Nathan Armstrong doesn’t mind using the F-word, and believes more Atlantic Canadians should discuss it openly.

The F-word, despite what you may have thought, is “failure”.

Armstrong is rightly proud that he and his brother Greg launched their cleantech startup Hyton Innovations, were shortlisted for an award and took the company through two accelerators. And he’s not ashamed to say that

Ron Keefe is proud that the sale of BioVectra, the Charlottetown drug manufacturer he has led for 11 years, is generating two waves of investment into Atlantic Canada.

Tens of millions of dollars will be invested in capital improvements at BioVectra over the next few years. Plus, the company’s original owners are putting together a fund to invest in Atlantic Canadian businesses.

Keefe and

Origin BioMed has been placed in receivership.

The Chronicle-Herald reported Friday that the Halifax company was placed in receivership on March 16, with Grant Thornton Ltd. being appointed trustee.

Origin Biomed, which had received venture capital funding from Nova Scotia Business Inc., GrowthWorks Atlantic and Avrio Ventures of Calgary, manufactured and marketed Neuragen, a natural pain relief for diabetes sufferers.

At its height, the company sold the sold the product over-the-counter at more than 20,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada. However, in 2011 the company ran into problems

The CS Square pitch competition at the University of New Brunswick took place last week with first place going to No Distrapptions, an app that allows users to eliminate the distraction of message notifications.

By turning on the app, notifications from messages are blocked, and the user has the option to send an automatic response.

“If the user needs to notify someone of their arrival, they can use the app to send an automatic (one time or recurring) message to a specified contact at a specified destination,” Natalia Stakhanova, NB Innovation Research Chair in Cyber Security, said in a

Vendeve, the Halifax startup that helps women find a market for their skills, has won six months in Silicon Valley to help develop its business.

The company was the winner Wednesday in the Funding Roadshow pitching competition hosted by Fundica at the Innovacorp Enterprise Centre in Halifax. Eleven companies pitched at the event. The winner was Vendeve and its model for encouraging businesswomen to become early adopters for each other.

“The sharing economy is changing everything so the two-sided marketplace is exploding,” Vendeve Founder and CEO Katelyn Bourgoin told the gathered

Having already secured funding from the world’s leading seed-stage venture fund for energy technology, Gordon McArthur is now focused on impressing more investors in energy-related tech next month.

McArthur is the CEO of Forerunner Research, a Dartmouth company whose technology detects and measures soil gases. In February, the company was one of eight companies accepted into the fourth cohort of the accelerator operated by Surge Ventures of Houston, a funding and mentoring organization specializing in energy technology.

At the end of the three-month cohort, Forerunner Research will make

Hoping its leading Alzheimer’s drug candidate will soon be fast-tracked in Europe, Charlottetown drug discovery company Neurodyn Life Sciences Inc. has completed a $1 million funding round.

The company said in a statement Tuesday it will use the funds to support development and commercial initiatives across its product line.

Neurodyn specializes in treating diseases of the brain and has been focusing recently on the commercialization of Memogain, a prescription drug candidate it bought from a German company in 2013. The drug has been shown to increase cognitive processes, both among the

After successfully proving its wireless power technology can recharge drones, Solace Power is embarking on the second phase of a development project with aircraft manufacturer Boeing.

But Kris McNeil, CEO of the Mount Pearl, NL, company, was quick to point out in an interview last week that the Boeing contract is only one of the projects that Solace is working on. The company is applying its wireless power technology to automobiles and various military and industrial functions.

Without a doubt, Solace Power so far is best known for the project it conducted with Seattle-based Boeing with

The mood was joyous and full of humour among the two Build Ventures partners the day after the New England Patriots won the Superbowl.

Patrick Keefe, a Patriots fan, was delighted his team had prevailed the night before. And his partner Rob Barbara, a New York Giant supporter, was pleased that there was no longer a sore point that the Pats had lost two Superbowls to his team.

“This has really been the only strain in the relationship and now it’s gone,” joked Barbara over lunch at a Turkish restaurant in Halifax.

Barbara and Keefe are now about 18 months into their venture capital

There’s a theme of community running through the story of Ongozah.

The Moncton startup founded by Topher Kingsley-Williams, Denis Daigle and Dan Gillis is developing a platform that will help community groups crowdsource the various things they need. And to nurture the company, they relied on a new community startup facility in their hometown.

Ongozah – a Swahili word that means everyone