Spring Loaded Technology of Halifax on Thursday won the third annual BioInnovation Challenge, capturing the $35,000 first prize and gaining further validation of its innovative knee  brace technology.

The top prize at the pitching competition at BioPort Atlantic caps a year of accelerating victories for the young company, whose three principals first met in Dalhousie University’s Starting Lean class in September, 2012.

Spring Loaded is developing a knee brace that strengthens as well as stabilizes the joint. The product can increase the performance of athletes or grant greater mobility

The energetic startup community in St. John’s, N.L., will stage its first Startup Weekend next month, and has already sold out more than half the spots available for the 54-hour technology-business competition.

Jason Janes, a co-founder of Startup St. John’s, and Chris Gardner, the founder of the Common Ground co-working space, are putting together the event for the weekend of Nov. 8 at teh Genesis Centre at Memorial University. It will allow 60 people to spend a weekend putting together companies, the best of which will hopefully become bona fide enterprises.

Where Janes and Gardner

Refuel Systems, a Dartmouth fuel filtering outfit, is looking to increase the deployment of its filtering devices that are now on active service across the U.S. and Canada.

The group builds devices that “polish” fuel, which means they solve a fuel storage problem created by the reduction in sulphur in diesel because of stricter environmental regulations. Though these changes have been good for the environment, they have caused problems in that water and impurities can now contaminate diesel that must be stored for prolonged periods.

Though sulphur harms the environment, it also absorbs

Late last month, USA Today published my latest story on Canadian technology, which featured InteraXon of Toronto. You can find it here. This is a really cool company, headquartered in the trendy neighbourhood around Spadina and King, just down the road from the new Toronto International Film Festival headquarters.

InteraXon’s Muse headsets detect brainwaves and can give you a graphic presentation of your thought processes on your desktop or device. You can’t play games with it, but you can understand how your brain works, when you’re at optimal awareness, how you react to anxiety, etc.

Last week, I wrote that more institutional money is coming into Atlantic Canadian startups, which is good because the world of funding is changing.

That was the good news. But it is counterbalanced by some bad news, which is that too many Atlantic Canadian startups are failing to take advantage of these changes.

Here’s the worse news: there’s a strong belief that some startups are going to go out of business in the next year or two because they will not secure the millions of dollars that it takes to grow. Maybe it’s because of a problem with their business model or their technology,

We want to offer huge congratulations to Tim Houston, a member of the startup community who was elected to the Nova Scotia legislature last night.

Running for the Progressive Conservatives, Houston won the Pictou East seat in last night’s provincial election, and will be a member of the official Opposition to the new Liberal government.

Houston is a Co-Founder of the New Glasgow-based startup, Znanja (pronounced  NAN-ja), whose technology makes it easy to convert existing training materials to SCORM compliant online eLearning material. Online eLearning requires users to access training

We’ve been getting requests to remind the startup community that deadlines are approaching for some high profile competitions, and people should get their names in. With luck, they’ll be as successful as Mindful Scientific has been in a recent national competition in the U.S.

The deadline for Innovacorp’s I-3 competition in Nova Scotia is Friday, Oct. 18, and the provincial agency wants entrepreneurs, whether they have a successful business or just a good idea, to enter. “People can enter with an idea, prototype or even be in business with cumulative sales to date of less than $3

When Charles Benaiah visited Dalhousie University to tell students about his experience founding and selling a startup in New York, he didn’t expect he’d soon be planning to establish his development team in Halifax.

But Benaiah, who received his MBA at Dal in 1993, was so impressed with his alma mater and the Atlantic Canadian startup community that he is working on a plan to build up a Halifax presence for his new company, watzan.

Now headquartered in New York, watzan is a “big data” visualization tool that makes it easier for companies to show clients the products they may be most

A group of seasoned investors and entrepreneurs will launch a new angel investment group in Halifax today with a pledge that they will not charge companies any fees to pitch to the group.

Having already attracted about 30 investors, Atlantic Angels will hold its first meeting this month and has identified several companies that could win investment from the members. The group is now being led by a loose steering committee and the key organizers include Volta Executive Director Milan Vrekic and Permjot Valia, the London-based founder of MentorCamp.

The thinking behind Atlantic Angels is

Money and how to obtain it will be one of the themes of this year’s BioPort Atlantic Conference, which will take place at Halifax’s Westin Nova Scotian hotel on October 9 and 10.

“Putting more focus on money reflects what we’re hearing from our members,” said Marli MacNeil, CEO of BioNova, the group behind the annual conference. “We’ve just finished a major survey of the industry and a look through the questionnaires reveals that pretty much everyone’s number one challenge is accessing money, whether it’s attracting investment or funding for research.”

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