Founder Profile
Ryan Petersen
Last reviewed: October 2026 · By Swet Parvadiya
Who is Ryan Petersen?
Ryan Petersen is a founder of Flexport, Inc., which was founded in 2013 with David Habben.
- Company founded
- Flexport, Inc.
- Founded
- 2013
- Co-founders
- David Habben
Background
Co-founder of ImportGenius, a U.S. customs-data business, and a former importer of goods from China; UC Berkeley economics graduate.
Founding Story
Ryan Petersen founded Flexport in 2013 after running import businesses and co-founding ImportGenius, which compiled U.S. customs manifest data. Frustrated by fax-and-email freight forwarding, he took Flexport through Y Combinator in 2014 and built it into a licensed forwarder and customs broker backed by Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, SoftBank and Shopify. He handed the CEO role to Dave Clark in 2022, returned in September 2023, and has since led the company's cost reset, the 2025 Convoy Platform sale and its 2026 push into tariff-refund and customs services. Ryan Petersen was born in 1981.
Sources
This profile does not yet cite a source specific to Ryan Petersen. The sources below document the company company rather than the person, so check them against the claims above.
- Sourcing Journal: Flexport 2024 revenue of $2.1 billion (Flexport, Inc.)
- Wall Street Journal: Flexport forecasts profitability in 2025, with an asterisk (Flexport, Inc.)