Shaur

Co-Founder and Head of Digital @ Northwood Space || Venture Partner @ Also Capital || Trying to make the world a better place

[Shaur @ILIVETWICE]

Lucky to have such great co-founders, investors, and team members here at Northwood.

[Bridgit Mendler @bridgitmendler]

https://t.co/SJG4ezHrtO

[Shaur @ILIVETWICE]

@fikocian Happy 4th!

[Shaur @ILIVETWICE]

Happy birthday America, 250 looks good on you

[Northwood @NorthwoodSpace]

Today we're expanding our network to support the things spacecraft actually need to do now: high-volume enterprise backhaul, direct-to-cellular communications, compute in space.

https://t.co/qVd7iuN11j

[Bridgit Mendler @bridgitmendler]

It’s exciting to finally announce what Northwood has been working on behind the scenes – the newest addition to our network, Prism, which will support high throughput comms through space.

When we first founded Northwood, the pressing problem in front of us was the sheer volume of spacecraft that needed to be coordinated and successfully operate in a new dynamic environment.

This led to our first offering, Portal, which has changed spacecraft link access on many important dimensions. We can now fit the equivalent of ten 7.4 meter dishes, providing multi-orbit link capacity, into a single 20ft ISO shipping container that can be manufactured in weeks, shipped over air freight, and stood up in hours. A capacity shortfall that looked like it would take years to resolve now has a solution for how to hit scale.

Our second offering is about envisioning the next set of challenges for space. As more of our economy moves to orbit, we need to design networking that meets or beats terrestrial performance. Prism is designed for the next step in expectations around throughput, latency and reliability. This is true industrialization of space networks.

Our solution here was also baked from first principles — a mixture of old and new. Northwood’s vision for high throughput networking is high frequency RF (today meeting customers in S/X/Ka, and in next version will be 100gbps+), a standard 2.4 meter building block that deploys in hours and can be digitally combined to adjust for different orbits and resiliency conditions (need to keep piping data to customers when it’s raining? We got you).

The real thing I want to celebrate is the pace of development that Northwood continues to set. In 2.5 years, we have:
- Sprinted through three block changes of Portal
- Gone from clean sheet to deployed Prism unit in 6 months
- Deployed a total of 14 antennas across 2 continents, at 5 sites with another 13 sites across 8 countries underway

These accomplishments are our data points that there’s no space networking problem too big for us and the best is yet to come!

Huge shoutout to Mariko McMurty and Kiran Raj who each lead a portion of our Prism product and the whole of company effort across digital, RF/EE, mechanical, manufacturing and production, supply chain and logistics, sites and network operations. Let’s keep building!

[Mike Annunziata @nunzi46]

Awesome seeing @CapitalAlso portcos on the cover of @WSJ this morning by @MicahMaidenberg

Unlike past hype cycles, the new leaders are emerging with real (expanding!) contracts and flight-proven hardware

An exciting time to be alive!

@NorthwoodSpace @K2SpaceCo @VardaSpace

[Mike Annunziata @nunzi46]

Founder that raised a big round but hasn’t shipped any hardware

[Shaur @ILIVETWICE]

RT @nunzi46: The first company we backed that seeded the company with their own money is now worth over $2B

@atlasmotion is the second.…

[Shaur @ILIVETWICE]

Mike always chooses the best people. Can’t wait to work with them and see all the cool companies they bring in
🔥🔥🔥

[Mike Annunziata @nunzi46]

Getting close to my favorite time of year…@CapitalAlso Summer Scout season!

I’m excited to announce this year’s class, which includes:

- A high school aerospace engineer who moonlights as a poet
- A marathon runner who studies how we can use our brain to control our iPhones; and
- A Twitter influencer and philosopher who stars on Team USA Racquetball in her free time

Please welcome @rushilkukreja, @trevorxingxie, and (returning scout!) @esha_hq to the squad!

Our job as early stage investors is to catalyze a select number of special founders and companies. We bring that same mentality to catalyzing early people and careers.

This year’s class brings us to 8 AC Scout members since launching the program in 2024. Alums have spoken at our AGM (@maximsiv), founded companies we’ve seeded (@sai_mattapalli_), and even joined us full-time on our investment team (@BrandesWoodall).

If you haven’t already, reach out to them! I promise it will be an interesting conversation :)

[Shaur @ILIVETWICE]

@neelkunjur @K2SpaceCo congrats !! Absolute killers

[Mike Annunziata @nunzi46]

Free at 11am today?

Tune in and listen to me, @itsmoislam, and @JackKuhr yap it up LIVE on the @NYSE trading floor!

Talkin’ big satellites, orbital data centers, and I’m sure much more…

[a16z @a16z]

Assemble a team.

@bridgitmendler

[Suffiyan Malik @suffiyanmalikk]

Broke into Top 100 on Apple Podcasts in the Technology category for the first time.

@WeThe_Builders is nothing without its people. Thank you to all the guests who have been on the show so far!

[Suffiyan Malik @suffiyanmalikk]

Incredible day @HillValleyForum yesterday. We covered some of the topics from the forum on the sides including “the next American century” and “rebuilding industry”.

Record interviews with:

- David Friedberg (@friedberg)
- Dmitri Alperovitch (@DAlperovitch)
- Shahin Farshchi (@Farshchi)
- Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz (@CobiBGantz)
- Bill Thalheimer (@billythalheimer)

We’ll be publishing throughout the week

[Bridgit Mendler @bridgitmendler]

Underrated way to go fast is to be ok with saying the perceived dumb thing that is blocking you from an outcome. One of the things that our team is proudest of is cultivating humility/approachability. To be on a team that is entirely focused on the goal and not defending ego it is liberating.

Thanks for having me @TheFP + @SulkinMaya !

[Bridgit Mendler @bridgitmendler]

As one of my faves @nunzi46 says, have fun, play to win :)

[Shaur @ILIVETWICE]

@luci_holland @bridgitmendler @CapitalAlso Thanks Luci!

[Shaur @ILIVETWICE]

@oyhsu @nunzi46 @CapitalAlso @NorthwoodSpace Thanks Oliver!

[Shaur @ILIVETWICE]

@bridgitmendler @CapitalAlso Thanks B <3

[Shaur @ILIVETWICE]

@BrandesWoodall @nunzi46 @CapitalAlso @NorthwoodSpace Excited to be here!

[Shaur @ILIVETWICE]

Honored to be part of the team @nunzi46 🍾

[Mike Annunziata @nunzi46]

More friends, more fun at @CapitalAlso!

We’re thrilled to welcome @ILIVETWICE, known to most as “Shaur”, as our newest Venture Partner.

We first met Shaur as part of our initial investment in @NorthwoodSpace in 2023. When we asked a mutual friend about him, the friend was unequivocal—“Shaur’s the smartest person I’ve ever met. Also the kindest.”

Close to 3 years since that first interaction, our lived experience has proven that friend’s assessment remarkably accurate. In that time, he helped take Northwood from inception through a $100M Series B, scaling the org from 3 co-founders to over 60 FTEs. Last year, the market also took notice of his contributions, with him receiving the Matthew Isakowitz Rising Star award and being named to Forbes 30 Under 30.

From day one Shaur’s been generous with his time and network, sharp and thoughtful with his technical and market insights, and a staunch supporter of Also and our broader community.

Most importantly, he’s values-aligned with everything we stand for–high integrity, low ego, and finding joy in the daily grind of solving hard problems. Bringing him into the fold in a more intentional way was a no brainer.

Shaur joins @WillBruey, Colin, @jimcox25, and @danielaperlein, our incredible group of Venture Partners whose lived experience helps them understand the challenges and complexity of building in Hard Tech. They’re an amazing resource to us and our portfolio companies as they navigate hiring, fundraising, strategy, and manufacturing at scale.

A fun fact about Shaur: at one point he served as a volunteer firefighter, graduating as valedictorian of his fire academy class – a small glimpse into the kind of intensity, commitment, and service mindset he brings to everything he does.

Welcome to the team, Shaur!