Quincy, MA Helps Startups Fuel Themselves for the Future
Resources in Quincy help startups grow and innovate.
A decade ago, sisters Renee and Julie Fry were concerned when their parents paid $10,000 for estate planning.
“We wanted to fix this problem for people,” says Renee Fry, the CEO and co-founder of Gentreo, a Quincy-based startup that automates estate planning. Gentreo guides clients through creating, storing and sharing a legal plan that protects their families.
“Estate planning is for everyone,” Fry says. “It covers who will make your health care or financial choices if you can’t, who will take care of your pets and who will make sure all of your decisions are carried through after you pass away.”
The response has been terrific.
“We’ve been growing in leaps and bounds,” Fry says.
Gentreo partners with employers, financial institutions, benefit providers and other businesses to provide services to their clients.
“From credit unions to financial planners for those with all kinds of income levels, we want to make sure these partners have the right materials to motivate their clients to do estate planning,” she says.
Fry says Quincy is a great place for startups like Gentreo. The company’s offices are located in QUBIC Labs, an incubator and innovation hub downtown.
“The ability to reach out and connect with other businesses creates an opportunity to build partnerships. As entrepreneurs, we’re looking for someone who will buy the product we’re selling. QUBIC helps us with that.”
QUBIC Supports Innovators
Founded by Ian Cain and John O’Keeffe as a one-stop shop for new companies, QUBIC offers mentorship and guidance to tech startups.
QUBIC got a boost in June 2022. The state awarded a nearly $2 million grant to help the incubator work with entrepreneurs interested in building blockchain apps. These technologies can potentially transform innovation-focused sectors, including finance, health care, insurance, supply chain and government.
Going forward, Cain is confident that Quincy will continue generating and attracting innovators and entrepreneurs.
“There’s a special sauce in Quincy — a sort of magic that stems from being such a strong community with great support for entrepreneurs and innovators,” he says. “Community and commercially driven projects thrive here. At about 100,000 people, Quincy still has that small-town vibe yet is large enough to offer opportunities. Entrepreneurs can make their mark in a place like Quincy and find the right support to keep growing.”
IntelyCare Keeps Growing
Another innovative tech company based in Quincy is IntelyCare, the country’s leading tech-enabled nurse staffing platform for healthcare organizations. IntelyCare’s app helps nurses create work schedules, so they do not have to pick between a paycheck and personal life.
Ike Nnah, Chris Caulfield and David Coppins launched IntelyCare in 2016.
By January 2020, a few months before COVID-19, IntelyCare was thriving. They filed over 2 million nursing shift hours at roughly 1,000 facility clients. IntelyCare’s platform schedules and matches nursing professionals with open assignments at the healthcare organizations it partners with.
“There’s a special sauce in Quincy – a sort of magic that stems from being such a strong community with great support for entrepreneurs and innovators.”
Ian Cain, QUBIC Labs
The scheduling control provided to nurses and nursing assistants is unprecedented in the profession, helping to reduce burnout among a dwindling workforce that is expected to be short 1.1 million nurses by 2025.
For health care organizations, IntelyCare helps to increase patient census, reduce operating costs and increase control of how they manage their workforce.
“IntelyCare is deeply rooted in Quincy, and we’re doubling down on our presence here,” says Coppins, CEO. “IntelyCare started out with a single cubicle in the Quincy Center for Innovation before we eventually moved to a space on Hancock Street. And now we’re in a brand-new space at President’s Place, which we kicked off with a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Mayor Koch earlier in the year. We’re planning to add 100 people to our Quincy headquarters this year and are in the process of expanding our office to a second floor.”
If you’d like to learn more about Quincy, MA, check out the latest edition of the Livability: Quincy, MA magazine.