Last night on Dragons’ Den, we witnessed two groups of Halifax children who exemplify all that’s great about student entrepreneurship.

The special student episode featured Hope Blooms, a north-end community garden project that grows its own ingredients for salad dressing, which it sells at $7 a bottle. The group has earned $4,000, which is being poured into their college tuition fund.

Six of its 43 members asked for $10,000 and ended up with $40,000 as well as a promise from four Dragons to help them build the business. (Only Kevin O’Leary, still awaiting that visit from the Ghost of

Two New Brunswick companies this week have been named to lists of Canadian tech companies making impressive strides.

Smart Skin Technologies of Fredericton was named to the CIX Top 20, a list of leading young tech companies recognized by the Canadian Innovation Exchange. And RtTech Software of Moncton was named to Deloitte’s 2013 Companies-To–Watch.

Smart Skin has developed a technology called Quantifeel, which detects pressure on surfaces and produces real-time graphics on devices or computers showing where pressure is being exerted. The latest application for the technology is testing

Entrevestor and Progress Media today are proud to release our Entrevestor Intelligence report on Big Data in Atlantic Canada.

The report outlines how the Atlantic Canadian startup community fits into the global revolution in data analytics – the opportunities, the challenges, the progress so far.

What we learned is that companies involved in this space are resonating with investors, and that the segment is growing. It’s also improving healthcare, as companies begin to probe how society can benefit by using health-related data to improve processes.

The reason for the segment’s growth

The success of the Startup Weekend St. John’s this past weekend is matched by the buzz in the startup community in the Newfoundland and Labrador capital overall.

I was lucky to attend the Startup Weekend in St. John’s and it gave me a chance to catch up on what’s going on in the burgeoning community. New companies are coming into the community, and established ones are moving toward traction and funding. In broad terms, there’s excitement that something is building.  

“There’s a strong buzz here with new companies forming all the time,” said Jason Janes, the head of Startup St. John’s,

http://www.voltaeffect.com/Volta, the Halifax-based startup incubator, announced today it has become an Amazon Activator partner. Following is the press release describing the partnership:

 

Volta becomes Amazon Activate program partner 

 

November 12, 2013 -- Today, we are excited to announce a partnership with another major driving force in technology  - Amazon.com.

We are happy to say that Volta is an Amazon Activate program partner. Amazon Activate is a program designed to provide startups with the resources needed to get started building scalable solutions on the Amazon

Sentinel Alert, a cellphone app that can alert companies when an employee has had an accident, won the $15,000 first prize Sunday at Startup Weekend St. John’s, capping off a coming-of-age event for the city’s startup community.

Startup Weekend events have been held in 115 countries and several Atlantic Canadian cities but this was the first one in St. John’s. And the strong turnout and sponsorship were a testament to the work done this year by Startup St. John’s in developing a grassroots-based entrepreneurial community.

“This has been absolutely beyond our expectations,” said Jason

The Wallace McCain Institute last week announced a new funding by the Miramichi Technology Fund, which was financed by a $1 million donation by former premier Frank McKenna.  The following is a press release issued by the institute.

 

UNB’s Wallace McCain Institute supports new software start-up in Miramichi

 

The Miramichi Technology Fund, managed by UNB’s Wallace McCain Institute (WMI), recently announced an investment in a new software start-up in Miramichi, NB.

Patchell Brook Equity Analytics Incorporated (Equity Analytics) is a company focused on creating the software

My grandfather, Major H.P. MacKeen of the Royal Artillery, shown on the left, wrote this poem in Ypres in September 1917, two months before the Battle of Passchendaele.

The White Cross

It isn’t a medal or order,
It carries no ribbon or braid
But a token still
As on Calvary Hill
Of the greater sacrifice made.

It stands as a lonely sentinel
O’er the place where the hero sleeps

Acknowledging that a treasured business venture is not going to succeed is tough for anyone, especially when the entrepreneur is only 17. But fledgling entrepreneur Raphael Paulin-Daigle recognizes that failure offers important lessons. When he closed his business Shopulse in early October, Paulin-Daigle was sad, but he knew that the experience had been valuable.

The Grade 12 student designed

The recent financings of Halifax-based startups Affinio and Analyze Re highlight one facet of the innovation ecosystem in Atlantic Canada that is healthier in 2013 than last year – the number and diversity of major institutional fundraisings.

In 2012, the startup scene in Atlantic Canada was characterized by a lot of exciting companies receiving seed funding – usually $200,000 to $2 million -- to finance the early stages of their growth. That was great, but it also meant that there were a cluster of young companies all scrambling for follow-on financing, each of them looking for rounds of