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Sourcery · 2 min · Aug 31, 2026

Space companies still need real businesses today

Bridgit Mendler says the SpaceX IPO is drawing talent and investors, but companies still need real businesses today. Northwood is building for future demand while grounding itself in existing markets.

Bridgit Mendler

Bridgit Mendler is cofounder and CEO of Northwood Space.

Co-founded Northwood Space, building shared satellite ground infrastructure; earlier a Disney Channel actress and singer.

  • Molly O'Shea, Host · Founder, Sourcery

    Ex-Upfront Ventures investor; has interviewed Alex Karp and Palmer Luckey.

About this segment

Bridgit Mendler says the SpaceX IPO is drawing talent and investors, but companies still need real businesses today. Northwood is building for future demand while grounding itself in existing markets.

From “Bridgit Mendler Gives Us the First Tour of Northwood's New HQ + Factory”, Aug 31, 2026. Watch the full episode

“there's a lot of enthusiasm around the category, but you have to tie that back to business fundamentals.”
Bridgit Mendlerat 9:26 · Sourcery9:26

Takeaways

  1. Investor interest does not replace current business fundamentals.
  2. Compute and IoT are future demand, not today’s market.
  3. Northwood aims to build on customers it can serve now.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 2:45Ground infrastructure lagged because the industry split the work5:55
  2. 23:07Northwood wants revenue growth before expanding its scope3:18
  3. 26:20Ground networks use costly redundancy to guarantee reliability2:57
  4. 13:28The Space Force contract is a trial for a larger engagement2:23
  5. 17:11Northwood uses site diversity to limit the impact of outages2:19

  6. 8:36Space companies still need real businesses today2:12

  7. 38:11Northwood is bringing time-critical manufacturing in-house2:23Up next

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 8:39

    Fun. Well, I mean, we've definitely seen with the SpaceX IPO, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, they all put out these reports on how amazing and how big the space industry is. So what kind of downstream effects are you seeing from maybe the mainstream on maybe hiring or culture, general education and interest on this space? I think there's definitely increasing interest externally. And I think from the talent base, there's also just the excitement of the momentum that it generates with where the industry is going. So I think both from the investor perspective, there's folks considering space as a real business category. And on the talent side, they're seeing it as a place where they can build their career.

  2. 9:26

    I think what's interesting, though, with the space economy, right, is like there's a lot of enthusiasm around the category, but you have to tie that back to business fundamentals. Like, is there a real business that is happening today while we are super excited about that future that the SpaceX IPO painted? I think for us as a company, we are and we have been, you know, since the beginning, very bullish on what kind of data was going to be moving through space.

  3. 9:54

    We've been big believers that more and more markets are going to be using space as the medium for transmitting data. And that has proven out, right? Like now there's enthusiasm around compute use cases and there's enthusiasm about IoT and other future industries moving to space. But the reality is that's not space today. That's what we're building all this infrastructure to be ready for. but today you need to build off of like real businesses that exist and so I think for us like we're a pragmatic business like we're very excited about the potential of space we appreciate that there's public sentiment and excitement about space but we're also like making sure that we're building real business today so that we can kind of you know rely on our own business going forward. What I love about coming and doing these factory tours even when they're