Ryan Petersen was born in Bethesda, Maryland. At 17 he and his brother David began importing goods from China to sell on eBay. He moved to China in 2005 to run the business, then co-founded Import Genius, a shipping data company.
He earned an MBA at Columbia Business School in 2008. He has said he made about $17,000 the year before business school and graduated owing about $140,000, which he covered with part-time work including GMAT teaching and a small SEO firm.
Flexport received its Customs and Border Protection licence on 31 March 2013 after about three years with no revenue. It joined Y Combinator in 2014. Big shippers signed up to a landing page before the product existed. In early 2022 a Series E of $935 million valued the company at $8 billion.
Petersen stepped aside in June 2022 for Dave Clark. Clark resigned in September 2023 and Petersen came back as CEO. In 2024 Flexport reported revenue of about $2.1 billion, a figure that likely counts gross freight billings.