Stephen Slattery (Growth & Product at Nominal, formerly at SpaceX) explains 'Delta qualification'—how modern hardware companies iterate rapidly without repeating full qualification test campaigns.
“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 new part.”
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More from Stephen Slattery
Opinion
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.”
Stephen SlatteryJun 12, 2025▶ 11:48Sequoia Leads $75M Series B Into Nominal | Alfred Lin Joins Board · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
AssertionNot checkable as stated
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.”
Stephen SlatteryJun 12, 2025▶ 26:11Sequoia Leads $75M Series B Into Nominal | Alfred Lin Joins Board · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
Insight
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…”
Stephen SlatteryJun 12, 2025▶ 29:34Sequoia Leads $75M Series B Into Nominal | Alfred Lin Joins Board · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
Insight
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…”
Stephen SlatteryJun 12, 2025▶ 48:34Sequoia Leads $75M Series B Into Nominal | Alfred Lin Joins Board · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
Insight
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…”
Stephen SlatteryJun 12, 2025▶ 58:58Sequoia Leads $75M Series B Into Nominal | Alfred Lin Joins Board · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
AssertionNot checkable as stated
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.”
Stephen SlatteryJun 12, 2025▶ 13:06Sequoia Leads $75M Series B Into Nominal | Alfred Lin Joins Board · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
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