Today I was excited to be joined by David Marella, Senior M&A Associate at BakerHostetler. Always one for superlatives, I would like to recognize Marella as the first Ocean County native on the podcast. Something of a hometown hero, Marella began his education at Toms River East High School. As an undergraduate student, Marella experienced a change of pace at Rutgers University where obtained his bachelor’s in Economics and Political Science; he obtained his JD at Seton Hall Law School in 2015 where he graduated Cum Laude. David Marella began his legal career as a Corporate Associate at Gibbons P.C. in Newark, where he worked from 2016 to 2017 and then returned after a six-month stint in government service. In 2017, Marella served as an Advisor to the Executive Director of the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis within the Executive Office of the President. He then resumed his corporate law practice at Gibbons before clerking for Paul B. Matey at the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 2019. After completing his clerkship, Marella returned to Gibbons as a Corporate Associate and remained there until 2021. He subsequently joined Squire Patton Boggs as a Corporate Associate in New York, where he worked for nearly three years before moving to BakerHostetler in 2024. He currently serves as a Corporate M&A Associate at BakerHostetler in New York, advising clients on mergers and acquisitions and other corporate transactions.

Today I was excited to be joined by Andrew Watson, co-founder of Igloo Media. Professional-athelete-turned-serial-entrepreneur, Watson’s career began on the junior tennis circuit, where he competed internationally and nationally (in the UK). His efforts earned him a scholarship to the University of Memphis, a place that served as a  stepping stone for his later professional career. After graduating in 2018, Watson joined the professional circuit, playing ITF, Futures, and Challenges, ultimately obtaining a world career high of 535. When tour life offered reprieve from its demanding schedule, Watson took up an even more arduous pastime–founding a company. In 2019, Watson and a couple co-founders–tennis players really are gentlemen (at least off the court)-- started Electric Boarding Company (an e-vehicle reseller) as a way to beef up the bank account. After scaling the company for 2 years, the team sold the company to Agora Brands as a way to join a broader ecosystem of founders. I think I’ll officially diagnose Watson with a bite from the startup bug, and here’s my evidence: in 2022, Watson started Igloo Media, a performance marketing agency that helps founders make sense of e-commerce (two startups in any time span meets the threshold for a serial entrepreneur). With some travel advice at the end, and a digression into college and career, this episode is fun and informative.

Tristan Pollock is the Managing Director of the Electrify Nevada Accelerator at gener8tor, a national accelerator program backing early-stage energy, battery, critical minerals, and AI infrastructure companies in Nevada.

He's also Founding Partner of Cool Climate Collective and co-founded two companies, SocialEarth and Storefront. Over 15 years in startups and venture, he's been a founder, investor, and ecosystem builder.

Nevada is his current focus, and he'd argue it's the most interesting energy economy in the country right now. The only U.S. state active across all seven stages of the lithium loop. Home to the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, Redwood Materials, and a growing bet from OpenAI. Most people haven't caught up yet.

Life after One-L: This is the unofficial (and unaffiliated) podcast auditory extension of your favorite legal-drama series, Suits. Joining me today is Megha Parekh, Chief Legal Officer of the Jacksonville Jaguars. The first NJ native on the podcast, this Manalapan(ian?) started her career at Harvard, obtaining her undergraduate in three years before graduating magna cum laude from HLS in 2008. While a law student, Parekh interned at the Boston Red Sox, an experience that served as her entry point into sports law. Interviewing in 2007 and 2008, Parekh began at Proskauer Rose—having declined other firms’ offers—where her early work in sports law expanded into M&A and international deals amid the financial crisis. In 2013, after working on Shahid Khan’s acquisition of the Jacksonville Jaguars, Parekh would join the team herself as part of the in-house counsel team. Today, Parekh serves as the CLO and executive vice-president of the 2026 AFC South champions.

For this episode of One the Come Up, I was joined by Calvin Bohn, former co-founder of Smalls and Head of Partner Success at Thrive. Starting his career at Yale, Bohn was a reporter and broadcaster for the Bulldogs while pursuing his degree in humanities. Unsure of what to do after college, Bohn’s first job was at the front desk of a four-star hotel in New York as part of a rotational managerial track. After two years of working at the hotel, where he scaled intake from $0 to $150,000 in ARR in his department, Bohn was bitten by the startup bug. He and his co-founder realized a gap in the catfood market: while there were three dog food brands at the time that made healthy dog foods, there were no companies making healthy cat food. And so was born Smalls, a company that makes human-grade, gently cooked cat food. Bohn and his co-founder scaled the company and completed nine-million dollars in fundraising in 2020. After transitioning away from the company in 2021, Bohn works today at Thrive, a lending platform for merchants.

Joining me for today’s podcast is Tom Coburn, the CEO of Waking Up. Coburn’s career began at Boston College far from entrepreneurship. Originally pursuing a pre-med path, Coburn was even accepted to Tufts Med school while in his sophomore year and started a double major in Theology, before a startup pitch competition shifted his focus to entrepreneurship. Competing in this competition, Coburn created the original idea for Jebbit, which was then a website for companies to run their advertisements and quiz viewers to gauge engagement, paying the viewer for each correct question.Through several iterations and business cycles, the company evolved into a platform where marketers could create interactive experience and capture 1st party data. Coburn and his co-founders sold Jebbit to Blueconic, where Corburn is now on the board. After the sale, Coburn transitioned to the role of CEO wt WakingUp, a meditation app.

If you’re like me and navigating the college application process, you may have heard of today’s company, UStrive, but you also may not of heard of its founder and today’s guest, Michael Carter. In the event the latter fact is true, you’re in the right place. Carter’s career began as a freshman at WashU, where he recognized that many qualified high school students were not pursuing 4-year college educations simply because they did not have adequate guidance resources in high school to help them navigate post high school life. Creating a solution to this issue, Carter started (what was then known as) Strive for College, a platform that connects aspiring high school students with college mentors to help them navigate the admission and financial processes of college. After growing for several years as exclusively an in person mentoring program, Strive switched in 2013 to an online platform to reach more students. Today, the company has helped over nine million students across 200 countries and has expanded its offerings to a wider variety career development consultings. 

The podcast is back! and joining me for the first conversation in almost two months is Angel Low, Venture Capitalist and Operator @ The Hive. Low's career began at Beijing University where she obtained her degree in economics. After graduating, she landed her first job in the ultra competitive Chinese job market as an analyst at Huisheng Consulting Group. Today, Low works at The Hive in Malaysia, where she oversees how the firm invests its $50 million to drive Malaysia's startup ecosystem. As the my guest join me from Southeast Asia, Low brings to the podcast a unique and diverse perspective on international dynamics and the Asian ecosystem.

A little bit late in the makings, this is an episode from the archives! I don't know how this conversation slipped between the cracks. Originally recorded in March of 2025, this was the 23rd podcast. Enjoy!

Today I was joined by Dr. Alexei Mlodinow, founding CEO of Surgical Innovations Associates (SIA), a med tech company spun out of Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine and Kellogg School of Management in 2016, and acquired by Integra LifeSciences in 2022. Alexei’s career began at UC Santa Barbara where he studied business economics and Japanese language and culture. You might be asking yourself at this point: I thought he was a doctor, where was his premed? I was wondering the same thing, so I asked him: he took the necessary medical courses on the side. Ever get the impression that the higher education system is trying to bottleneck your career before it even begins? It was refreshing to learn some academic freedom is allowed; if you’re considering medicine, you don’t necessarily pigeonhole yourself by initially studying something else. Enrolling in Northwestern Medical School in 2012, Mlodinow was recruited by his research mentor to work on a device designed to enhance soft tissue support in surgical procedures. This was the genesis for SIA: Mlodinow would grow the company to 25+ employees, raise $23 million in equity funding and NIH grants, and lead the sale to Integra in 2022. If you think there are 24 hours in a day, I’ll direct you to Dr. Mlodinow at this time. In 2020, while pursuing his MD and running SIA, Mlodinow also co-founded RapidRona (acquired 2021), a Covid testing platform. Mlodinow began his plastic surgery residency in 2021 and ultimately left to take a sabbatical recently, after deciding he prefers medical innovation to clinical practice.