EP 102 — Vendra's Shan Mohta On Going From 200 Investor Rejections To Parts Orbiting Earth

At Vendra, three operations engineers manage over 250 U.S. suppliers. A top competitor worth $5 billion needs one ops engineer for every two to three suppliers. The difference is a software layer that reads CAD files, matches parts to qualified shops, and orchestrates the full supply chain from quote to delivered hardware.

Shan Mohta, Co-Founder and CEO of Vendra (YC S24), designed hardware at Microsoft, Apple, and Skydio before building the platform. Vendra now ships flight hardware for aerospace and defense customers, with parts in orbit and on upcoming launch vehicles.

Topics discussed:

• Why custom part sourcing is still a manual process
• Building a data layer on top of U.S. machine shops
• Automating shipping, procurement, and CAD analysis with AI agents
• Scaling from prototype orders to 500-part monthly runs
• Qualifying suppliers through on-site facility walks
• Maintaining ITAR compliance as an early-stage startup
• Lessons from seven or eight pivots inside Y Combinator
• Turning a former employer into your first customer

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