Dylan Mitchell’s creation of PlanAheADD illustrates all that is good in the Atlantic Canadian start-up community. His is the story of someone turning a personal challenge into a business, of a mentor and an angel giving generously to a young entrepreneur, and of a venture with the potential to help millions.

PlanAheADD is a software-as-a-service aid that helps those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) plan their lives and organize their work. Its creation dates back to 2011 when Mitchell, then a 24-year-old strength-and-conditioning coach in Fredericton, was diagnosed

Ten teams of students and entrepreneurs will vie for $10,000 in seed money in Startup Sunday, the highlight of the Halifax Entrepreneurship Expo, which culminates on March 21.

Philip Calvert, the head of Calvert Events and the organizer of this event, launched the fourth Entrepreneurship Expo on Thursday at St. Mary’s University.

The Expo comprises several events spanning 11 days all at the Cunard Centre, ending with the Dine with a Legend on March 21 which will feature an address by Arlene Dickinson, star of CBC’s Dragons’ Den. (The event used to be called Dine with a Dragon, but

A loose confederacy of organizations is organizing East Coast Startup Week in Fredericton in late March to encourage entrepreneurs, and they hope it will become an annual event in a different city each year.

Startup Week 2013 will feature Demo Day for the Launch36 accelerator, the dinner for the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation’s Breakthru competition, a Startup Weekend event and a host of mentoring and speaking events.

The program has been organized by entrepreneurs and their supporters in the three Maritime provinces. It will feature at least one speaker from Newfoundand and

In the continuing effort to encourage women in technological pursuits, the Halifax chapter of Ladies Learning Code will hold its first workshop in the region in April.

Toronto-based Ladies Learning Code is a national not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to introduce women and girls to writing code and teach them to apply the skills to daily life and/or professional ambitions. Since August 2011, the organization has held workshops in several Canadian cities, and its first Atlantic Canadian session will be held Saturday, April 6, in Halifax. The session, to be led by Pearl Chen of

Interview Rocket, a Halifax startup that offers interview technology for recruiters and jobseekers, has landed more than $250,000 in funding from the First Angel Network, foreign investors and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.

In an exchange of emails, CEO Craig Brown declined to reveal specifics of the funding other than to say it was above $250,000.

One-year-old Interview Rocket is a Software-as-a-Service recruitment aid that helps both recruiters and jobseekers simplify the interview process. Brown estimates recruiters save about $6 on wages and other costs for every dollar

Nathan and Gregory Armstrong, two brothers studying at University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, are working on an intriguing proposition to reduce the cost and environmental footprint of waste-water cleanups.

They want the methane gas produced by such waste water to provide the energy for the cleanup process. And they have formed a company called CeteX to develop the technology, which will require preliminary seed funding of about $250,000.

CeteX is still in the conceptual stage, but the Armstrongs are moving forward with their plans. They have entered the company in the New

Ryan Keliher walked into Pitch101 in Charlottetown with an idea for a social entrepreneurship venture and walked out with a $500 first prize and an invitation to Invest Atlantic in Halifax in September.

Keliher’s pitch Friday for United World Changewear was a wonder in brevity, focus and passion, and one of the highlights of the first Pitch101 – a new regional initiative organized by Bob Williamson of Invest Atlantic, the region’s premier conference for the startup community.  The second Pitch101 will be held in Halifax on March 1.

Williamson set up the events to give entrepreneurs in

After a variety of business pursuits, Sarbjyot Bains believes he may have finally found the entrepreneurial venture that can change the world — an educational platform for the world’s most inexpensive tablets.

Born and raised in Gujarat in Western India, Bains is now a 22-year-old chemical engineering student at the University of New Brunswick. Despite his young age, he has initiated several startups, featuring them in various competitions around the Maritimes.

But he believes he has now found the venture he can move forward with.

Bains is the CEO of NovelBoard, a Fredericton-based

Having retired from a career in engineering, Bob Haagensen has devoted the last few years to making GPS surveys more accurate at sea.

Haagensen is the founder of Ocean Wireless Data Systems, or O-Wireless, which has developed technology that extends the range at which the Global Positioning System is accurate at sea. He said the existing system now operates with incredible accuracy up to 20 kilometres from shore, and the O-Wireless technology lengthens that to about 500 kilometres, which could be a valuable resource for the offshore oil industry.

“Offshore surveying is still really

Peter Diamandis has got past linear thinking to grasp the potential of a world in which knowledge is expanding exponentially. And in his brilliant book Abundance he shares his vision of what this brave new world could look like.

The book is powerful enough that I felt compelled to review it, even though it strays a bit from my usual job of covering startups in Atlantic Canada. Its message is key to the people who struggle day after day to develop companies that will change the world.

I first became aware of the book when Dan Martell, the CEO of Clarity in Moncton, tweeted that he loved