Nov 4, 2021
This week The Entertainment Engine podcast welcomes Technology Entrepreneur & Co-founder of Quadio- Marcus Welch…
Every story has its ups and downs, the trick is to keep pushing forward and never give up!
This week on The Entertainment Engine podcast, we welcome our next guest to the show Marcus Welch the co-founder and CEO of Quadio!
Marcus Welch, the co-founder of Quadio with his step-cousin Joe Welch, is CEO of the company. A lifelong fan of emerging, genre-blending, and experimental music who DJ’d his first radio show at 14.
Marcus entered the music industry after Cornell by joining Twitter’s music partnerships team, where he worked with artists including Lizzo, Hinds, Erykah Badu, and Pusha T.
He later joined BlizzardActivision in operations and digital marketing strategy roles for Hearthstone and World of Warcraft, becoming a certified Scrum Master along the way.
In 2018, galvanized by the idea that technology could unleash the untapped talent of college artists, he joined with Joe to create a digital hub for collaboration, opportunity, and exposure.
To learn more about Marcus journey, listen to the full podcast below;
Starting with creating lo-fi wireframes in their Brooklyn apartment, Marcus spearheaded the conceptualization of Quadio’s product vision and design and competitive strategy and has grown the company to nearly 30 team members engaged in activities ranging from engineering and finance to data analysis and social media.
Marcus serves on the board of Cornell’s award-winning student radio station, WVBR.
The Quadio Story:
Like a lot of companies, Quadio was started by two friends who had a problem they thought no one else was solving.
Unlike a lot of companies, those founders were also step-cousins who didn’t actually have a lot else in common.
One was a college hockey star who secretly dreamt of making it big as an EDM producer. The other was an Ivy League nerd who started DJing his own radio show at age 14 as an outlet for his obsession with experimental music.
Their main overlap was that in summers during college, they shared an apartment in New York as they worked in music industry internships, bonding over Pokemon Go games and gripe sessions about how hard it was for musicians to get discovered, a particular pain point for Joe Welch as a producer, and for Marcus Welch as a music fanatic hungry for a career in A&R.
The Quadio 2.0 app will be released in early 2021, with less streaming and more social functionality for collaboration, opportunity, and exposure for creatives.
Quadio has added a new division dedicated to digitally facilitated community-building activities, such as its immensely popular songwriting clubs.
Opportunities for exposure, often brand sponsored, have been heavily augmented, with the addition of more contests that award cash prizes and mentorship sessions.
And finally, in August, the company launched Quadio Records and Management, a label under the leadership of A&R veteran Abir Hossain that is designed to discover, develop, and promote the most exciting college talent in the country.
Quadio Records recently announced a partnership with Sony’s Disruptor label, and, working closely with six rising stars in genres from Uke Trap to Bedroom Pop, is scheduled to release more than a dozen singles by the end of 2020.
Few start-ups stay the same from inception through actualization, even in normal times, but with Quadio what remains unchanged is the commitment of its founders and the entire team (now 28 strong) to champion the next generation of creatives, unleashing the power of community.
By Pete Moore
