--- title: What I Learned Going From Failed Navy Officer to $450M... description: Rylan Hamilton, CEO and co-founder of Blue Water Autonomy, shares his journey from Navy officer to building autonomous warships for the US Navy. He reflects on... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/what-i-learned-going-from-failed-navy-officer-to-450m-exit-blue-water-autonomy-rylan-hamilton-fshqfykb9 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: What I Learned Going From Failed Navy Officer to $450M Exit | Blue Water Autonomy, Rylan Hamilton | daily.dev og:description: Rylan Hamilton, CEO and co-founder of Blue Water Autonomy, shares his journey from Navy officer to building autonomous warships for the US Navy. He reflects on... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/what-i-learned-going-from-failed-navy-officer-to-450m-exit-blue-water-autonomy-rylan-hamilton-fshqfykb9 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/FSHqfYKb9.png og:image:alt: What I Learned Going From Failed Navy Officer to $450M Exit | Blue Water Autonomy, Rylan Hamilton og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # What I Learned Going From Failed Navy Officer to $450M Exit | Blue Water Autonomy, Rylan Hamilton **[EO](https://daily.dev/sources/entreprenueropp)** · 15 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Rylan Hamilton, CEO and co-founder of Blue Water Autonomy, shares his journey from Navy officer to building autonomous warships for the US Navy. He reflects on leadership lessons learned at sea, including 'deck plate leadership' and understanding what motivates people. After leaving the Navy, he joined Kiva Systems (later Amazon Robotics) and co-founded Six River Systems, which was acquired by Shopify. He then identified maritime autonomy for defense as a critical opportunity given China's shipbuilding dominance, founding Blue Water Autonomy to design ships from the keel up as software-defined vessels. The company has raised $50M from Google Ventures and has congressional backing of over $2 billion for its mission. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Blue Energy raises $380M to build grid-scale nuclear reactors in shipyards](https://daily.dev/posts/blue-energy-raises-380m-to-build-grid-scale-nuclear-reactors-in-shipyards-jcoptxrle) · TechCrunch · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Oracle sails AI onto Royal Navy flagship via edge cloud kit](https://daily.dev/posts/oracle-sails-ai-onto-royal-navy-flagship-via-edge-cloud-kit-jrwamwhqr) · The Register · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Ethan Thornton is trying to do everything all at once](https://daily.dev/posts/ethan-thornton-is-trying-to-do-everything-all-at-once-ehppmohgz) · TechCrunch · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Download: autonomous narco submarines, and virtue signaling chatbots](https://daily.dev/posts/the-download-autonomous-narco-submarines-and-virtue-signaling-chatbots-ewwcvzlpo) · MIT Technology Review · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#startup](https://daily.dev/tags/startup), [#leadership](https://daily.dev/tags/leadership), [#robotics](https://daily.dev/tags/robotics), [#autonomous-systems](https://daily.dev/tags/autonomous-systems), [#defense-tech](https://daily.dev/tags/defense-tech) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/what-i-learned-going-from-failed-navy-officer-to-450m-exit-blue-water-autonomy-rylan-hamilton-fshqfykb9) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"What I Learned Going From Failed Navy Officer to $450M Exit | Blue Water Autonomy, Rylan Hamilton","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-i-learned-going-from-failed-navy-officer-to-450m-exit-blue-water-autonomy-rylan-hamilton-fshqfykb9","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-i-learned-going-from-failed-navy-officer-to-450m-exit-blue-water-autonomy-rylan-hamilton-fshqfykb9"},"datePublished":"2026-02-24T14:36:15.413Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T14:36:34.883Z","description":"Rylan Hamilton, CEO and co-founder of Blue Water Autonomy, shares his journey from Navy officer to building autonomous warships for the US Navy. 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