School. As his venture capital career progresses, we will see how he helps lay the foundation for successful investments at Bedrock. Vera Kopp pictured on Twitter Vera Kopp From modeling to business, Kopp has grown to understand the power of influencers in today’s day and age. She is the founder of inCast, an influencer marketing platform. The Brazilian-native/Los Angeles-resident works with celebrities on marketing campaigns in both her native country and the United States and has over 20,000 influencers and 1,400 clients/brands who have utilized the platform. Kopp has become a role model for women who want to become involved in startups, so it is no surprise that she is a Board Member of Girls in Tech in Brazil. Previously, she was a model being represented by Ford Models and appeared in a number of commercials and infomercials as an actress. You would think with all of that in her track record that she would have a Wikipedia page but I guess not! Effect.AI Logo Effect.AI Effect.AI is a decentralized artificial intelligence platform that was one of the most popular dapps on NEO. I say “was” because that is no longer the case because the dapp is migrating to EOS. Citing reasons such as spam, limited throughput, and other problems, the Effect.AI team has been looking to move for some time and was also considering other blockchains such as Ethereum, Komodo, and Tezos. They ultimately settled on EOS due to its technical capabilities and community. The migration is set to happen in April and as migrations between blockchains become easier, so will the race to attract dapps to them as well. Ben Braverman pictured on Linkedin Ben Braverman Ben Braverman is an executive of one of the fastest growing companies in the United States. As the Chief Revenue Officer of Flexport, Braverman helped lead the company to generate $441 million in revenue in 2018. Braverman knows what it takes to keep growth going having previously lead URX as their Head of Growth and Heyzap as their Director of Sales to be acquired by different firms. Recently, Flexport raised $1 billion from SoftBank’s Vision Fund, valuing the company at $3.2 billion. Braverman is originally from Cincinnati and graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from Vassar College.

Internet Culture Roundup #9: Making The Right Decision

Promising greenfield for new entrants or battlefield of incumbents? In our first publication — The Era of Tokenization — market outlook on a $24trn business opportunity , we outlined our granular market sizing of tokenized assets and the potential of a $24trn industry by 2027. As shown, in the short-term tokenization will especially affect standardized issuing products such as Equity or Bonds , benefitting from significantly lower issuance and transaction costs (e.g. a substitution of smaller IPOs with STOs). Subsequently, we expect the accelerating tokenization of smaller and more illiquid and non-fungible assets (e.g. SME shares or Real Estate), attributed to the benefit of easy ownership transfer leveraged by blockchain technology. While the benefits of asset tokenization seem obvious, mainstream adoption and the capturing of full market potential will not only require the current crypto ecosystem to professionalize, but will also require existing business models in the traditional financial industry to adapt. The often-seen reluctance of incumbents to enter the space provides FinTechs and other startups with a multi-billion dollar market opportunity. Business Opportunities At a very high level, the financial services landscape for tokenized assets can be consolidated under the following framework: Within this article, we will focus on the financial services opportunities, while just briefly touching on the infrastructure layers. A. Retail Banking (Opportunity for new entrants: low to middle) In our framework we allocate standard banking products such as savings/checking accounts, loans, debit/credit cards payments, mortgages (and many more) to Retail Banking. To allow mainstream adoption of tokenized assets in the private sector, especially of cryptocurrencies, innovative Retail Banking accounts will evolve, or incumbents will adapt existing accounts to crypto-methodology. We observe this field being divided into three main groups of market participants: FinTech players with a hybrid model (FIAT & Crypto) combining traditional finance with digital assets — e.g. (United Kingdom) Revolut FinTech players with a crypto focus — e.g. (Germany), (Singapore) Bitwala TenX Traditional Banks launching crypto-offering — e.g. (Liechtenstein) Bank Frick Within the first category, has been the first mover, offering their strong “traditional” retail customer base the option to buy/sell a range of cryptocurrencies. While their biggest European competitor has yet not entered the battlefield, we expect them to do so in the near future.Within the second category we can list several projects that are struggling to succeed (i.e. , WaveCrest, ) due to regulatory risks or because of collapsing business models, as traditional banks refuse to partner/process, for example, credit card payments. Revolut N26 TenX Amon Traditional banks in the third group are yet the most reluctant to enter the space, mainly because of regulatory uncertainty that results in the risk of jeopardizing their traditional revenue streams. Overall, the hybrid model of FinTech players seems to be the most likely to capture the market potential at this point in time. B. Corporate Banking (Opportunity for new entrants: low to middle) Traditional Corporate Banking products include loans, syndicated loans, trade and project finance, among others. Over the last months, we have especially seen more development of trade finance use cases for blockchain technology. Incumbents are trying to defend disruption through formation of industry consortia (e.g. / ), leveraging blockchain technology to digitize letters of credit and bills of ladings, track payment guarantees, and expedite receivable discounting. Startups like and (both USA) already show significant traction in the space, while a win against strong industry consortia won’t come easy. R3 Corda Flexport Tradeshift C. Merchant Banking (Opportunity for new entrants: high) As in the traditional financial landscape, buy-and-sell side services (Merchant Banking Services) complement financial services for digital assets. Service providers (sell-side) for issuers will be required to develop, register, and sell securities to finance their operations. Those service providers will need to cover compliant KYC/AML processes, technological capabilities of structuring tokenized assets, as well as distribution channels towards the investor side (buy-side). We currently see several new entrants trying to establish market standards for security tokens with their own protocols/token-structures, such as (Canada), (USA), (Germany) and (USA). It has to be determined whether this will be a race to the bottom or if several protocols across different jurisdictions will survive. Polymath Securitize Neufund Harbor To properly develop buy-and-sell side services, close cooperation with technology standards/protocols, law firms, and market makers will be required, consolidated under the roof of “full-service providers” (e2e tokenization services). D. Brokerage (Opportunity for new entrants: middle) Facilitators in the buying and selling of assets are needed for tokenized assets just as much as they are for traditional financial assets, since they are the key to trigger sufficient market volumes/liquidity and provide efficiency through investment advice and market information/transparency. The current crypto ecosystem suffers from low-volume order books across a fragmented landscape of exchanges. For a “big money” inflow from the institutional side, brokerage infrastructure has to evolve in order to allow liquidity for high-volume transactions while avoiding significant market movements/manipulations. Several new players are working on OTC solutions, reducing overall transaction costs and ensuring best-price-execution, such as and (both USA) as well as (United Kingdom) in Europe. Some of these new players are even backed by traditional institutions as in the case of , with Goldman Sachs. Circle XTRD Huobi Circle E. Custody (Opportunity for new entrants: high) Lack of institutional custody solutions is one of the key roadblocks for accelerated growth in the current tokenized assets ecosystem. In the majority of jurisdictions, qualified custodians (licensed) are required by regulators — for example once a fund-size grows beyond a certain threshold (e.g. >$100mn). However, these players are currently non-existent or are offering unsophisticated product offerings. Even without the regulatory requirement of qualified custodians, asset managers are craving custody solutions that help them to store the private keys to their tokenized assets, as safeguarding of assets is not among their core capabilities. Furthermore, investors of the asset manager’s fund demand sophisticated security mechanisms, only to be provided by custodians. As of today, the combination of regulatory requirements and lack of trusted institutional custody solutions keeps a vast majority of traditional asset managers from taking positions in tokenized assets. To ensure sophisticated blockchain functionalities such as staking (as in proof-of-stake) or dividing/voting rights (as in tokenized common shares), online/hot-storage custodians are required. F. Exchanges (Opportunity for new entrants: middle to high) Over the last few years, a large number of crypto-exchanges have evolved, providing liquidity to the secondary market of cryptocurrencies and utility tokens. The vast majority of those are not yet regulated by their local regulating bodies and, hence, not qualified to offer security tokens representing, for example, equity — which is expected to trigger the next wave in the ecosystem. This subsequent lack of liquidity and market depth is a significant roadblock for accelerated growth and can only be conquered with a rapid evolution of licensed exchanges or traditional exchanges entering the digital asset space. Promising new entrants are as well as Overstock’s (both USA), which are among the first US-based regulated security token platforms. Rumors continue to swirl that traditional stock exchange (USA) may be close to entering the battlefield, which still remains unconfirmed by the organization. In Europe, (GSX), (MSX), as well as (SIX) are known to launch digital asset operations the first half of 2019. Overall, traditional exchanges seem to have better cards to win this business opportunity, as security regulation (e.g., German BörsG) foresees that exchange market participants need to be “qualified” — leading to the tiered system that banks participate in exchanges (and not end clients) in the traditional world. This would likely also happen to crypto-exchanges, leaving them with advantage due to their strong B2C (end client) focus. OpenFinance tZERO Nasdaq Gibraltar Stock Exchange Malta Stock Exchange Swiss Exchange I.-IV. Infrastructure Layer The infrastructure layer is the necessary basis for the foundation of a solid landscape of financial services for tokenized assets: Ongoing technological innovation and maturity of blockchain technology I. Technology: Consistent and clear regulatory guides across jurisdictions with regional/global standards. (The current situation shows jurisdictions moving independently — e.g. Malta VFA license). II. Regulation: Transparent taxation methodology and legislative guidance III. Tax & Legal: Increasing insurance and reinsurance offerings for tokenized assets for risk-diversification IV. Insurance: To unlock the ~$24trn business opportunity, significant development across the financial landscape of tokenized assets is required. The infrastructure layer is the basis for a solid foundation of the ecosystem, but core-value will be captured across the key financial pillars. In the foreseeable future, Custody, as well as Merchant Banking services, are expected to contain the most significant business opportunities for new entrants, as they are crucial for the professionalization of the landscape. In our next article, we will dive deeper into the custody landscape of tokenized assets, outlining the current product offering and introducing promising new market entrants. - Follow us on for future articles: Medium @Finoa_Banking - Visit our website to learn more about us: https://finoa.io/ - To always remain up-to-date follow us on and scan the QR Code to subscribe to our newsletter Twitter

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FLEXPORT

flexport.com

1K-5K employees

Since 2013

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