The Global Ground Layer, with Bridgit Mendler (CEO of Northwood)

**Bridgit Mendler** (0:00)
I want to see 1,000 SpaceXes, and I want to see them not take 25 years to get there. I want to see them get there in five years. There's all of this promise about the value that space can bring. How do you actually deliver that value? How do you do that for folks like us who are at Northwood Lake getting an image that we could actually reference? For others, that's the ability to connect to internet in a location they've never been able to do so before, or cellular connectivity. How do we bring the internet to space? We are galvanizing the momentum, that time is here and it's happening. Following that same playbook that we always have is, how do we introduce the next solution to solve for that?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:45)
Bridgit, thanks for having us.

**Bridgit Mendler** (0:46)
Thank you so much for coming. Welcome to Northwood.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:49)
No, it's great. Really, where I feel like I'm like, we're like riding the action.

**Bridgit Mendler** (0:52)
You literally are, yeah.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:54)
So when you think back to your background in the entertainment industry, and now as CEO of Northwood, like what do you feel, what are some skillsets or like a skill that you feel like you've brought over and has helped you be like the CEO of this company?

**Bridgit Mendler** (1:09)
I think starting something from nothing, like the zero to one, I've done many times in life, and that's very applicable to a startup.
Obviously, no track record as an 11-year-old trying to form an entertainment career and had to go through a lot of repeated rejection with that. Going into my academic experience, trying to gain admission into a master's program at MIT with no undergrad and no coding experience, needing to try to consume Python content, JavaScript, HTML in my ears, visually every different modality for trying to bring my self up to speed and demonstrate enough competency to get into that program. Then now with forming a company, just needing to make myself into what I've needed to be. For this phase of career, it's not about me, it's about this entire business and building something bigger than myself. That zero-to-one experience with all the different teammates that we've got to build a company with, and seeing an idea that gains adoption, and at this point, global reach has been really gratifying.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:33)
Was space always part of back in the back of your head, something you wanted to pursue, or where did the fascination come from?

**Bridgit Mendler** (2:43)
I mean, as a kid growing up in DC, whose dad repeatedly took her to the Air and Space Museum, something was lodged in there, for sure.
But honestly, no. Like, for many years, that was not the thing that I was thinking about. It was really exposure through my husband, our CTO, who had been working in the space industry, that I kind of regained awareness of the industry. And then that fateful summer where we started doing the prototyping around Northwood was where I discovered the ground problem and have been locked on it ever since. And yeah.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:23)
Did that ground problem arise when you're time... I know you spent some time at the FCC Space Bureau. Like, how was that part of sort of the journey into discovering the problem that Northwood is trying to solve?

**Bridgit Mendler** (3:34)
Definitely. And, you know, what the Space Bureau does for the satellite industry is regulate spectrum. And spectrum is, you know, how we manage networking for the space industry. And so it kind of has intimately to do with what I view to be as one of the very foundational pillars of the space economy. You know, I've said this before, I think, it comes down to being able to create things that go into space, being able to put them into space, and then being able to use them once they are in space, comes down to the networking that you can accomplish. And I view networking really as the fundamental driver of value in the space economy, both from data as the medium of value, but also the potential to unlock further markets.
So I think FCC was definitely key to my education in that.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:28)
So walk me through sort of the moment where you were like, OK, this is the idea we have. Like you, Griffin, Sharia, you guys came together and formed around this thesis. How did it all happen? What year was it?
Talk to me about that.

**Bridgit Mendler** (4:43)
We started talking about it, like the three of us, in 2023, and Griffin had been the one who had been building the technical prototypes. I'd been thinking more on the operational side of the business, and Shar was bringing the industry expertise, having worked in the ground segment, specifically across his career.