text: Don't Call it a Lobby: New Startup Platform 1776 To Help Companies Tap D.C. Power | Observer
  Don't Call it a Lobby: New Startup Platform 1776 To Help Companies Tap D.C. Power
  "A platform to reinvent America by connecting the hottest startups in the world with the assets of the most powerful city on Earth."
  By Patrick Clark • 02/05/13 12:15pm
  It's a hard truth confronted by many a would-be world-changing entrepreneur that the industries that seem most ripe for disruption are also the businesses most heavily regulated, putting that dream of a tech company that revolutionizes education or health care or transportation a little farther out of reach.
  So what's a founder to do? Stamp his feet and complain about the incumbent's powerful lobby? Lawyer up? Both?
  It's a question that seems like perfect fodder for 1776, a new Washington, D.C.-based startup campus that's launching tomorrow. Formally billed as a "platform," 1776 will include events spaces, coworking, educational opportunities and an accelerator; 1776's pre-launch website doesn't explicitly mention a lobbying function, but the first line of copy on the sparsely-populated site reads like a big wink at influence pedaling:
  "A platform to reinvent America by connecting the hottest startups in the world with the assets of the most powerful city on Earth. All coming together in one place a few blocks from the White House."
  PandoDaily says that 1776 will be funded by a grant from the District of Columbia as well as membership fees, and operate on a hybrid model along the lines of General Assembly or Chicago's 1871, and that the organization will help startups connect to "political, intellectual, social, and financial capital that are unique to DC."