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Heads up, specialty insurers: Flexport wants to be Uber of the oceans

Uber is changing the way people move around cities; Flexport wants to do the same with stuff in the holds of container ships in oceans.

By Eric Newcomer | Updated on May 11, 2015
Flexport is an app that connects customers with carriers, and software takes care of customs, tariffs and other logistics.

(Bloomberg Business) — Ryan Petersen came up with a quality-control feint when he was working in China for his brother’s import business. During a factory tour he’d excuse himself to go to the bathroom, to see if there was tap water or flush toilets.

No? He’d scratch the plant from his list of potential manufacturers, because it lacked sufficient industrial finesse. Petersen says he learned a lot of similar tricks in the two years he lived in Shanghai and Kunming. He also picked up Mandarin, and a serious frustration with what he views as the unnecessarily hassle-heavy business of freight forwarding.

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