Bridgit Mendler goes from Disney Channel to CEO as the head of a new start-up company Northwood Space… which just got $6.3M in seed funding: ‘Expect the unexpected!’
Nearly twenty years after she started her career as a child actress, Bridgit Mendler is now heading to the boardroom as CEO of a new startup company.
The 31-year-old began her career as a child actress at the age of 11 in 2004 with a voice role in the animated film The Legend of Buddha.
She also had roles in Jonas, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel and The Secret World of Arrietty before her breakout role on Disney Channel’s Good Luck Charlie.
Although she has been working fairly steadily in 2019, she has been working on her studies in recent years, earning degrees from USC, MIT, and studying at Harvard Law School.
Now she’s ready to break into the business world as CEO of new space startup Northwood Space, which secured $6.3 million in seed funding, via CNBC.
Nearly two decades after she started her career as a child actress, Bridgit Mendler is now heading to the boardroom as CEO of a new startup company
Now she’s ready to break into the business world as CEO of new space startup Northwood Space, which raised $6.3 million in seed funding through CNBC.
She also took to X (formerly Twitter) to quote and retweet the CNBC story with an announcement of her own.
‘Expect the unexpected! So excited to announce our $6.3M seed funding led by @foundersfund and @a16z with participation from @CapitalAlso, @LongJourneyVC, @BoxGroup, @humbavc” Mendler began.
“At @NorhwoodSpace we have our sights set on building a data highway between Earth and space,” she added.
“We are designing shared ground infrastructure from first principles to expand access to space,” she continued.
‘We have a lot of work ahead of us, but that’s the fun part. If you enjoy building quickly and seeing your work deployed with real impact in locations around the world, we want you at Northwood,” she concluded, linking to Northwood’s career page.
Mendler also recently spent some time at the Federal Communications Commission’s new space agency, where she “completely fell in love with space law.”
‘The vision is a data highway between Earth and space. Space is getting easier on so many different dimensions, but actually sending data to and from space is still difficult. You have trouble finding an access point to contact your satellite,” she said.
The company will not focus on building rockets from satellites, but on ground stations, which are described as “typically large and often circular antennas that connect to satellites in space.”
She also took to X (formerly Twitter) to quote and retweet the CNBC story with an announcement of her own
Mendler also recently spent some time at the Federal Communications Commission’s new Space Bureau, where she “completely fell in love with space law.”
‘The vision is a data highway between Earth and space. Space is getting easier on so many different dimensions, but actually sending data to and from space is still difficult. You have trouble finding an access point to contact your satellite,” she said
‘The vision is a data highway between Earth and space. Space is getting easier on so many different dimensions, but actually sending data to and from space is still difficult. You have trouble finding an access point to contact your satellite,” she said
Mendler co-founded the company with her husband Griffin Cleverly, who will serve as Chief Technology Officer, and Head of Software Shaurya Luthra
She revealed that the company’s name comes from a lake in New Hampshire where the idea for the company first took root while she was spending time there with her family during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“To me, the reason the ground side matters is because it’s really about bringing the impact of the space to people,” she added.
Mendler co-founded the company with her husband Griffin Cleverly, who will serve as Chief Technology Officer, and Head of Software Shaurya Luthra.
She revealed that the company’s name comes from a lake in New Hampshire where the idea for the company first took root while she was spending time there with her family during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“While everyone else was making their sourdough starters, we were building antennas out of random crap we could find at Home Depot… and receiving data from (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) satellites,” Mendler said.
“For me, the ground side is important because it’s really about bringing the impact of the space to people,” she added.
Slim added that there is now a “colossal” amount of data traveling to and from satellites and that their company wants to make it more efficient to deliver the data.
“We need an approach so that these companies can collect the data reliably and in the quantities they need,” he said.
They want to be able to deliver these ground stations, “within days, not months,” with Luthra adding that it takes 18 months for an antenna to be installed.
The company wants to be in the same vein as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft’s Azure, which provides server space so companies don’t have to build their own.
“It allows space companies to be much more responsive to use cases and missions that arise,” Cleverly added, adding that the company hoped to conduct their first test of an orbiting spacecraft later this year.