Freight and logistics companies Flexport A new set of products and features are being launched, many of which use AI, which will be the first in the company’s first semi-annual announcement.
If this sounds similar to Airbnb’s seasonal product announcement, it’s because it’s inspiration for Flexport’s new approach.
“Brian Chesky told me to do this,” Flexport founder Ryan Petersen said in an interview, referring to Airbnb’s CEO. “He gave a great speech to Paul Graham Write an article aboutcalled “Founder Model”, I was there that day and he gave some good advice. ”
According to Flexport, the next product launch will be in the “late summer”.
Peterson told TechCrunch that moving to the twice-year “issuance” pace brings two major benefits. “Nothing is more like the power of the deadline,” he said. Another is more about marketing.
“We’ve developed a lot of great technology over the years, but it’ll be gradually growing. Peterson told TechCrunch, there’s not much fanfare, buzz and opportunity to tell the story.
Flexport said it will launch more than 20 different products on Monday, many of which are already in-house, all powered by an AI combination of OpenAI, Anthropic and AWS. Petersen Former Amazon executive Dave Clark Second half of 2023 [Flexport’s] The house is well organized. ”
New products include FlexPort Intelligence, which allows businesses to use natural language prompts to get information about their goods. Another person, known as the Control Tower, will provide customers with “real-time visibility and control of the entire logistics network, even on freight managed by Flexport,” the company said.
Previously, these were things Flexport employees did for their clients. The tendency toward AI performing these tasks is essentially a big change to the company’s relationships – especially because one of the reasons Petersen fired Clark was because he believed the company had devalued its customer relationships.
“This is what we really realize. Peterson said, I’m still a loyal believer to “people,”” Peterson said. The new product will offer “the best of both worlds” as businesses are still able to call Flexport team members — ideally, people who know they know them very well — and get help if needed or prefer it that way.
To this end, Peterson said he hopes that accepting AI will help boost its ranks rather than replace workers.
“I think the company – and I think it will be us – but in the company that automates the best job of this job, the workers are not going to be less. You will have more because you will grow so fast. If You’re cheaper than others, then you’ll need more people than ever to provide services, sales, consulting, technology, development, etc. ” he said.
Another effort announced by Flexport on Monday is to include AI-powered voice agents in some of its own workflows.
Peterson stressed that Flexport carefully introduced this capability. Currently, the company is using truck drivers and warehouses that use its logistics platform for testing. An AI voice broker calls the driver to tell them there is a load that can be picked up in their area and calls the warehouse to verify basic details (such as operating time).
This helps with these simple conversations, Peterson said, but Flexport is still ending these transactions through regular workflows on its platform. He said he was “hesitant” to include voice agents in other parts of the Flexport business until capability and reliability improve.
“My standard quality standard column makes these things really high for customers,” he said. “I think there is a future where if I’m really good at answering their questions, customers will be happy to talk to AI.”
This doesn’t mean Peterson plans to move slowly in AI overall. In fact, he said he likes the speed at which Flexport can experiment.
“Our team can watch [customer] Pain and find a process that can be done better with LLM or other forms of machine learning and then do it. The next day, it was live, and it was used by thousands of companies without having to sign a business contract or beggars. ” he said.
