After raising $2.5 million in seed funding, a health care analytics startup based in Chapel Hill is preparing for a busy year.
Husband and wife Jeff and Jenny Maze founded Quinsite in 2017 in Indiana after spending time working in the health care industry — Jeff in administrative roles and Jenny on the clinical side as a registered nurse. They experienced firsthand the inefficiencies in health care offices and wanted to create a company that could help.
“We said, ‘there’s so much data in health care, but there’s so little viable information and insights being delivered,’” said Jeff Maze, who is the company’s CEO.
During its first two years, the company grew from two clients to five. Initially the company filled a consulting role, before building its own cloud-based platform that pulls in data and generates insights for health care providers. This includes insights related to patient care, physicians and finances.
“What makes us passionate … is every row of data is a person,” Maze said. “We may be doing dashboards and reports, but this is helping (physicians) make a difference in peoples’ lives.”
After building its own platform, the company doubled its client size in 2019. Covid-19 pandemic made 2020 a difficult year, but Maze said Quinsite didn’t lose any clients or let go of employees. Instead, Quinsite continued to grow and now serves 33 clients nationwide.
First-time entrepreneurs, the Mazes started raising money for the first time last year. Jeff Maze said the couple “spent the first six to nine months drinking from the firehouse” while trying to navigate the venture capital world.
Eventually, they connected with Jeff Clark, a veteran Triangle-based investor, who led the seed round, which also included funds from angel and institutional investors. The company began raising money in January and closed the round last week.
Backed with $2.5 million, the company is taking several steps to continue its growth. For instance, most of its nearly three dozen clients are in radiology, but Maze said the platform could easily translate to other health care specialties. The company is targeting pathology, anesthesiology, emergency medicine or orthopedics practices.
Additionally, the company, which has mostly relied on adding new clients through references, is investing in a sales and marketing team. The company is bringing in employees that can proactively sell its platform to radiology practices and the other specialties it plans to target.
By the end of this year, the 14-employee company expects to grow to 25 to 30 people. Quinsite will concentrate its hiring efforts on the Triangle — as access to talent was one of the reasons the company moved to the region in 2019 — but as a tech firm, some of these positions could also be remote. About half of the company’s existing employees are based in North Carolina.
With a larger headcount, including a dedicated sales team and a focus on multiple health care specialties, Quinsite aims to reach 55 to 60 clients by the end of the year. While Maze declined to share financial details, a statement from the company says its annual recurring revenue grew by 70 percent last year.
"This is a pivotal year for us," Maze said. "This is when we'll turn that dial up. We plan to have pretty aggressive growth over the next four to five years."
