In April, 1776 and Benjamin’s Desk officially completed its merger, six months after it was first announced. Today, the recently combined companies are unveiling a new structure for its leadership team.
Jennifer Maher, co-founder of Benjamin’s Desk and current co-CEO of 1776, will serve as the sole chief executive of the combined company, according to an announcement Monday. Anthony Maher, another co-founder of Benjamin’s Desk and co-CEO of 1776, will now be 1776’s chief growth officer and head of incubation, overseeing membership offerings and incubator services. Ron Braunfeld, 1776’s entrepreneur-in-residence, is also the new president of the company, focusing on services and corporate partnerships.
"The recent merger with Benjamin's Desk has quickly expanded 1776's reach by becoming the largest network of incubators in the United States," said David Hall, a 1776 board member, in a statement. "We believe Jenn Maher and her team will lead 1776 successfully forward in this next phase of growth."
The leadership shift comes as 1776 prepares to revamp its D.C. campus and test out a new business model. In April, Jennifer Maher told DC Inno that the company was looking at adding rentable office spaces to its downtown campus, isolating the events space to allow for more daytime events and adding a hot desk rate to the membership offerings. In addition, 1776 is eyeing new cities to expand into, including Baltimore, North Jersey and additional D.C. metro area locations.
"I love building stuff up from the ground up, too," Jennifer Maher told DC Inno in April. "The good thing about coming into 1776, which is already established, is that we get to put our own stamp on it. Getting connected with people in D.C. and the entrepreneurial ecosystem, figuring out what they need is exciting to me so I can build our own stamp on it with a great infrastructure."
Jennifer and Anthony Maher, who are in-laws, co-founded Benjamin's Desk in 2012 with Mike Maher, Jen's husband and Anthony's brother. Since then, Mike Maher left Benjamin's Desk to start real estate startup Houwzer in 2015.
In October 2017, Benjamin's Desk and 1776 announced a plan to merge the two co-working and startup incubator companies, with the two Mahers at the helm as co-CEOs and under the 1776 brand name. The merger extended 1776's reach to Washington, D.C., Wilmington, Delaware; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and New York City. Under the arrangement, the 1776 Dubai campus was spun out to join Area 2071, a government-sponsored incubator and hub for innovation in the United Arab Emirates.
Now, the company has more than 2,700 individual members at 10 campuses across the Northeast. To better manage the growth, the 1776 board decided to shake up the leadership team.
"There is a dramatic shift taking place in where and how we work, and in what it takes to build a business that lasts," said Jennifer Maher in a statement. "1776 is uniquely positioned to succeed because of our management model and relentless focus on the programming needs for growth-minded entrepreneurs."
