The Underdog: From Dead Broke to $30,000,000 | Starter Story

Casey Halliday used to avoid looking at his bank account because he didn’t want to know how much was in there. He was three months into his marriage, dead broke, working the 7 a.m. shift at a Beverly Hills restaurant, and living with his mom. A few years later, he was president of a company that had sold over a hundred million dollars worth of silicone wedding rings. The gap between those two points was not a straight line. It was a sequence of scrappy, uncomfortable, and often desperate decisions made by two people who had no business experience and no money, but who refused to stop moving.

The Problem That Made the Product

The idea for what became Qalo started as a shared frustration. Casey and his friend and eventual co-founder Ted were both newly married and both kept losing their metal wedding rings. It didn’t make sense to wear a traditional ring to the gym or while working a restaurant shift. “You don’t wear a Rolex to the gym,” Casey says. “People have very specific accessories for very specific things.” Ted went looking for a silicone alternative and came back empty-handed. That absence of a product was the entire business thesis. Neither man had ever started a company. They were both trying to make it as actors. But they made a handshake deal based on what each could afford to contribute: Ted had some savings, Casey had time and energy. Casey’s goal was modest—r