We sat down with Rylan Hamilton, the Co-Founder and CEO of Blue Water Autonomy, to learn more about his entrepreneurial journey.
As the U.S. Navy faces rising global threats and urgent capability gaps, a new generation of founders is stepping in with hard-earned domain expertise and bold technical ambition. One of them is Rylan Hamilton — a Navy veteran and serial robotics entrepreneur — who’s building software-defined, modular ships designed for autonomy, flexibility, and scale. We sat down with Rylan to discuss his journey from the Persian Gulf to startup boardrooms, and how Blue Water Autonomy is reimagining the naval fleet from the keel up.
Eclipse: What led you from a Navy career into entrepreneurship?
Rylan: My path was definitely nonlinear. I joined the Navy after 9/11, driven by a love for the ocean and a sense of duty. I served as a surface warfare engineering officer, eventually becoming a navigator on a frigate in the Pacific. Those years taught me just how complex and maintenance-heavy naval ships are — and how critical reliability and teamwork are at sea. After the Navy, I worked in construction management, then pivoted to business school and ultimately into tech, starting with Vistaprint and later Kiva Systems (which became Amazon Robotics). That eventually led me to co-found 6 River Systems (acquired by Shopify in 2019), and now, Blue Water Autonomy.
Eclipse: How did Blue Water Autonomy come together?
It started with a conversation between myself and my now co-founder, , a Navy intel officer. We shared a belief that autonomous vessels could fundamentally reshape naval operations, but we didn’t jump in with a product in mind. We spent months doing deep customer research — talking to Navy contacts, understanding needs, mission gaps, and tech requirements. Eventually, we saw a clear opportunity to build smaller, autonomous ships that could be cost-effective, flexible, and resilient.
