{"id":620767,"date":"2026-09-10T21:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T21:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/620767\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T21:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T21:42:09","slug":"this-ex-navy-seal-spent-5-years-in-private-equity-working-100-hour-weeks-before-building-a-9-billion-startup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/620767\/","title":{"rendered":"This ex-Navy SEAL spent 5 years in private equity working 100-hour weeks before building a $9 billion startup"},"content":{"rendered":"

At just 46 years old, Dino Mavrookas\u2019 career already looks more expansive than most, spanning three distinct roles: Navy SEAL, private-equity investor, and now cofounder and CEO of $9.25 defense-tech<\/a> startup Saronic\u2014proof that your first career doesn\u2019t have to be your last.<\/p>\n

His latest career pivot came just four years ago, when Mavrookas was a senior associate at Austin-based private equity firm Vista Equity Partners<\/a>. However, after half a decade in finance\u2014likely bringing in a six-figure salary\u2014Mavrookas began to question whether he wanted to spend the rest of his career on the same path.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter five years, I started to look around and say, is this what I want to do for the next 20 or 30 years of my life? Like, I learned a ton about investing. I learned a ton about operating companies, but is this what I wanted my career to be? And the answer was no,\u201d Mavrookas said in a recent interview on the Sourcery podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI walked into the living room one night and I told my wife that I had to quit my job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mavrookas knew he wanted to start a defense-tech company, but he didn\u2019t yet know what the business would be. What he did know was that he needed to create the time and space to figure it out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just knew that I had to go and focus my energy there, and I wasn\u2019t going to come up with Saronic, or at that point whatever the idea was, if I was working 80 to 100 hours a week at a finance firm,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That leap has proved to be a lucrative one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mavrookas co-founded Saronic in 2022, focusing on the development of autonomous maritime vehicles. The Austin-based firm has become one of the fastest-growing in defense tech, with a $9.25 billion valuation and a workforce of more than 1,000 employees. It is also expanding aggressively: Saronic currently has more than 200 open roles, and earlier this year announced<\/a> plans for \u201cPort Alpha,\u201d a next-generation shipyard in Brownsville, Texas, that the company says will create 10,000 jobs and generate billions of dollars in investment.<\/p>\n

How being a Navy SEAL prepared Mavrookas for entrepreneurship\u2014and the C-suite<\/p>\n

For Gen Z workers who feel intensive pressure<\/a> to map out their entire careers\u2014and pick a trajectory that\u2019s simultaneously AI-proof<\/a>, lucrative, and also interesting\u2014Mavrookas\u2019 path offers a different lesson: You don\u2019t necessarily need to know exactly where you\u2019re going before making a change.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In his case, each experience built on the one before it, eventually giving him a combination of technical, military, and business expertise that he could bring to the C-suite.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Before his time in finance, Mavrookas graduated in 2003 from Rutgers University with a degree in computer engineering. He then joined the Navy, spending 11 years as a Navy SEAL, including eight deployments and five years on SEAL Team Six.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That high-stakes experience dramatically shaped how he approaches decision-making as a CEO. Mavrookas has said one of the biggest lessons he took from his time as a SEAL was the importance of making decisions with the information available\u2014and then executing quickly.<\/p>\n

\u201cA good decision doesn\u2019t always have a good outcome, and a bad decision doesn\u2019t always have a bad outcome,\u201d Mavrookas said in an interview with McKinsey<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to focus on the decision-making process. Make good decisions with the information that you have and then execute adeptly. A perfect plan with mediocre execution will lose to a mediocre plan with excellent execution every time. Our goal is to deter a conflict, regardless of when it happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortune reached out to Saronic for further comment.<\/p>\n

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says Navy SEAL traits are good for business<\/p>\n

Navy SEALs have long been up as a model for speed, execution, and accountability\u2014critical traits that carry into the business world.<\/p>\n

In fact, JPMorgan Chase<\/a> CEO Jamie Dimon<\/a> has specifically pointed to the SEALs as an example of how he wants small teams inside his 300,000-employee-strong finance giant to operate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe teams needed to tackle [specific problems] should be small and authorized with the decision-making ability to move and act like Navy SEALs or the Army\u2019s Delta Force,\u201d Dimon wrote in a letter to shareholders<\/a> earlier this year. \u201cThis is trench warfare; it\u2019s about fighting for every inch, moving quickly, and getting things done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dimon and Mavrookas have another interest in common: shipbuilding<\/a>. As the U.S. looks to revitalize its domestic construction, Dimon has become increasingly vocal<\/a> about the need to train a new generation of skilled workers to build the ships.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need 300,000 electricians, welders, etc. to build ships in the next five or 10 years,\u201d Dimon told CNBC<\/a> in July, speaking from the Philadelphia Navy Yard.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt fits what we call the American dream: getting kids skills or all workers\u2019 skills that they have jobs that could pay 80-, 90-, $100,000 a year after you know a year or two of training. This lifts up America. It helps build the defense industry,\u201d Dimon added.<\/p>\n

As Saronic works to expand the shipbuilding industry through its new products and technological advancements, JPMorgan has committed $24 million through loans and philanthropic grants to support a new submarine manufacturing and assembly facility in Philadelphia. The funding is also expected to expand workforce training and apprenticeship programs for \u201cthousands\u201d of prospective welders, electricians<\/a>, pipefitters, and other skilled trades workers<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At just 46 years old, Dino Mavrookas\u2019 career already looks more expansive than most, spanning three distinct roles:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[263550,72,71596,2940,13640,175341,1823,191,14547,61,60,40256,1728,19680,108925],"class_list":["post-620767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-aerospace-and-defense","tag-business","tag-career-change","tag-careers","tag-chief-executive-officer-ceo","tag-defense-industry","tag-entrepreneurs","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-founders","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-navy","tag-private-equity","tag-skills","tag-view-from-the-c-suite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}