Founder Stories

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Five-act journeys from founders worth listening to. Problem, journey, struggles, breakthrough, lessons — editor-curated, never pay-to-post.

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Ryan Petersen: Flexport, Founder Mode, and the Return of the Founder-CEO

Ryan Petersen founded Flexport in 2013. He stepped back in 2022. He returned in 2023 to steer the company through the freight downturn. Along the way, Paul Graham's Founder Mode essay used his story as the anchor.

Ryan Petersen

Flexport

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We hired a full-time anthropologist before our second engineer

Founder Storyhealth tech

5 min read·consumer

We hired a full-time anthropologist before our second engineer

Most early-stage teams hire engineers, then designers, then growth. We hired an anthropologist on day 30. It changed everything about who our product was for.

Inez MarinVerde

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The real storiesbehind the build.

Ryan Petersen: Flexport, Founder Mode, and the Return of the Founder-CEO

Every story, unfiltered.

We hired a full-time anthropologist before our second engineer

Built something worth telling?

The real stories
behind the build.