News / Dave Clark lashes out at Flexport: 'extensive problems' with 'numbers based on hope'

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Flexport founder Ryan Petersen’s chickens are coming home to roost – and could even result in legal action. Two media exposés yesterday show Dave Clark, ‘fall guy’ and ex-CEO, has come back fighting with a few truths of his own.

This CNBC article is fascinating – particularly as it notes that both Mr Petersen and Mr Clark were due to speak at the same conference. The former, surprised he was there, praised Mr Clark – while the ex-Amazonian lashed out in response.

“The only thing I really regret from the past year was I sort of picked the wrong founder,” he said.

“Basically, it was a case of extending my reputational halo to a group that, in my opinion, didn’t deserve it. Largely, because about half the team was let go last Friday, the most brutal non-severance packages I’ve ever seen in my life. It was about as disrespectful a way as humanly possible.”

CNBC revealed that Mr Clark sent Mr Petersen a ‘cease and desist’ letter, suggesting some comments by Flexport had been defamatory. Mr Petersen has since deleted some of his Twitter/X remarks that were critical of Mr Clark.

CNBC has briefs from both sides of the fight – but then Mr Clark came out on Twitter/X, saying the CNBC story was “deeply concerning”, as reported by TechCrunch.

Mr Clark accused Flexport of “lacking process and financial discipline” and having a “revenue-forecasting model that was consistently providing over-optimistic outputs,” an angle explored by CNBC.

He  said: “The company had missed cost, margin and revenue forecasts for multiple quarters prior to my arrival. My go-forward plan for Flexport, which was vetted by Ryan and presented to the board, was focused on delivering growth and moving to align costs with revenue, not a revenue number based on hope — but one grounded in reality.”

He also wrote that “the problems at Flexport were much more extensive than I thought they would be … Flexport is facing serious internal and industry challenges that require serious leadership…”

Flexport’s leadership has not looked very serious in the past week or two: it clearly has some catching up to do.