Rylan Hamilton, cofounder of Blue Water Autonomy, discusses his entrepreneurial journey, covering lessons learned from acquisition and the importance.
Rylan Hamilton, cofounder of Blue Water Autonomy, discusses his entrepreneurial journey, covering lessons learned from acquisition and the importance of long-term commitment to a startup. He also shares leadership secrets from his Navy experience.
Guess one thing that comes to mind now is what do you think that experience gave you uh in terms of like the top three things that you apply uh on the way that you approach life and perhaps business? >> Yeah. So ownership is definitely one of them. When you're on a ship or when you're in the military, you can't just necessarily take no for an answer or if something doesn't work, say, I guess it doesn't work. like you're literally on a ship with your shipmates in the middle of the ocean and you just have to make sure everything works that the whole team kind of operates uh you know cohesively. Uh so ownership's one. Um the second is leading from the front. You have to be uh willing to do the job uh and kind of show people that you're willing to do whatever it takes. You can roll up your sleeves. You can work the long hours because if you're not willing to do that work, why would
anyone who was working for you be willing to do that? And then the third thing what I really appreciate from the Navy is and it's kind of like being at a startup. Uh I'd call it this wardroom mentality where when you're in the Navy, everyone like you know what everyone makes. Like literally your salary is posted on the wall. So it's not about getting promoted. It's not about a bonus or anything. It's just like we're all in this room together. How do we make this work? And what's the mission that's important? And so it really removes a lot of the politics and kind of other layers of bureaucracy that you get in bigger companies. And I feel like you have the same sense of camaraderie when you're at a startup.