About Branch

Hello! Thanks for stopping by. My name is Josh Reynolds and I'm the CEO and co-founder of Branch. I am a recent graduate of Hofstra University, where I represented the Hofstra Men's Tennis team. Eventually, my focus had to shift towards my career. As I got closer to graduation and the real world loomed, I turned to online networking as a means of improving my career prospects.

I didn't enjoy the experience. It felt shallow and fake. I saw platforms prioritizing quantity over quality, and titles over substance. To make things worse, recently these platforms have buried any value beneath cascades of irrelevant information, in the form of social media-style feeds and spam. This detracts from the essence of networking. I brought these concerns to my teammate Jonathan, now my co-founder, who shared these sentiments. We saw a gap and decided to act.

As our discussions continued, we realized that true networking power is created through affinity groups and authentic connections. In this way, we learn about another person on a deeper, human level, rather than strictly seeing them as a job title or position. This budding thought grew into Branch, a hub for all your communities in one place, where online networking occurs organically and intentionally.

As CEO, my focus is on creating a vision for Branch that aligns with our values: authenticity, simplicity, community, and reciprocity. Particularly in these early stages, your feedback is everything. With your help, we will mold this vision into the best possible product and user experience, which will empower you to unlock your network's full potential.

Now, a word from my co-founder Jonathan:

My path to Branch started on a random day at Hofstra when Josh and I discovered we'd been working on similar ideas—his called Mentaur, mine called ProNet.

I had just come off creating a startup with another teammate and co-captain, an experience that taught me something important: building something meaningful with people you genuinely care about makes all the difference.

After spending the first part of my life chasing my tennis dream, five years of college ended and I suddenly found myself on my own, wondering what to do next, stressed that I would never find something that I had the same passion and drive for.

Trying to find that next thing, I fell into the trap of chasing big-name companies that felt empty and impersonal, but I didn't know any better. I found myself randomly reaching out to high-status people on LinkedIn, hoping something would happen. The whole experience felt hollow and transactional.

That's when I first envisioned ProNet as a way to actually organize and understand my professional connections and their networks in a meaningful way. I realized this wasn't just my problem—it was a problem facing countless young people starting their professional journeys.

When Josh and I connected over our shared frustrations with online networking, everything clicked. We both believed that real networking power comes from community and genuine connection, not vanity metrics and spam feeds.

I decided to embark on this journey so that other young professionals don't have to face the same confusion and emptiness that I did. As CTO, I'm focused on building the platform that I wish had existed when I graduated—one that helps you build real relationships, not just collect contacts.