I found eight takeaways from the Atlantic Canada Entrepreneurial Ecosystem conference, hosted by the Sobey School of Business at St Mary’s University on Friday.

The first three come from Gerry Pond, former CEO of NBTel and founder and investor in several successful businesses.  The first is that scale matters. Promoting entrepreneurship has to operate at the regional level – individual cities and provinces lack critical mass. For me that suggests, among other things, more efficient and cheaper travel.

Second, Pond argued that the region needs to think creatively about new opportunities.

Towers Watson, a publicly listed professional services consultancy, has issued the following press release:

Towers Watson to Acquire Brovada

Acquisition expands Towers Watson's insurance technology offerings

ARLINGTON, VA, September 14, 2015 — Towers Watson (NASDAQ:TW), a global professional services company, announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Brovada, a Canadian insurance technology business. The acquisition will enhance Towers Watson's position as a leading insurance software provider.

Brovada focuses on streamlining the communications between insurance

Jeremie Saunders is an actor and adventurer who has cystic fibrosis, and he’s bringing his light-hearted love of life to a series of unusual health podcasts.

Saunders is running a Kickstarter campaign to fund his Internet shows, which are made under the name Sickboy Podcast.

In them, Saunders and two friends interview people with different illnesses in order to shed light on the daily

Not long after Gerry Pond offered half a million bucks to any Atlantic Canadian university that initiates an international tech sales program, some people began to ask: what would such a program look like?

Daniel P. Strunk is pretty sure he knows the answer.

Pond, the chair of the East Valley Ventures investment group in Saint John, surprised the Atlantic Leadership Summit in February by

Right now, your eyes are gazing at something we’re pretty excited about.

Welcome to Entrevestor’s new website – which represents something far larger than a redesign. It’s an essential component of our first major expansion since we began four years ago this month.

Entrevestor now features two sites – one for Atlantic Canada and the other for Kitchener-Waterloo. You can move between them

After months of work, Sydney is finally getting its own incubator for tech startups.

Launched by startup enthusiasts Ardelle Reynolds and Lindsay Uhma, the Navigate Startup House is due to open Oct. 9 in downtown Sydney. The space will feature offices for four growing startups, and a common work area in which as many as 20 teams at the idea or early stages can work.

“People who are

BlueLight Analytics, the Halifax startup that helps dentists ensure they use optimal energy when curing the resin in fillings, has named J.P. Furey its new Chief Executive Officer.

The company said today in a press release that Colin Deacon, the founder who had been CEO for the past six years, would become President and Director. He will report to Furey, who had been CFO since joining the

When Kelly Lawson wanted to know if other Canadian women shared her problem of not knowing to do with closets full of clothes, she started a Facebook Group to discuss the matter. Within a few weeks, 4,400 women had joined the group.

It now only led to the creation of Ella, her online app that helps women sell slightly used clothes they don’t want. It also gave her an amazing test ground for

Most startups on the East Coast and around the world view raising capital as a top priority. And with good reason, you can only boot-strap your startup so far. Cash is almost always the fuel for growth.

But it is important to be strategic in your efforts to raise capital. Too little capital, or even too much, can create serious problems that will reduce your odds of success.

The startup

Spotful, the ecommerce augmentation company that began life as the Maritime startup Spot Interactive, took a major leap forward on Friday when it went live on the budding ecommerce giant Shopify.

Based in Montreal and Halifax, Spotful allows people to execute an interactive function while watching an online video, with virtually no interruption in the film. That means they can purchase an