A couple of Atlantic Canadian startups are looking for your vote in their quest for a global startup award.  

Robin Hood and Holla! are winners of recent Startup Weekend events and now they are competing in the Global Startup Battle, in which the public chooses the best SUW winner in the world. Voting closes today at 11:59 pm PST (which technically is tomorrow at about 4 am AST).

Startup Weekend is an international organization that sanctions local events around the world bringing together people to form a business in a single weekend. In the past couple of months, Startup Weekends have

Tom Gilgan laughed and shook his head. “Oh no,” said the co-founder and CEO of G2 Research of Dartmouth. “We’re not a Radian6. But what we’re happy about is we did this with a company we started from nothing.”

The “this” Gilgan referred to was his geo-location software company’s successful sale to Track Group of Salt Lake City for $4.6 million in November.

The G2 Research sale exemplified a trend that developed in 2014, which could be called the Year of the Modest Exit.

There was nothing like Radian6’s $326-million sale to Salesforce in 2011, or the $540-million sale of Ocean

When the three founders of G2 Research began to look for funding this past summer, they had no idea it would lead to a $4.6 million sale of the company by late November.

Yet Salt Lake City-based Track Group announced today that it paid that amount last week to buy the five-year-old Dartmouth company and gain access to its geo-location software used by law enforcement agencies.

G2 will now lead development for the Track Group, and G2 CEO Tom Gilgan has been named the company’s CTO. One of his first jobs will be to find a larger office because he will have to add several more members to

The following chart shows the details of Track Group's purchase of G2 Research announced today:

Target Company	G2 Research
Headquarters	Dartmouth, N.S.
Purchaser	Track Group
Headquarters	Salt Lake City
Deal Value	$4.6 million
G2’s Financial Adviser	Jim Lutes, EY
G2’s Legal Adviser	Jim Cruickshank,

Propel ICT is looking for a couple of experienced entrepreneurs to serve as entrepreneurs-in-residence in two centres in Atlantic Canada.

The organization that oversees the Launch36 accelerator hopes to have two entrepreneurs-in-residence in place in the near future to help work with startup founders on developing their businesses.

Propel began 11 years ago as a Saint John-based IT group, and has progressively spread across Atlantic Canada.  Startups from all four Atlantic Provinces have gone through the Launch36 programs. And with the hiring of St. John’s-based CEO Gary Dinn last

Halifax, Nova Scotia, November 27, 2014 - Volta is pleased to announce that Iain Klugman, the President & CEO of Communitech has joined their Board of Directors. As the Halifax startup house prepares to move into the old Library, expanding the Board of Directors is a key element of the strategic plan. Iain’s experience in growing Communitech and the Waterloo Region startup community will bring valuable benefits to Volta, as will his connections with startup communities across the country and internationally.

Iain joins Jevon MacDonald, GoInstant co-Founder, and Patrick Keefe, Partner at

Fuelled by a desire to boost the number of people who can write computer code, Simon Gauvin has created Vizwik.com, a social platform that allows anyone to learn computer coding for free and to create and sell apps that work on any mobile phone browser.

Gauvin, 50, is CEO and co-founder of Moncton startup Agora Mobile. He said his cloud-based method of teaching coding uses graphical code,

The Rounds, the Halifax startup that operates a social network for medical professionals, has added $565,000 in equity investment to its seed round, which it will use to accelerate its rapid growth.

Having launched its closed network for physicians in February, the company now says it is targeting having 26,000 doctors enrolled on the site by the end of 2014.

“This funding isn’t meant to extend our runway; it will be used to grow faster, right now,” said Co-Founder and CEO Blair Ryan in a statement. “The decision to raise a seed extension came down to our desire to capitalize on the

One subject that has cropped up increasingly in recent conversations about Atlantic Canada startups is the difficulty many have had this year with the federal government’s Scientific Research and Experimental Development program.

Known as SR&ED and pronounced “sred,” the program administered by the Canadian Revenue Agency has long been used by small and large Canadian companies to finance research and development. However, several entrepreneurs said they have been denied funding — sometimes amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars — in 2014, even though their applications were

Several startups this year have had trouble with the Scientific Research and Experimental Development program, walking away empty-handed from reviews with the Canada Revenue Agency.

So should startup founders even try to tap the program?

Yes, most definitely, say accountants and experts in financing startups.

But they quickly add two provisos. Founders should only apply if they’re in a business conducting bona fide research. And they have to take a few steps to make avoid the problems that have plagued many startups this year.

“Startups should investigate SR&ED because it is a good