Thread by @typesfast

Global supply chains are a mess. The world's logistics infrastructure has proven incapable of scaling to the demands of a global economy going through more chaotic evolution than ever. 1/

Prices for pretty much all logistics and supply chain services have reached all time highs while service levels and transit times have never been worse. 2/

In hindsight, the signs were there for years. Almost no logistics companies can show you where your freight is in real-time on a map. Most data is exchanged in unstructured email messages with attachments. There are almost no logistics APIs to speak of. 3/

The pandemic has dramatically amplified two major trends in supply chains: the rise of e-commerce and the diversification of global supply and demand. 4/

Both these trends long pre-date the pandemic and will continue for the next few decades. And both require more agile, tech-enabled logistics and supply chain infrastructure. 5/

The internet has put consumers in the drivers seat: they can get what they want, when they want it. And they want it right now. If you can't get it to them right now, someone else will. 6/

In the old world, brands were in charge, and more specifically, a small number of brands who could afford the mass media buys required to push their products through a limited number of retail channels. 7/

Customers didn't have much choice: they bought the products they saw on TV because those were the only ones available in the stores by their house. 8/

In the internet world, customers can find the brands whose product speak directly to them, who solve their exact need, and who have available inventory right now near by for fast delivery and instant gratification. 9/

To satisfy what Jeff Bezos calls the "divinely discontent" consumer, brands must carry more SKUs (and companies may need to maintain more brands). And they edge-cache more inventory closer to those consumers homes. 10/

In the Sears catalog era I grew up in, a single distribution center in Memphis or all Louisville could serve the entire country. Three week delivery times was good enough. 11/

In the e-commerce era, companies that want to have reasonably shipping costs need to position 5-6 distribution centers across the country to achieve 2-day delivery, several dozen for next day, and hundreds of sites for 2-hour delivery. 12/

The optimization problem that falls out of this is beyond the capabilities of even the best demand and S&OP planning departments working with analog logistics and supply chain providers. 13/

If a brand trying to achieve tight delivery promises has too much inventory, their working capital goes through the roof as inventory sits unsold. Too little inventory and they lose the sale to a competitor whose got stock nearby. 14/

At the same time, the supply side of supply chains has become more complex and global. Rising labor costs were pushing manufacturing away from China to Southeast Asia and other regions for many years before the tariffs and trade tensions accelerated that trend. /15/

The reliability of sourcing goods from these disparate locations has fallen through the floor with the pandemic, but even before that ever shifting regulations and trade barriers made life way too hard for supply chain managers. 16/

And the fact is, most logistics teams are ill-equipped for the magnitude of the problems they face. They're trying to solve multi-variate optimizations of complex dynamic systems on the back of data stitched together in Microsoft Excel from dozens of analog service providers. 17/

It doesn't work. And we see the results with the pandemic causing cascading waves of bottlenecks and outright system failures across our ports, airports, warehouses, railroads and trucking networks.

Logistics is the circulatory system of the world economy, and it's got a pulmonary embolism. 18/

There's good news in all this, which is, there has never been a better time to solve problems in logistics. As Chesty Puller said, "We're surrounded. That simplifies the problem. They are in front of us, behind us, and we are flanked on both sides...They can't get away now." 19/

The history of the last 50 years in Silicon Valley shows that the organizations best equipped to solve problems are startups. The night is coldest just before the dawn. We believe we're on the cusp of a golden age of logistics and supply chain technology companies. 20/

The future of supply chains will look very different from the present, with agile, responsive systems connecting all the parties through modern protocols and interfaces. 21/

Every legacy logistics and supply chain company that doesn't elevate technology development to a C-level role at least on par with the CFO will be replaced a more agile, tech-first innovator. Most either can't or won't do it. 22/

This is a huge market. Global Trade is 47% of GDP and logistics is 15%. And if you take the pie chart of GDP and divide it by the number of hours of computer programming that have been applied, this must be the biggest slice of all. 23/

We are positioning Flexport to be the reference asset in this massive space, but the reality is the world is too big and too complex (and frankly, too screwed up) for us to do it alone. 24/

To serve this critical need, Flexport and @BeOnDeck are joining forces to create a logistics and supply chain accelerator that will partner with companies to help reinvent the circulatory system of the world economy.

We will invest $125k for 7% ownership in the most promising new companies in this space, and then we'll partner to help them create innovation and scale their businesses.

We’ll teach the founders high growth startup tactics that have allowed us to grow into one of the worlds largest shipping companies in just 8 years since we ourselves went through a startup accelerator @Ycombinator.

We are committed to bring the most founder-friendly investors in the world because we know what it's like to be in your shoes and annoying investors only hurt the companies (and themselves).

We’re looking for founders with unrelenting grit, tenacity, and boundless curiosity about a global economy that offers no simple solutions or silver bullets. I’m going to try to personally read every single application we receive.

If you're building something special in the global logistics and supply chain space, we want to meet you.

You can learn more and apply to the new Flexport On Deck accelerator here. Let's go, there's no time to waste: beondeck.com/x/flexport