Rylan started his career in the U.S. Navy as an engineering & surface warfare officer before pivoting into robotics after Harvard Business School. As an early leader at Amazon Robotics, he deployed thousands of industrial robots to warehouses around the country. When he saw a gap in the market, he founded 6 River Systems, a warehouse automation company that quickly commercialized the first collaborative, autonomous mobile robots for logistics. Rylan raised $45 million while growing 6 River, and sold it to Shopify for $450 million.

Austin started his professional journey as a U.S. Navy intelligence officer. Based in Washington D.C. he helped modernize classified Navy technology, such as the first interactive tablets in the Pentagon. Next, Austin led the intelligence watch teams on aircraft carrier strike groups, where his team built and maintained the fleet’s top secret battle map and supported combat, diplomatic, and intelligence operations. Austin left active duty to complete masters degrees at MIT & Harvard, where he helped grow Boston’s nascent defense tech ecosystem. A day after graduating business school, Austin flew out to Ukraine and started volunteering in a drone factory, where he built supply chains and collected front-line feedback to support multiple products still used in combat today.