By Mike Harris Friday, June 23rd, 2023

After several decades in the Navy and the defense sector, longtime Camarillo resident Scott Kolsow, in 2021, felt the time was right to take his career to the next level.

“Loved my 20 years in the Navy,” Koslow, 52, told the Business Times on June 20. “But I always had an entrepreneurial drive, so that was the goal: To start my own business.”

A year ago, he achieved that objective, buying Synectic Solutions Inc., private missile experts for the U.S. Navy then based in Oxnard, for $3.1 million with the help of an SBA loan.

Koslow assumed ownership in June 2022 and it’s been “an amazing ride” since then, he said.

“Just incredible,” Koslow, the company’s president and chief executive officer, said. “I feel like I have all the right skills and there have been almost no surprises. I feel like I’ve been trained to do this.”

After purchasing the company, Koslow moved it to new headquarters in Camarillo.

Synectic says it’s “proudly veteran-owned.”

A native of New York, Koslow was in the Navy from 1989 to 2008, much of that time stationed at the Point Magu portion of Naval Base Ventura County, living in nearby Camarillo with his wife and three children.

While on active duty, he was a technical expert.

After leaving the Navy, Koslow for roughly the next 12 years worked for various defense firms in senior-level positions, including Northrop, Valkyrie Enterprises and VT Group, according to his LinkedIn resume.

During that period, he was also a division director and senior contracts manager for the Naval Sea Systems Command, which has a force of more than 80,000 civilian, military and contract support personnel.

He worked for it at Naval Base Port Hueneme from 2010 through 2016.

Koslow started looking around to buy his own defense business in 2021.

“I really felt that, based on my skills, the industry needed somebody to help lead and drive a better product,” he said. “And I thought that I could do that.”

Koslow is an expert in management functions and has an in-depth understanding of government cost accounting standards (CAS) and contract cost and pricing strategies, according to a Synectic press release.

He has more than 10 years of experience negotiating $100 million-plus contracts.

He also has a deep understanding of complex agreements — domestic and international — foreign military sales, and U.S. contracts, according to the release.

Koslow considered several companies to buy but ultimately settled on Synectic in 2022.

“I was able to get a loan and put a deal together and take ownership of a great company which has been around since 1997,” he said.

The previous owner, Lynn Dines, had put the company up for sale as she headed toward retirement.

Synectic works with the Navy and Naval Base Ventura County, providing the company’s experts to ensure that missiles are in top working shape once the Navy buys and takes delivery of them from such manufacturers as Northrup and Boeing, Koslow said.

“We support weapons readiness, making sure that when our Navy needs to use those weapons, they are ready to perform,” he said.

Synectic provides everything missile-related from engineering to technical to writing reports on how the missiles perform, he said.

“Once they’re on board ship or at an airbase, that’s when we step in and do inspections and servicing and the support at that end,” Koslow said.

“It’s soup to nuts, everything missile-related,” he said.

Synectic has about 120 employees at its Camarillo headquarters and satellite offices in Ridgecrest, Calif., southern Maryland and Tucson, Arizona.

Yearly revenues are more than $14 million, Koslow said.

Synectic’s future is bright, he said.

“Just this past year, we already had 35% growth,” he said. “We’re just super excited about the future.

“There’s a lot of scary geopolitical stuff going on in the world right now,” Koslow added. “We’re playing a critical role in making sure that our country is ready and safe.”

A July 13 ribbon cutting is planned to celebrate Synectic’s new ownership and new building lease.

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