How an 'Uber for the oceans' wants to change marine shipping
May 11, 2015, 21:14 IST
Shipping goods from a factory in China is now almost as easy as tapping your way to a car service in Manhattan. "Our mission is to bring the world free trade through technology - not free trade in the sense that you don't have to pay taxes or follow regulations, but free trade in the sense of those things happen in the background automatically," founder Ryan Peterson said in a previous interview. "It's so simple that anyone can do it." Flexport has raised $6.6 million in funding, some of which has come from the likes of Google Ventures and actor Ashton Kutcher, according to Bloomberg. It is one of many concepts to emerge from Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley-based startup incubator. Airbnb, Dropbox, Reddit and many other platforms have also sprouted from Y Combinator.