Jun 12, 2025 · 1h 27m · sourcery
Sequoia Leads $75M Series B Into Nominal | Alfred Lin Joins Board · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
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In this episode of Sourcery, host Molly O'Shea speaks with Nominal co-founders Cameron and Steven about closing their $75 million Series B round led by Sequoia Capital, operational lessons learned at SpaceX and Anduril, and how continuous hardware testing software is revolutionizing aerospace, defense, and hard-tech manufacturing.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Molly holds 8.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Molly as informed peer 3.4 Guest teaching 5.1 Guest disagreement 0.6 Molly pushing back 0.1
speaking balance: gold is Molly, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 48:28 Pushback on customer bespoke uniqueness
Stephen directly challenges Molly's framing that each hard tech customer case is completely unique, pointing out standardizing data architectures across industries.
Hardest push from Molly ▶ 48:03 Molly questions performance across legacy complexitiesMolly presses the guests on how a single software suite can manage high performance in complex, highly fragmented legacy engineering settings.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 30:54 Deep dive into Delta Qualification mechanicsStephen systematically breaks down Delta Qual, explaining how agile aerospace testing isolates small design changes from redundant full-system qualification campaigns.
Molly holds their own ▶ 17:42 Molly articulates the hard tech macro convergenceMolly commands the macroeconomic framing by synthesizing reshoring, defense budgets, and robotics trends driving hard tech demand.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Molly as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Molly pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nominal's $75M Series B & Raising from Sequoia & Lightspeed | 4 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Molly opens with congratulations on the $75M Series B and asks about the fast fundraising process. She shows venture familiarity by citing Pat Grady's remarks at Upfront Summit regarding Sequoia's diligence style. | |
| Cameron's Journey from Submarine Officer to Founding Nominal | 4 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Molly lists Cameron's background across Anduril, the Navy, and VC firms. Cameron explains the core problem of hardware testing software being trapped between legacy tools and software-only web monitoring tools. | |
| Sponsor Read: Brex Financial Stack for Startups | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Following an ad read, Stephen details his transitions across Sierra Space, SpaceX, and Anduril, describing how disconnected operations lacked modern telemetry tools. | |
| Market Opportunity, Dual-Use Strategy, and Continuous Testing | 3 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Molly asks how big the market really is in defense and aerospace. Cameron reframes the market as continuous hardware testing across the full lifecycle where every physical asset is a test asset. | |
| Bullish Macro Trends: Defense Shift & Supply Chain Onshoring | 5 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Molly lists several macro trends including supply chain reshoring, defense budgets, and robotics. Cameron and Stephen outline how onshoring suppliers creates a massive downstream testing and qualification bottleneck. | |
| Bearish Perspectives on Defense Spending & Contrarian Prime Views | 3 | 6 | 3 | 0 | Cameron offers contrarian perspectives, rejecting the common anti-prime rhetoric and noting that large defense programs are unlikely to be cut. Stephen also pushes back against unmeasured vertical integration hype. | |
| End-to-End Hardware Development Lifecycle & Nominal Core Overview | 3 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Stephen breaks down the end-to-end hardware testing lifecycle from zero-to-one prototyping to production lines and fleet data ingestion, explaining why homegrown patchwork tools fail at scale. | |
| Delta Qualification: Accelerating Hardware Iteration Loops | 2 | 7 | 0 | 0 | Cameron introduces Delta Qual and Stephen educates Molly on how SpaceX and agile defense contractors rapidly validate isolated changes without repeating multi-month qualification campaigns. | |
| Product Deep Dive: Nominal Core and Nominal Connect | 3 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Stephen and Cameron walk through Nominal Core and the new Nominal Connect desktop edge application, detailing high-frequency data ingestion and replacing legacy LabVIEW setups. | |
| System Performance, Scalability, and Internal Hardware Lab | 4 | 6 | 3 | 1 | Molly asks how Nominal manages performance given that every customer scenario is unique. Stephen pushes back on the uniqueness premise, explaining that telemetry data formats are standardizing across industries. | |
| Customer Case Studies: Shield AI, Antares, and Vatten Systems | 3 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Cameron and Stephen present detailed case studies across Shield AI's V-BAT, Antares modular nuclear reactors, and Vatten Systems maritime submersibles. | |
| ROI and Financial Impact: Time Savings and Competitive Advantage | 5 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Molly asks about financial and time ROI, actively adding that building internal tool teams costs a million dollars minimum in overhead. Cameron outlines the multi-tiered value proposition. | |
| AI Integration in Hardware Engineering and Anomaly Detection | 3 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Molly inquires about AI integration. Cameron and Stephen give a grounded perspective, explaining that unstructured telemetry must be cleaned before predictive AI models or anomaly detection agents can work reliably. | |
| Dual-Use Go-To-Market Strategy: Commercial vs Federal Sales | 4 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Molly asks about GTM across federal and commercial sectors. Cameron outlines how the identical underlying product serves both segments through tailored sales motions. | |
| Team Growth, Mission Operations, and Key Team Member Shout-outs | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Molly asks about team scaling and backgrounds. Cameron and Stephen give extensive shout-outs to team leaders with backgrounds from Palantir, Applied Intuition, and SpaceX. | |
| Fundraising Takeaways and Demonstrating Violent Execution | 4 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Molly asks about key fundraising lessons. Cameron details the tactical value of rapid 10-page RFI turnarounds, open customer references, and proving violent execution. | |
| Five-Year Vision and the North Star for Hardware Engineering | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Cameron articulates the five-year vision of becoming the default operating platform for every hardware engineer globally across enterprise primes and international markets. | |
| Yacht Rescue Scenario & Cameron's Navy Submarine Experiences | 2 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Molly poses a playful yacht rescue scenario, prompting Cameron to share firsthand stories of submarine operations under hurricanes and underwater living constraints. |
Statements from this episode (29)
McCord: Sequoia and Lightspeed co-led Nominal's Series B, Alfred Lin joined board
“The round series B led by Sequoia specifically Alfred Lynn is a partner there who will be joining nominal board. We're super excited about that. And the round is also co-led by Lightspeed venture partners.”
McCord: Nominal signed Series B term sheet 10 days after starting pitches
“It honestly, from starting the yeah, from starting sort of formal, you know, pitches and conversations to signing a term, she was about 10 days.”
McCord: Sequoia spoke to 100% of Nominal's customers during Series B diligence
“In our case, like they, I think the Sequoia team spoke to, I think a hundred percent. I think they spoke to every customer of ours which was amazing.”
McCord: General Catalyst's Paul Kwan led Nominal's Series A about 18 months ago
“We were lucky to have a pretty fast Series A process as well that was led by General Catalyst, Paul Kwan. That was you know, about a year and a half ago now.”
McCord: Legacy Tools Like MATLAB and National Instruments Fail Modern Hardware Testing
“Scenario A, where you would use really old outdated software. Things like win plot people know, but a lot of MATLAB has used Python analysis, Python scripts, some of the national instruments, you know, tools, things like that to do modern test engineering. And…”
McCord: Software tools like Datadog and Grafana fail hardware testing
“Or you know, have modern technologies that were generally built in a software only world with like no consideration for hardware limitations or constraints. And so you might have new technologies like people use Tableau, right? Or like Looker or Grafana or Dat…”
Slattery: Nominal's early team surpassed engineering groups at SpaceX and Anduril
“Meeting the initial folks at Nominal, it was evident from those conversations that this team was above and beyond even those groups I had worked with at Andrel and at SpaceX, so that was extremely exciting.”
Slattery: SpaceX has invested millions into custom internal software toolchains
“Going to SpaceX, they've invested millions in their tool chain, everything from ERP to fleet management. To data analysis, obviously.”
McCord: Hardware development is shifting to tight continuous iteration pioneered by SpaceX
“The world is moving from this like type one hardware development where you will work really hard. You'll iterate on a prototype or a design of something, a widget, a machine, and then you will sort of set that design. You'll lock it and you will print manufact…”
McCord: Every deployed vehicle and drone is fundamentally a test asset
“Every asset, every drone, every plane, every, ah, you know, ground vehicle, every UUV is a test asset. Fundamentally, it's generating, you know, telemetry sensor data logs, just like you would a hardware in the loop, you know, test stand, or a test cell, or a …”
McCord: DoD is compressing hardware development lifecycles to 24 months
“The DoD is like shifting the way that it's thinking about a lot of these larger programs, trying to get away from 10, 12, 20 year program development life cycles. Like let's build the next exquisite, you know, bomber or exquisite plane or submarine. Right. Tho…”
Slattery: Onshoring hardware supply chains demands massive continuous component re-testing
“Once you find that vendor, the next thing that happens is testing. If I'm, you know, previously was buying my brushless motor from China, and now I'm gonna buy it from a US vendor or a Czech vendor, whoever it might be, that is a test campaign that needs to go…”
McCord: Not enough defense program cuts for startups to win big programs
“When I look at the sort of overall budgetary picture, like there's just not, there's not a enough. Of these big program cuts, I think for all of the amazing new companies building out there to like really get the big program or record wins that they want over …”
McCord: Traditional primes do things no defense startup can do
“The primes play a like really key role in national defense. They have resources, they have capabilities. They can do things frankly, that. You know, and say essentially no other startup can do. And so we need to treat them accordingly in that way.”
Slattery: SpaceX always checks to buy before deciding to build
“SpaceX is always going to look and see first if they can go and buy something before they go and build it themselves.”
Slattery: Custom hardware toolchains rarely generalize to subsequent product lines
“They might have built a tool chain that worked very well for product one, but almost always what we're seeing is that it's typically over tailored to that system in terms of the data types it supports, the analysis workflows, how commoditized it is. And then t…”
Slattery: Hardware acceleration depends on rapidly proving safety of minor improvements
“Where you got this acceleration, if you're a SpaceX or an Andrel, is how fast can I identify an improvement I want to make and then convince my customers That that is a safe improvement, and that I can deploy that into the field, whether it's new software or a…”
McCord: DoD programs conduct significant unnecessary hardware re-testing
“What we see is like, there's a lot of retests that happens that probably doesn't need to happen.”
McCord: Legacy software from National Instruments and Siemens has low NPS
“National instruments, lab use Siemens, you know, massive software, industrial software conglomerates that I've had, you know, billion dollar businesses here for decades. Generally there's like a very low NPS for those products. Like people don't like them. The…”
Slattery: SpaceX and Anduril diaspora is standardizing hardware data models
“One of the things that's made nominal possible now, or say three years ago, is that there is this crunch happening across all of these disparate industries in terms of the data types that they are using.
Where, 20 years ago, if we were going in and trying to i…”
McCord: Nominal is the de facto flight testing software for Shield AI's V-BAT
“They nominal is sort of, you know, become kind of a de facto piece of software for experimental flight tests, developmental flight tests how they're going about iterating on, you know, the V bat.”
Slattery: Maritime, nuclear, and aerospace share identical core telemetry needs
“What we're seeing, you know, maritime, nuclear, aerospace, is that we're not getting bombarded with a million different maritime-specific feature requests. Right. We're seeing a lot of commonality across these industries. Folks want the same answers. They want…”
McCord: Nominal reduces engineering data review from 24 hours to under 10 minutes
“Things that used to take 24 hours taking, like, under 10 minutes, right? And so, like, When you stack up those processes in an individual engineering layer, like it used to take me 24 hours to just get to look at this piece of data, and now it's 10 minutes.”
McCord: Government AI predictive maintenance claims are largely 'false goods'
“On the government side specifically, I think there's been a lot of like false goods that have been sold, predictive maintenance, prognostic, you know, type things that when you actually get down to it, like the data, the telemetry and the sensor data and the l…”
McCord: Nominal uses the exact same software for commercial and federal customers
“The exact same product serves commercial and federal customers. So there's like zero differentiation with other core connect there.”
McCord: Enterprise and dual-use sales require simultaneous bottom-up and executive alignment
“Building the technical alignment in base case with end users is like a thing you always have to do. And then being able to have this sort of like executive level alignment over what values actually being delivered, you know, if something like nominal is adopte…”
McCord: Nominal created 10-page investor RFI responses overnight
“We would put together 10 page responses overnight.”
McCord: Applied Intuition had 18 of the top 20 automotive OEMs as customers
“I, you know, and I worked at applied intuition. They had this incredible Slogan that I think it was just, you know, 18 of the top 20 automotive OEMs in their case, you know, trusted applied intuition, used applied intuition, like crazy stat. They literally had…”