The startup landscape in Halifax is going to change in the next year or so, and Spring Garden Road could soon be known for perky young entrepreneurs as much as for shopping fashion-istas.

 The innovation community in the Halifax area is now spread out across an array of pods throughout the urban area, most with their own coffee shops that they hang out at. But there are a few developments coming down the pipe that will change the way entrepreneurs work, gather and recaffeinate in the region’s largest city.

I am not being facetious when I mention the coffee shops. One of the hallmarks of

USA Today on Monday published my story on the Canadian tech scene, which said the heart of the industry is found in the small and growing companies.

It was a great opportunity to go beyond Atlantic Canada and chat with people covering the tech industry, including the listed companies, outside of Atlantic Canada. The most familiar name in the story to Entrevestor readers is Damien Steel, the OMERS Ventures Director who put together that fund’s deal with LeadSift of Halifax. The paper has a daily circulation of 1.8 million, the largest in the U.S. for print publications.

I’d like to thank

The most intriguing story at the Canadian Business Model Competition on Saturday was not so much the team that took home the gold medal as the team(s) who captured silver and bronze.

For the record, Spring Loaded Technology, which is developing a knee brace that adds power as well as stability to the knee joint, captured the Deloitte Smart Launch Award, which comprises $10,000 in cash and $5,000 in consulting services from Deloitte. (Yes, it’s the same Spring Loaded we featured on Entrevestor last week for attracting $100,000 in angel funding.)  As the winners, Chris Cowper-Smith, Shea

A year and a half after he set out to revolutionize the crowd-buying model, Emmanuel Elmajian is now adjusting the focus of his company Spinzo in a bid to ramp up its sales volume.

Elmajian formed the Saint John company in late 2011 in a bid to bring more price flexibility and “virality” (the ability of customers to share a promotion so it can go viral) into the crowd-buying model.

Popularized by companies like Groupon, crowd-buying lets merchants offer deep discounts on their products to anyone who buys an online coupon. The model is successful — Groupon is now worth $3.5 billion — but

Two of the leading organizations in the Nova Scotia startup world have new bosses.

Innovacorp, the province’s innovation agency, said Friday that it had appointed Stephen Duff, the former Co-CEO of Precision BioLogic of Dartmouth, as its new President and CEO. And Digital Nova Scotia announced that Ulrike Bahr‐Gedalia has been named to the newly created position of President and CEO.

Duff worked for 30 years with Precision BioLogic, which makes innovative blood diagnostic products and has a staff of 60 people.

It would be a stretch to say Duff must bring stability to Innovacorp

Editor’s note: We’re delighted to introduce the first Canadian Startup Lawyer blog by Rob Cowan, Partner at McInnes Cooper.  This will appear monthly on Rob’s blogging site, StartupLawyer.ca, and Entrevestor.

Each month, Rob will select a topic that arises frequently in his work with leading Canadian startups, and provide the advice that sets young companies on the course to success. It cuts

Spring Loaded Technology of Halifax has landed a $100,000 investment from a prominent Halifax tech entrepreneur, validating not only the company’s product, but also entrepreneurship courses at the region’s universities.

John Hamblin, the president of Clarke IT Solutions, has invested in the company, accounting for one-fifth of a seed funding round with a target of $500,000. The money is helping the company protect its intellectual property and further develop its prototype.

Spring Loaded Technology is developing a knee brace that not only stabilizes the joint but also strengthens it,

We're delighted to post for the first -- and certainly not the last -- time a joint panel with Startup Kitchen.

We've taped a discussion among Startup Kitchen's Robert Foley and Suhaim Abdussamad and me, covering a few of the big startup stories in the region this month. The topics include the recent controversy over the First Angel Network, the wave of hirings and East Coast Startup Week.

Jevon MacDonald, the co-founder and CEO of GoInstant, is leading a drive to open a new working space in Halifax where tech entrepreneurs can rent space and benefit from each other’s experiences.

MacDonald and his collaborators plan to open the facility, called Volta, this year, starting out mainly as a workspace where founders of young companies can meet and feed off each other’s energy. In time, it might offer some programs, evolving into an incubator or accelerator, which are more structured systems for developing young companies.

MacDonald has been working on Volta since he and his

The story of SkySquirrel Technologies is a story of two immigrants in rural Nova Scotia, a kick-ass medical device company and the development of an unmanned aerial vehicle that could save lives.

Though very much in its infancy, SkySquirrel is a company that’s already creating buzz at support agencies due to its potential in both software development and manufacturing from its base in