We can’t say we weren’t warned.
On Friday, the two cofounders of Quincy fintech startup accelerator Qubic Labs, Ian Cain and John O’Keeffe, announced they would be shutting down their nonprofit immediately.
That’s a big loss for the local startup scene. Qubic had helped more than 70 startups collectively raise $40 million and create 200 plus jobs over the past seven years. And the accelerator ran a popular crypto conference that drew Fidelity Investments CEO Abby Johnson as a speaker last year.
Unmentioned in Friday’s closing announcement but widely known since August: a big state grant that Qubic’s cofounders had been counting on fell through. When they learned for sure that they weren’t going to get the money from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative — a previous Qubic sponsor, with a $1.9 million grant in 2022 — they scrambled to line up other sources of funding. Qubic had used the state money to give grants to startup founders and to support the cofounders’ salaries as well as those of two other staffers.
Amid the scramble, a number of benefactors had pledged to help. But Cain said there’s a difference between interest and investment. They found no game-changing financial support that could keep the nonprofit vibrant, rather than existing as a dormant shell, so its board on Friday voted for dissolution.
In their email announcing the closing, the co-founders thanked FoxRock Properties for giving Qubic free space and the city of Quincy for its support.
The closure of Qubic Labs also means the end for the marquee event that the accelerator sponsored in its hometown, Boston Blockchain Week, that had attracted the Fidelity boss and other crypto players. The annual event was not a money maker for Qubic, which picked it up from venture capital firm Pillar VC in 2022, though it drew crowds to Quincy Center every September.
“We had been doing our best to seek diversified sources of revenue [such as] finding sponsors for regular and bespoke cohorts of the accelerator program,” Cain said.
Nothing really panned out.
“We looked at the landscape, and we looked at the opportunities that we had explored,” Cain said. “Without a recurring revenue source outside of the grant funding, it just wasn’t going to work.”
This is an installment of our weekly Bold Types column about the movers and shakers on Boston’s business scene.
Jon Chesto can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @jonchesto.
