My name is Rob Valli. I’m the founder of OUTCAST.  I build the websites, I lick the stamps, and if I had to summarize my personality in one line, it would be this:

“Hyper-competitive control freak, with no sense of moderation, and an extreme tolerance for failure.”

...It’s unvarnished, funny, and incredibly accurate—and it explains a lot about how I approach life in general, and design and work, in particular.

I grew up in central Pennsylvania, spending most of my time outside: hunting, shooting, and riding mini-bikes. My father was a mechanical engineer who founded a drilling equipment company and held a Class 3 firearms license; my mother was an artist, with pieces in various museums and galleries. Precision and creativity lived in the same house, and that shaped my worldview.

I studied at Gonzaga College High School, in D.C., and Environmental Studies and Policy at Boston University, graduating both with honors, after which I lived alone in a tent for 6 months, doing field work on an Apache reservation in AZ.

I later moved to Idaho, to work for The Nature Conservancy, as a field biologist. In 1994 I worked for the largest dog sled touring operation, with 250 dog kennel, out of Snowmass Village, Colorado...

In 1995, I discovered the internet and quickly moved into SEO and digital marketing, building more than a hundred websites and several companies, over the years. I used this newfound cashflow to fund my true addiction: dog sled racing and my backcountry guide service.

I had lived in Alaska for a year in a one room log cabin, to train under a seven-time world champion sprint kennel, Charlie and Roxy Wright Champaine, and then built my own racing team and outfitting business in Utah, Wild Dog Mushing Company...

In a few years, I went from 'newcomer', to opening my own touring company, where I gave people rides on my race team... to setting records on the Colorado Mountain Musher race circuit, to winning their 10-dog mid-distance championship... 

In 2002, I met Katie, Matt and Al, and was featured on the Today Show, back when that was the biggest Morning Show in the country, right in the middle of the Olympics. And my company was hired by Samsung (the main sponsor) for 4 days for a private party, taking out all their big wigs.  VISA, IBM, GE, ABC and other mega brands also hired me to give their top brass, my top treatment...

I also met Brooke Burke the Playmate model and TV personality, and Art Mann (football) when they featured me on Wild on E!...

But for a few years, I raced all over the Western US; Washington, Oregon, Wyoming, Idaho, went out to Upper Penninsula of Michigan once, as well all the way up past Quebec City, on an island on the St. Laurence, only to get my Mid-distance ass kicked, by a bunch of Sprinters, when I tried my hand at the Open Pro Tour…

I was also the first to sign up for a 200-mile World Cup race in eastern Siberia, back in 2004. I wrote a big blog post on it, here. We raced around five volcanoes in under 72 hours. It was so extreme they only did it once...

I won Bronze, behind the French teams, but I beat all the Russians in their own backyard, including the Natives with their traditional techniques and gear, as well as their most advanced; the guy I beat in 4th place was an ex-KGB fighter pilot.

After retiring from racing, I shifted into designing firearms —modular Glock conversion kits (that the BATF shut down before it got too far off the ground)...

...a super cool .44 magnum gas-piston auto-revolver, that shot from the 6 o'clock position for faster followup shots, that I designed for the CEO of Taurus, but it was too expensive to build (and probably no one wanted besides me)...

...and random other studies and a few provisional patents.  Some involved changing things mechanically, but some were purely cosmetic, like my Sig, in full party dress, pictured here, for my new company 'PinkGun', which allowed women to pick a firearm and decorate the different parts however they liked...

...that is actually where the first 'product builder' idea came from.  Plus I just think it's ganster AF:)  I live in South Florida.  Everybody carries guns.  So I figure if I ever had to pull this thing out, I bet I'd either scare them to death, or kill them with laughter, before I ever needed to send the first round:)

I also designed a solar powered one man boat, with a geodesic hull and a PVC frame, using standard fittings, that anyone could build from parts at Home Depot...

But the pattern is always the same: build a model, test it to failure, refine it, and repeat until it works in the real world. And OUTCAST has sprouted out of that same mindset; I needed a watch that didn’t exist, so I designed one. Then another. Each new piece started with a specific problem to solve, and was pushed through the same cycle of testing and iteration I’ve used in every other part of my life, to test my dogs, my gear, or myself.

For several years, I traded crypto and had a big following on LinkedIn, under the name, "Max Pain", and was known for my deadly accurate trading, which was actually attributable to the trading algorithms I was licensing under my trading company Cerberus Dynamics...

...that ended with big thud, after I had a hacker bypass 2FA on Xmas day 3 years, and there was no way to recover.  I ended up suing the exchange and they settled, but by that time, Max was dead.

Long Live Max.

That one actually hurt, so I took a little while to settle myself, and then I decided while I waited for the next idea, I tried my hand at flipping rolexes, but the market was turning, and I saw the writing on the wall, so I exited that.  Not most people know, I'm the one behind WatchCollector.org...

That's how I vented. My distraction. A 170 website on watches, including a 10 chapter book on Horology, and a 70 company directory, researched by me and written by ai.  It also had a store full of cool things.  Red Coffin Boxes, vintage Rolexes that were unique...

...what can I say?  I'm an ex-SEO.  What do you expect? By the way, that site is actually for sale, and I could use the money, and you could use the traffic.  I just don't have time to do anything with it now that I started OUTCAST.  In fact, I sold my last Rolex after they released their bubble watch, and since then, I'm only rocking my own OUTCAST brand watches, because if anyone embodies the spirit of an outcast, it's me:)

Today I live in Florida, still spend as much time with my family and outdoors as I can, and continue to treat watches the way I treated racing sleds and mechanical prototypes: no shortcuts, no pretending, and no interest in doing something if it's already been done before.  The world didn't need me to design another dive watch, so I didn't.

So if OUTCAST feels different, it’s because it’s built from that background — one person’s stubborn insistence on gear that earns its place, one design at a time, built on a foundation of iteration and real-life extreme stress testing, by a guy that understands that a great watch, isn't actually a great watch, if it doesn't really do what you need it to do, to get the job done, on time.