Michael Autery, SFMBA ’26, a United States Navy Civil Engineer Corps officer with fifteen years of active service, joined host Christopher Reichert, MOT ’04, on Sloanies Talking with Sloanies to discuss his journey from active duty to entrepreneurship. Coming from a working-class background and skeptical of the business world, Autery enrolled in the MIT Sloan Fellows program not knowing what came next, but determined to find work that gave him the same sense of purpose he had found in the Navy. It was in 15.390 New Enterprises (also known as “Entrepreneurship 101”) taught by Bill Aulet, SF ’94 (Ethernet Inventors Professor of the Practice; Managing Director, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship)—through a deceptively simple assignment to generate twenty business ideas—that he landed on the one that would define his next chapter.

That idea became Gander Robotics, a venture-backed company building an autonomous underwater rescue swimmer to address one of maritime safety’s most persistent and deadly problems. Drawing on his Naval Academy electrical engineering background, a master’s in ocean engineering from Texas A&M, and firsthand experience with man overboard situations at sea, Autery identified a gap that technology had yet to fill: locating a person in the water before they disappear from sight. With survival rates of just 28% in the Navy and 17% on cruise ships, the urgency was clear. Autery and co-founder Lael Ayala won the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition unanimously—taking both the top prize and the Audience Choice Award—and secured over a million dollars in investment within a month.

Autery closed the conversation with advice for incoming MIT Sloan Fellows and a look at the road ahead for Gander. He urged prospective students to use every available moment before and during the summer term to clarify their direction, since the one-year program leaves little room to pivot. For himself, he summed up a life philosophy of continuous self-improvement without a fixed destination—enlisting in the Navy after failing out of college, earning his way into the Naval Academy as an enlisted sailor, and now building a company he believes can save lives at scale. His near-term goal is to land government contracts and get Gander’s autonomous rescue swimmer deployed on Navy ships, with the long-term ambition of broad commercial adoption and, eventually, the rank of admiral in the Navy Reserve.

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