00:41:10 · John Coogan, Bridgit Mendler
[00:41:10] S1: And and talked last time, but what what what was what the key unlock? Is it is it technology milestone, financial milestone? What really unlocked this particular fundraise? [00:41:22] S6: I mean, we're asking ourselves a series of questions. The first one is, like, can the tech do what we say it can do? So we have the two products. There's portal, which is our c two product. And then there is prism, which is the high throughput products. We've now validated them across not just LEO orbit, but all the way up to geostationary orbit. And the real thing that matters for us is that capability demonstrating it, but also on a timeline that is relevant. So we were able to turn that capability around, get it fielded in a matter of days. So it's basically, you know, can we perform at speed and can we actually hit the performance specifications that we are are saying we can do? And then at that point, it's a question of scale. Have we kind of proven to ourselves that we can actually scale this product? We have produced at this point 29 units of hardware across the We've done two production runs. We're now in our bigger scaled up facility, 185,000 square feet that's ready to produce hundreds of antennas. And so we we kinda convinced ourselves we were ready for that scale. And then ultimately, it's been, you know, a tremendous year for the space industry in terms of just validating the original Northwood premise, which is the volume and data is gonna go up by a lot. So, yeah, we were ready for the next milestone.
00:42:31 · Jordi Hays, Bridgit Mendler, John Coogan
[00:42:31] S0: Super impressive. And then demand, like, demand side, like, what's going on on that front? Like, I'm assuming a lot of it's still, like, kind of, hey. If we do this thing, like, will you give us a lot of money? And so far, it seems like the answer is yes, but but break that down. [00:42:47] S6: Yeah. I mean, there's there's the whole range from a lot of net new signed customers as well as exactly what you're saying, which is huge amounts of demand as new customer sets are examining space fresh for the first time on the commercial side, but also on the government side, just huge waves of of funding and programs that are becoming more solidified. So all of those things at the same time and a lot of different customer priorities, but that's what we're, you know, built to support. [00:43:16] S1: Are you thinking about the the breakdown of different opportunities in space? Obviously, there's a lot of satellite Internet traffic. That's so exciting. There's there's imagery that's happening. There's also AI potentially happening, but unclear how bandwidth heavy that will be. And then just yesterday, SpaceX announced Starfall doing microgravity experiments for bio. I have no idea how bandwidth constrained those types of experiments are, but what's on the horizon that you think will either be uniquely unlocked by Northwood or just be another tailwind for you?
00:43:54 · Bridgit Mendler
[00:43:54] S6: Yeah. I mean, exactly. Like, the industry is diverse. And frankly, like, that's what we think is really important and what we're solving for. So the way that we've designed our product is so that we can fit as many industry use cases into portal and prism, our our two product lines as possible. And so when we're looking at those use cases that are coming up and are are interesting, the kind of, like, overall, customer requirements that... Or or customer features that align with us is is it a customer that cares about scale, and is it a customer that cares cares about reliability? Like, these are customers that are managing constellations that need to, hit that scale on aggressive timelines, but also really assure high levels of uptime that historically, you know, third party ground has not been able to offer. So that is things like comms. Comms is is a use case that has a particular amount of pressure there. And I think, as you said, pushing into higher and higher throughputs is a really exciting problem. And and for me, I think that's especially exciting as we talk about overall volume of data and space becoming more important. But use cases like you described, whether it's star fall or or others on the actual lower bandwidth side are also tremendously exciting. And it's also a very key national security priority. So... Yeah.
00:45:04 · John Coogan
[00:45:04] S1: On the national security side, what's the supply chain look like? I was I was reflecting on the fact that the the new iPhone... I think we're on 08/18. It's been almost twenty years. I think this one is the first one that has an Apple modem in it. They finally moved on to their own Yeah. Their own hardware stack. And I'm wondering, like, are are you supply constrained in any way, or are you thinking about... I don't even know what goes into building a ground station like other rare earth magnets, or is it just metal and aluminum or do have license technology and IP from, like, Qualcomm or some other company? Like, what does that supply chain look like? I imagine you're not bottlenecked right now because you're still growing the company, but what's coming down the pipe?
00:45:44 · Bridgit Mendler, Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:45:44] S6: I mean, I don't think there's a single hard tech company that is not supply chain impacted. It's just like, what are the strategies that make sense for the company to, address that? And I'd say that's where the the new capital comes in. We're at a stage now as a company where we're making, you know, different sets of decision calls about how we can scale up production, whether that be deepening vendor relationships. So, like, we've had some relationships we've been building since day one with vendors that are nontraditional to these space problems. And really... Now we can indicate higher levels of volumes, which helps gets us, you know, special engagements with those partners. So that's great. But also we're we're at this point able to implement bringing more things in house. So we're also doing that strategically with a whole wide range of pieces of our stack for exactly the reasons that you mentioned. And then also sometimes whether it be for like a performance or cost reason, but but also, you know, any, any areas where we're kind of pinned down by a vendor's timelines, that's where we seriously consider insourcing. [00:46:44] S0: Yeah. Many countries are you guys in now? [00:46:48] S6: So we're in building nine countries. Yeah. [00:46:52] S1: Wow. Cool. Coogan. [00:46:54] S0: Wow. Is that On the hiring side. Is is... Like, what's the ceiling on countries? Like, I'm assuming that it's not like I'm assuming it's not like Yeah. We have to 10 x. [00:47:06] S6: Every country? [00:47:07] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:47:07 · Jordi Hays, Bridgit Mendler, John Coogan, Dylan Patel
[00:47:07] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:47:10] S6: Yeah. So there is, you know, if you if you look at SpaceX, for example, like, their market access program is tremendous. I think they have nearly covered most countries, which is insane and Really? Super, super cool. But that's more on the consumer side. So on the actual, you know, backhaul side, which is the side that we focus on, it turns into basically, like, looking at a map and then plugging in a satellite elevation and determining, you know, where you need to have visibility and where you need to have, like, extra density in a network. So I'd say there's there's still a lot more to go for Northwood. You know, we will be dramatically increasing that number in terms of both density and in terms of diversity. [00:47:53] S1: So And on the [00:47:54] S0: We should expect the 10 x year over year. [00:47:57] S6: I mean, I was... We're at a start up here. We're we're trying to 10 x everything year over year. [00:48:03] S0: There we go. That's great. 90 countries by by by [00:48:06] S6: 9,000 countries. [00:48:08] S0: And I hope you enjoy I hope you enjoy a lot of travel. John, what were you gonna say? [00:48:15] S1: I was gonna ask about hiring. [00:48:17] S3: Yeah.