Amazon Retail Chief Named CEO of Supply Chain Start-Up

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So it turns out that

Amazon

retail chief Dave Clark is leaving the company for a very good reason—he’s agreed to become the CEO of Flexport, a red-hot supply chain management start-up that is trying to cure the world’s current logistics and product shortage mess.

Last week, Clark made the surprise decision to step down as the head of Amazon’s global consumer business, a role he has held only since January 2021.

Clark joined Amazon (ticker: AMZN) right out of business school in 1999, and spent most of his tenure working in operations and fulfillment. In a note to the Amazon staff announcing Clark’s departure, CEO Andy Jassy pointed out that among other things Clark “built out Amazon’s transportation network from scratch.”

That experience—building out Amazon’s fleet of trucks, planes, and other logistics infrastructure—has clear application at Flexport, which provides software and services to help companies manage logistics and supply chain management. Flexport helps companies arrange freight shipments, handle taxes and tariffs, obtain insurance, and track goods.

In a LinkedIn post Wednesday, Clark wrote that he has spent most of his professional life “thinking about solving problems at the intersection of technology and the physical world.” He described Flexport as “a customer-first, rocket ship of a company” focused specifically on addressing complex supply-chain problems.

Clark will take over the CEO role from founder Ryan Petersen, whom he credits with “brilliantly tackling the most complicated piece of the supply chain: the global cross-border movement of goods.”

According to Crunchbase, Flexport has raised $2.2 billion in venture capital from a group of investors that includes the SoftBank Vision Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, Founder Funds, Michael Dell’s MSD Partners, and

Shopify

(SHOP), among others. In February, the company raised $935 million at an $8 billion valuation.

Write to Eric J. Savitz at [email protected]