The creation of SNZweig brings together Zweig Group and Stambaugh Ness with the leadership, resources, and ambition to build something bigger.
I started Zweig Group in the back room of our two-family house in Natick, Massachusetts, in 1988. We grew quickly enough to make the Inc. 500 list in 1995 and 1996, which was pretty exciting for a company that had started with only $1,000 and a lot of ambition.
Since then, we’ve sold it to private equity, watched it ultimately be lost to its mezzanine lenders, been recruited back to rebuild it, bought it back, turned it around, and eventually sold my ownership internally in 2018. After the turnaround, the company made the Inc. 5000 List again in 2013 and then, more than a decade later with my successor, Chad Clinehens, running the business, made the list once more in 2024. That last one may have been particularly satisfying because it demonstrated that what we rebuilt was not just a recovery story. It was a business capable of growing and succeeding again under new leadership and ownership.
I’ve had more opportunities than most entrepreneurs ever get to learn that companies have lives of their own. They go through good times and bad times. They change owners, leaders, strategies, and even identities.
I’ve come to believe that you don’t really own a company. You have custody of it for a while. The real measure of success is whether you can leave it strong enough for the people who follow you to take it somewhere you could not have taken it yourself.
That is why I’m so excited about what is happening now. The combination of Zweig Group and Stambaugh Ness, the creation of SNZweig, and the investment by Aphias Capital represent much more than a change in ownership. They create a new platform with the resources, talent, and ambition to grow significantly and to have a much greater impact on the AEC industry.
Aphias has big plans for SNZweig, and I think that is exactly what makes this next chapter so exciting. Two organizations with a proven track record of working together successfully – each with deep knowledge of the AEC industry – are coming together, and they now have the opportunity and resources to build something considerably larger than either could have built alone.
Steve Hake and Chad Clinehens are leading that next chapter as CEO and president, respectively, and I have tremendous confidence in them and in the Stambaugh Ness and Zweig Group teams. These two firms together have services and products that the AEC industry not only wants but actually needs. I’m not going to pretend I know exactly what SNZweig will look like 10 years from now. If my experience has taught me anything, it is that the best companies rarely end up looking exactly like you thought they would.
I’m proud of what we started in that back room in Massachusetts, proud of the people who have carried it forward, and excited to see where SNZweig goes next.
After 38 years, I’ve learned that one of the great privileges of being a founder is eventually getting to watch other people make your old ideas better – and realizing they don’t need your permission to do it.
Read the full announcement here.
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Mark Zweig is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com. |
