Tristan Pollock Gener8tor

Tristan Pollock Gener8tor

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.

Megha Parekh, Executive Vice-President and CLO of the Jacksonville Jaguars

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.

Calvin Bohn from Thrive. Former co-founder of Smalls!

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.

Tom Coburn, the CEO of Waking Up

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.

Michael Carter from UStrive — One The Come Up

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.