Former actress and singer, Bridgit Mendler, is now the CEO and co-founder of Northwood Space, a satellite startup. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Actress, Bridgit Mendler, most known for her famous roles in Disney’s Good Luck Charlie and Wizards of Waverly Place, is now the CEO and co-founder of Northwood Space, a satellite startup.
Mendler announced the news on Monday, via X and LinkedIn, where she told followers to “expect the unexpected”.
The post reads, “So excited to be able to finally share what I’ve been working on with my two favorite ground nerds – Griffin Cleverly and Shaurya Luthra. At Northwood, we’re rethinking infrastructure for satellite backhaul from the ground up. “
“We have our sights on building a data highway between earth and space. We are designing shared ground infrastructure from first principles to expand access to space.”
Both Cleverly, Mendler’s husband and now CTO of Northwood, and Luthra, Head of Software at Northwood, spent time at Lockheed Martin as engineers, prior to working on building ground stations network of satellite imagery at Capella Space.
The launch has been making headlines as fans took to social media shocked and impressed by the news.
One X user wrote, “She is Barbie. Like 12 different careers. Singer/songwriter, actress, Harvard doctorate of law recipient, MIT PHD student, CEO of a startup”.
she is Barbie. like 12 different careers. singer/songwriter, actress, harvard doctorate of law recipient, MIT PHD student, ceo of a start up
— RR 🇬🇭 kwame (@Asoegwu_) February 20, 2024
Since her acting career, Mendler went on to receive a master’s and doctorate of philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2020 and 2024 respectively, as well as a doctorate of law from Havard Law school in 2013.
While at school, Mendler says the moment she “completely fell in love with space law” was after she spent time with the Federal Communications Commission’s new Space Bureau.
Mendler’s startup has already received $6.3M in funding and is backed by high-profile investors, including Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, and Also Capital.
Mendler said the idea for the company, Northwood, originated from a lake in Hampshire, while she was spending time with family during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“While everybody 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 told CNBC.
“For me, why the ground-side matters is because it actually is about bringing the impacts of space home to people.”
Luthra, Head of Software at Northwood, says the issue with ground stations now is that it takes a long time for companies to be able to receive “data down reliably and in the quantities that they need”.
“If you want a dedicated antenna, you have to wait 18 months to get the antenna delivered, installed and built out for you.”
Northwood aims to design satellite stations with “fast [and mass] production and deployment flexibility” in mind, aiming to deliver results “within days, not months”.
The startup aims to test its first connection to a satellite in orbit later this year.
