This former Navy SEAL spent 5 years in private equity working 100-hour weeks before quitting and building a $9 billion startup

At just 46 years old, Dino Mavrookas’ 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 startup Saronic—proof that your first career doesn’t have to be your last.

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

“After 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,” Mavrookas said in a recent interview on the Sourcery podcast.

“I walked into the living room one night and I told my wife that I had to quit my job.”

Mavrookas knew he wanted to start a defense-tech company, but he didn’t 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.

“I just knew that I had to go and focus my energy there, and I wasn’t 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,” he........

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