I had a whirlwind visit to St. John’s last week, touring the new Genesis facility and delivering my presentation on Entrevestor’s 2017 startup data. Here are three things I observed during the trip:

1. There are a LOT of new companies.

The St. John’s ecosystem is accelerating its production of new companies. The Memorial Centre for Entrepreneurship, or MCE, has now been going for a couple of years. It is proving adept at gathering MUN students with ideas and marshalling them through the first stages of launching a company. What’s more, these new companies can often find an incubator once they get going. Genesis has expanded and therefore has greater capacity to help companies to scale.

Younger companies were on display at Invest NL last Wednesday, taking the stage in the Pitch 201 and Pitch 101 competitions.

Yousef Ramezani, who recently completed a Masters of Computer Science at MUN, captured the first prize in Pitch 201 for his company CVT Project. CVT stands for Connected Vehicle Technology.

The other finalists in Pitch 201 (not all of whom are "new" companies) were: Duncan Wallace, UAV Control Tower; Peter Francis, HelpMeOrder; Mathias Nielson, Oliver POS; and Jan Mertlik, PowerHV.

The Pitch 101 Winner was Jesse McCaw, President of Averro Robotics & Technologies Inc.

2. The biotech ecosystem is maturing.

One of the interesting developments in Newfoundland and Labrador is the growth of the life sciences segment. Atlantic Canada has biotech organizations in each of the Maritime provinces but until recently there were none on the Rock.  But now there is a collaborative group in St. John’s with buy-in from the local medical community.

The MCE has been nurturing MUN students with ideas for life sciences companies, and the community has brought in Montreal-based Hacking Health, an organization that promotes healthcare innovation,  to help develop the sector.

That has led to the launch of the Bounce Health Initiative (which Jennifer Lee wrote about when she interviewed EIR Mandy Woodland in September). MCE Director Florian Villaumé explained that Bounce is a collaborative effort between MCE, Eastern Health, the MUN Faculty of Medicine and the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Technical Industries, or NATI.

Here’s what’s interesting: the Bounce process starts with participants asking Eastern Health what problems the province’s biggest health authority is facing, then assembling innovators to try to solve that program.

The life sciences organizations in the region are working together under the auspices of the Atlantic Growth Strategy to collaborate on ecosystem development. And NATI is representing Newfoundland in these discussions.

 3. Global Ad Source has exited.

Global Ad Source, the St. John’s company whose advertising database is used by some of the world’s largest brands, has been sold for an undisclosed price to a publicly listed British company.

Global Ad Source – whose official corporate name is Adfinitum Networks Inc. – will maintain its brand name and continue to operate out of St. John’s with its team intact. The Newfoundland company’s CEO Ed Clarke declined to reveal the price or other details.

“We are very excited by this opportunity as we will be able to access additional capital, technology and data to grow our service as a part of the larger company,” said Clarke .

The buyer is a major provider of data to thousands of the world's largest organizations, helping them to analyze information to make better and faster decisions.

In purchasing Global Ad Source, the company is taking on a massive databank of more than 30 million ads, covering eight media types from 80 countries. Clients use this databank to keep abreast of what is happening in the marketing world and how their competitors are reaching out into the marketplace.

Global Ad Source was founded in 2007, and Clarke said in 2015 that it was profitable. It has more than 25 blue-chip clients from 10 countries across a range of industries.

Global Ad Source over the years has raised money from investors, including St. John’s-based angel investors Tom Foran and Jo Mark Zurel, as well as Permjot Valia, who now resides in Nova Scotia. The company in 2012 raised $350,000 from the GrowthWorks Atlantic Venture Fund, whose managers have been overseeing its portfolio as it is wound down.

Said Clarke: “I would like to thank our investors, especially Tom Foran and Jo Mark Zurel, who were instrumental in helping us reach this milestone.”