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

Written by Jon Forisha | Jun 16, 2026

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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