One the Come Up

An interesting episode on modern slavery.

Griffel’s career began at NYU, where he double majored in philosophy and finance (the first guest to study either major and to attend NYU). Beginning his career in 2010 as Head of Marketing at appssavvy, he led company-wide marketing initiatives before founding The Front Labs in 2011, a product-focused incubation lab in New York. In 2013, he co-founded One Month (YC ‘13), serving as CEO and later...

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...

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 graduatin...

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, investo...

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. Whi...

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 t...

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 crea...

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 e...

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,...

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...

For this episode, I was joined by Amy Zitelman, the CEO and Co-founder of Soom Foods, a Tahini brand. Completing their first sale in 2013, Zitelman and her two sisters founded Soom to capitalize on tahini’s relative obscurity in the American market. While tahini is a primary ingredient in everybody’s favorite dip - hummus - few people realize the full versatility of this delicious spread. But Soom...

Joining me on today’s episode is Rachel Mercer, MD of Design and Customer Experience at JPMorganChase. Mercer started her career at Northeastern University, where she obtained her Bachelor’s in Design and Interactive media. A unique part of Northeastern University is the co-op program which rotates 6 months of full time work with 6 months of coursework. In 2011, Mercer started at CP+B as a UX Desi...

For one of the most fun conversations I’ve had on the podcast so far, today I was joined by Matthew Rooda, the CEO and Founder of SwineTech. Rooda’s career began at Hawkeye Community College, a time in which he worked on a pork worked on a pig farm caring for sows and delivering piglets - perfect preparation for med school. It was also at Hawkeye that he met his co-founder. The two would then tran...

Today I was joined by Nathanael Ren, former co-founder of Buoy Health (2014-2022). Ren’s career began at Harvard, where his first assignment was an unlikely destination for an 18 year fresh out of high school: go undercover to an iPhone factory in China. Returning to the States, he completed his degree in 2012, when he began working on Buoy Health. After building in a cave for the first three year...

I was honored to be joined by Emily Hazelwood and Amber Sparks, the co-founders of Blue Latitudes, a certified women-owned marine environmental consulting firm. Before starting Blue Latitudes in 2015, Hazelwood and Sparks started their careers on opposite sides of the country. Hazelwood’s career began at Connecticut College where she obtained her B.A. in environmental science. In 2011, she worked...

Today I had the pleasure of speaking with Hristo Tenchev. Tenchev, for my international listeners, is the CEO and founder of the company that probably makes your favorite video game - XS Software. Tenchev began his career when he was 18, creating a web-based video game that quickly went viral in Bulgaria. Pursuing his education at the Technical University of Sofia, Tenchev wanted to study computer...

I’m starting to lose count of the episodes, so I’ll ditch the tradition of saying it’s such and such number of episodes, and instead I’ll resort to saying it’s n and n+1 episodes. But then I’ll exhaust n and lose track of counting again, so I think I’ll just stop counting altogether ;) I was honored to be joined by Matthew Simmonds. Simmonds' career began at the University of Oxford, where he grad...

I was honored to be joined by Teasha Feldman-Fitzhum. Feldman-Fitzthum’s career began at MIT as a physics major. Originally intending to pursue graduate school, she pivoted to entrepreneurship after enrolling in MIT’s 13.366 entrepreneurship class, where she and her cofounder successfully launched EverVest. Originally known as Cardinal Winds, and a company a little bit beyond my understanding to e...

Kostapanos Miliaresis and I covered a lot of ground, so I suppose I’ll go in chronological order. Miliaresis' journey began in the Boy Scouts, where he first discovered a passion for volunteering. The idea of volunteering continued with him to Athens University of Economics and Business, where he was involved with AIESEC (an opportunity that brought him to Taiwan to teach for three months) and ser...

It was my fortune to be joined by Anton Toll Håkanson, the CEO and founder of DayCape. Toll Håkanson’s career began somewhere far away from entrepreneurship or user experience: scuba diving. After being a scuba diving instructor for a year, he decided to head off to Hyper Island, where he got his first taste of entrepreneurship, and where he developed his idea for DayCape. After completing his tim...

The first Dutchman on the Podcast!, Ferdinand Grapperhaus is the CEO of Nextsense, a company aimed at decarbonizing real estate. Grapperhaus’ career began at Delft University of Technology, where, when pursuing his MSc, he made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery: a substance to be used in windows to convert natural light into energy. Recognizing the potential of this innovation, Grapperhaus and a co-f...

I was fortunate to share the time with Mr Matthew Rastovac. The former CEO of Respell (now acquired by Salesforce), his career began at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Here, Mr Rastovac was co-president of Founders, the university’s entrepreneurship club, where he doubled the group’s budget and grew from 5 to 60 members. During this time, he also landed internships at NASA and Faceboo...

I was honored to be joined by Ms. Milagros Barsallo, who currently serves as the Outreach Director for the Denver Mayor’s Office. Her career began at Cornell University, where she studied Government and International Relations. After college, her first role was as a bilingual third and fourth grade teacher through Teach For America in Colorado, working to support underserved students. Afterwards,...