Jarrad Delarso, '21, cofounds StareSafe to protect eye health

January 21, 2021
'The goal of StareSafe was to do something I had never done before,' he said.

When Jarrad Delarso, ‘21, found himself taking classes on a screen at home in March 2020, he knew right away he could start a business.

“Billy, my co-founder, and I had been brainstorming potential business opportunities and endeavors to explore during the height of COVID-19 and we stumbled upon the idea of blue light glasses,” Delarso said.

He co-founded StareSafe, a company that sells blue light blocking glasses to help protect the user’s eyesight and overall health, with William Buehler from University of Alabama.

The amount of time people spend on screens has skyrocketed during the pandemic. Delarso saw an opportunity, and business is booming.

“As we saw during the second half of the 2020 spring semester, we were spending a much greater amount of time in front of screens,” Delarso said. “Looking ahead, we recognized that there would be a large transition to a digital world. There has never been a better time to become more conscious of eye health.”

Blue light can affect your sleep and potentially cause disease. And according to Johns Hopkins, not only does prolonged exposure dry out your eyes, it can also reduce reading speed and lead to eye inflammation.

According to the StareSafe website, they are currently sold out of nearly all of their products, and more are in production due to demand.

“The goal of StareSafe was to do something I had never done before. As someone who has always had an entrepreneurial mindset, I had never fully gone out and launched a company before. StareSafe has given me the opportunity to wear many hats and experience the responsibility of roles I may never have had the chance to work in.”

He said he relied on the principles he learned in the Robins School get the company off the ground.

“The ability to act quickly is certainly a skill that I took from my Robins School experience in pursuing this endeavor,” Delarso said. “I thought back to the lessons I had learned the previous semester and I decided that everything did not have to be perfect. It was okay to make mistakes and in fact, making mistakes was encouraged as long as I was able to learn from them.”

You can find out more about StareSafe and other Spider businesses here.