The staff of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and the wider startup community were saddened by the passing last week of John Kavanagh, who had been a mainstay of ACOA’s Halifax office for decades.

Kavanagh died peacefully from lung cancer on Oct. 22, surrounded by his family. As well as his broader family, he is survived by his wife of 35 years Anne and their four sons, Rhys, Elliot,

Six Atlantic Canadian startups will present in a special East Coast panel at the annual Canadian Innovation Exchange conference to be held on Wednesday.

The CIX is a Toronto-based group that supports and promotes the country’s most promising early-stage and scaling startups. It is best known for releasing its annual CIX Top 20 during a conference held in the autumn. The conference is virtual

The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation invested about $4.35 million in equity funding rounds for the province's startups in its 2020-21 fiscal year, as it focused on inking deals to stabilize its existing portfolio companies during the pandemic.

In its 2020-21 annual report, NBIF said the venture capital investments accounted for just under a third of its $13.64 million total spending. Another

Fredericton-based startup accelerator Energia Ventures has announced its five-company fall cohort -- the second this year, as the program moves to offer more frequent programming in response to increased demand.

The accelerator is run by the University of New Brunswick’s J. Herbert Smith Centre for Technology Management & Entrepreneurship, commonly known as TME. Energia accepts companies from

Industry group Digital Nova Scotia has honoured five people or organizations for their contributions to diversity and inclusion in Nova Scotia’s tech sector in a ceremony held as part of the Centre for Women in Business’s Innovate online event.

Digital Nova Scotia, which represents the IT industry in the province, started the annual awards in 2016 to highlight influential women in the tech

Halifax data analytics startup Affinio and its 12-person team are being bought by fellow big data company NowVertical Group in a deal worth US$7.3 million or about C$9 million.

The purchase price includes US$6 million cash and US$1.3 million of shares in NowVertical, currently trading for 94 cents on the TSX Venture Exchange and valued at one dollar in the deal.

As of 2018, Affinio had raised

CoLab Software, the St. John’s-based maker of collaboration software for 3D modelling, has raised a US$17 million (C$21 million) Series A funding round on the back of a fiscal year in which its revenue grew 609 percent.

The round was led by New York’s Insight Partners, with alumni from manufacturing giants Tesla and Bosch also joining as angel investors.

CoLab builds software that lets

We’d like to draw your attention to two pieces of content that will be of interest to people who follow the Atlantic Canadian startup community.

Vanessa Balintec of CBC New Brunswick on Monday reported on the under-representation of female and minority founders in the community. The article arose from our presentation earlier this month on New Brunswick startup in collaboration with Planet Hatch

Jason Trask, the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Memorial Centre for Entrepreneurship, has landed a spot for his new rodent deterrent company in the federal government’s CTA AgTech Accelerator.

A serial entrepreneur, Trask has run companies ranging from sales AI specialist Zambara to Globalstudent.com -- an online book exchange for university students. He co-founded his latest venture,

Moncton-based startup hub Venn Innovation will lead an Atlantic Canadian delegation to the world’s largest fintech conference -- Money20/20 in Las Vegas.

The delegation is being backed by the governments of the four Atlantic Provinces and will include eight local fintech startups. Venn said in a press release that the purpose of the trip, which follows up on a 2019 mission also organized by the