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.
