In the summer of 2017, Joe Welch was on Nantucket lamenting to his grandfather, the late Jack Welch, and his wife, Suzy, about a problem he encountered at college. A budding music producer, Joe had arrived at Williams College eager to start collaborating with other musicians, but he found it almost impossible to connect with them on campus. There was no readily available network for musicians, songwriters, artists and other creatives to find one another. So at that dinner on Nantucket, Joe told Jack and Suzy that he was thinking of creating a network of his own, a sort of Facebook or Tinder designed specifically for creators. Loving the idea, Suzy said, “You should really talk to my son Marcus.” So began Quadio, a family business launched by the progeny of one of the most revered names in all of business.

Then 25 years old, Marcus Welch— who is technically Joe’s step-uncle— had the perfect background to run with Joe’s idea. He had been entrenched in the music industry from an early age. Throughout high school and college, Marcus hosted his own radio show where he played songs that most listeners would not hear over the airwaves. After graduating, he worked in the music division of Twitter, brokering partnerships with big-name musicians such as Erykah Badu and Alicia Keys to get them on the social media platform. With this combination of musical passion and technical know-how, Marcus jumped at Joe’s idea. After many long phone calls and hashing out a business plan, Joe and Marcus quit their jobs and moved into an apartment together in Brooklyn where they launched Quadio.

"The original idea was to create a streaming platform specific for college listeners,” described Joe. “It would be a way for artists to create earlier and build their careers earlier.” Reminiscent of Spotify or Pandora, Quadio would allow unknown college musicians to upload their music to a database where their peers could discover and follow them. “It would be like SoundCloud for college campuses,” Marcus said. “It was localized to your own area, so you could start your own feed and build a chart.” Joe and Marcus designed the platform so that the more a musician’s song was played, the higher it ranked on the localized chart. Once the song racked up enough plays, it would then graduate to a national chart where it could reach more listeners. Almost as an afterthought, Quadio also included a connect feature, where artists could message one another.

On January 14, 2020, the beta version of Quadio launched. Joe was in Ohio as part of a national college road trip he embarked on with Suzy to start spreading the word about Quadio as well as to learn more about the challenges faced by up-andcoming musicians. Within those first two days, a massive amount of music was uploaded onto the platform. Yet what became most revealing in the ensuing weeks and months was the amount of traffic Quadio’s messaging functionality received. “The feature wasn’t what the app was designed for, but it was getting all the traffic,” Joe said. In true entrepreneurial fashion, the Welch men pivoted, going back to the drawing board and rebuilding Quadio to be more of a social media app than a streaming service.

As they were rebuilding the app, the pandemic hit, throwing a host of challenges their way, while also creating new opportunities. “How do we maintain a community amidst a pandemic?” Joe pondered. Their answer was launching virtual songwriting clubs. “That was the silver lining for us,” Joe said. “We realized how much people loved these clubs; now it’s part of what we do.” Along with relaunching the app last October— with a renewed emphasis on its social functionality over streaming— Quadio also formalized its songwriting and production clubs. These clubs served as the seeds of inspiration for Quadio’s latest project called The Quad, what’s essentially a master class in the music and production industry. And as if that wasn’t ambitious enough, they’ve also launched a record label for which they’re developing and producing talents found on their app like twenty-two-year-old singer Dasha. “It feels good to have a team that truly believes in you,” said Dasha, who currently has a million streams online. “Quadio saw this in me and my potential and were there and ready, for lack of better terms, to blow my music up.”

Throughout their company’s evolution, Jack and Suzy were in their corner. “None of this would have come close to happening without them,” said Joe. “The motivation they instilled in us and the belief they had in us really helped keep us going.” During the pandemic rebuild, the Welch men often spent time headquartered on Nantucket where Jack and Suzy would share their expertise and vast business acumen. “Anytime we had a presentation with our progress, Jack was an amazing resource in pressure testing it,” Marcus said. “He’d ask things like ‘At what time are you turning a profit?’ And tell us to have a super clear mission, making sure that everyone in the company knows that mission and pushes it forward.”

Sadly, Jack Welch passed away before he could see Quadio’s current skyward trajectory. “He’d be blown away,” said Suzy Welch, who also sits on the company’s board of directors. “He’d be so proud that the boys made the hard decisions to keep it going during the pandemic, that they kept pivoting.” She added, “It actually breaks my heart a little to think about this, because I can just imagine Jack hooting and hollering about it all. That’s the way he was.”

Welch also praised the duo’s decision to bring in a new CEO to Quadio Records, Miranda Martell, who, prior to joining Quadio nearly three years ago, worked for The New York Times and The Foundry. While their staff once numbered in the double digits, they’ve since streamlined their operation to an agile team of five. One significant change has happened recently among the founders: Marcus decided to take a step back from Quadio to help his wife open a boutique home goods store in Brooklyn. He remains on the company’s board and an invaluable resource for Joe as he continues to forge ahead with the vision that started around a dinner table on Nantucket.