Comment by pastor_bob | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pastor_bob | Hacker News Reader

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>Logistics was clearly a worthwhile side quest for us, and started to create the conditions for our main quest to succeed. From the beginning, we worked with lots of partners on all aspects of this same problem: warehouses, robotics, transportation, crossdock, freight. We iteratively built a solution, step by step, through software, leases, and M&A deals, that could be an independent company one day. Shopify was the perfect place to bootstrap this effort from 0 to 1 and we have done this. The next step is to take what we have and take it from 1 to N as a main quest.

I don't understand the point of a statement like this. Why not just admit logistics turned out to be a sunk cost and you're abandoning it, rather than say "We actually killed it!"

I read it as "this works, but it's not our core competency so we will sell it off" - whether they're pulling one over on the company and it'll die immediately remains to be seen.

Shipping is getting expensive across the board, which might be part of it.

I think you've nailed it on the head. I think they've now offloaded a key piece of e-commerce which they now have less control over their own destiny. Flexport is going to have to make margins as well which is going to get pushed onto the consumer at the end of the day which drives up prices, decreases demand. Tricky future incoming.

If you know a portion of your business is going to get more expensive, it can be very nice to disassociate yourself from it - now people will be saying "Flexport screwing me, what other options do I have" instead of "Shopify is screwing me". A similar thing happened when eBay and PayPal stopped being connected at the hip.

Interesting take. That sounds like an upside to offloading a difficult operation though not necessarily driving reason.

They’re not though, they’re selling it? To a company that presumably wants it and intends to grow it

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