Senra Systems' $65M Series B: Fixing Aerospace & Defense's Biggest Bottleneck

**Jordan Black** (0:00)
People need more rockets, people need more missiles, people need more cars, everything in the hardware space is booming right now, and the center of all of it's wire harnessing. I saw this firsthand at SpaceX, where wire harnessing was the bane of our existence.

**Molly O'Shea** (0:10)
We started about three years ago, and today is completely different.

**Jordan Black** (0:13)
Venner Systems officially closed our Series B fundraising for $65 million. We had Lowercarbon, Interlagos leading the round. A lot of our existing investors coming to the mix, such as Sequoia, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, 8VC, Andreessen Horowitz.

**Ken Venner** (0:27)
Cable Harnesses is such a large, unautomated business and yet it's the backbone to everything that's being built today.

**Molly O'Shea** (0:33)
You have a legendary career. You're at Broadcom, then you're at SpaceX, then you've done a couple of space companies since then.

**Ken Venner** (0:39)
He wanted to hire me because he wanted to build the digital nervous system for the 21st century rocket company.

**Jordan Black** (0:44)
The world needs more wire harnesses and I want to build every one of them.

**Molly O'Shea** (0:58)
All right, Jordan Black, we are here at Senra Systems today. Thanks for joining Sourcery.

**Jordan Black** (1:04)
Absolutely, thanks for having me.

**Molly O'Shea** (1:06)
So you have a big announcement. What's going on?

**Jordan Black** (1:09)
Yeah, absolutely. Senra Systems officially closed our Series B fundraising for $65 million.
We had Lowercarbon, Interlagos leading the round. A lot of our existing investors coming into the mix, such as Sequoia, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, 8VC, Andreessen Horowitz. We're really excited for the next few years as we are hyperscaling into this hard tech boom that we're all seeing around us.

**Molly O'Shea** (1:36)
So for people who don't know what Senra Systems is, can you explain that a bit? Then I want to definitely go into the funding environment because you started about three years ago and today is completely different.

**Jordan Black** (1:47)
Yeah, absolutely. So Senra Systems is supercharging the skilled assembly workforce, and we're starting with this thing called a wire harness. And what it is is like the nervous system of anything that requires electricity. So it's what sends power and data in your rockets, in your cars, in your generators, in your planes and everything.
And the whole thing is done by hand today because it's flexible wire, all custom made, and it's pretty much arts and crafts. What's really difficult about it is there's hundreds of miles of wire harnessing in your plane, miles in just even your car, and it's really expensive. It could be 25% of the cost of your vehicle in any given moment too. And so what happens is people need more wire harnessing because the world's getting more electrified, people need more rockets, people need more missiles, people need more cars, people need more generators. Everything in the hardware space is booming right now. And the center of all of it's wire harnessing. The difficult part is, demand's going like this, but the supply chain is drastically decreasing because it's a skilled assembly workforce that's doing this for 20 to 50 years, all by hand, and they have all the tribal knowledge, and they are the machine at the end of the day. They are truly the backbone of this entire workforce. And if it's Bob and Judy building in the corner and they leave, we don't build more wire harnesses for this product line or this company or anything else too. I saw this firsthand at SpaceX where I was the manager of the research and development team for electronics, so I did a little bit of everything that went into a rocket and a satellite and wire harnessing was the bane of our existence and we outsourced 95% of it for Falcon and Dragon back in the day.
And it was a really painful process because everyone hasn't changed the process since the Cold War era. And what Senra is really trying to do is like, how do you kind of bring this industry into the 21st century with software, technology and robotics as well?

**Molly O'Shea** (3:44)
So in terms of miles of wire harnesses, how are you measuring success and scale here? I know there's a certain target you want to get to with the build out of this facility. So what will that facilitate and what are you trying to accomplish?

**Jordan Black** (4:02)
Yeah. So there's just this ever growing demand of wire harnessing. It's all around us. It's literally in the microphone we're wearing today. And success for us is just continuing to scale with our customers and making sure they're not only happy with us, but that we're meeting the demands of any other business needs too. So when people need more satellites or people need more missiles or people need more rockets, like harnessing is not becoming the bottleneck. Harnessing is actually becoming the least of their concerns at the end of the day too. We hit our, you know, exceed our revenue targets. I think the main milestones for us are, you know, filling out this entire factory, supporting all the major platforms that we're currently on or continue to grow into, and then making sure harnessing is like the least bit of worries for any of our customers too.