When a pair of female tech entrepreneurs calls their new social media product Hashpipe, it’s a safe bet that they tend to think outside the box.

Yet the story of how Julia Rivard-Dexter and Leah Skerry devised and commercialized Hashpipe reveals more than just original thinking. It also shows a cunning and disciplined strategy that is gaining revenues quickly.

Rivard-Dexter and Skerry are the principals of Norex, a creative web strategy company based in Halifax. In 2012, it incubated Pursu.it, a crowdfunding site for high-level athletes that has raised almost $300,000 for Canadian

Six startups have graduated from the first cohort of the Accelr8 program, marking a landmark in the development of the accelerator course that operates out of the Planet Hatch incubation facility in Fredericton.

The organizers held a graduation dinner on Thursday night to recognize the completion of the course. Executive Director Sally Ng said in an interview Sunday the accelerator will also hold a public demo day on Feb. 8 to give the public a chance to see presentations by the companies.

“It’s awesome,” said Ng when asked how it felt to have the first cohort in the books. “It shows

T4G and the New Brunswick Information Technology Council have announced that the second Big Data Congress will be held Feb. 25 in Saint John, and the keynote speaker will be renowned Harvard innovation strategy professor Clayton Christensen.

The event was launched in January of this year and attracted about 600 people, a tremendous turnout for an event in the Atlantic Canadian startup community. The next congress, to be held at the Saint John Trade and Convention Centre, will be able to accommodate 950 people and will include workshops before and after the event. The goal this year is to

Teenage entrepreneur Raphael Paulin-Daigle is feeling validated after being named one of 10 Future Dragons by CBC’s Future Dragon Fund Contest.

The Grade 12 Moncton student was thrilled to win $5,000 in the contest. The youngster has already proven his entrepreneurial smarts after starting his first business, an online magic store, at the age of 11. He recently had to close another venture, Shopulse, when he realized he could not grow the business, but he chalked that up to experience.

“Winning this contest for me is sort of like a confirmation that people see that I've been working

BDC Venture Capital has invested $150,000 each into Eigen Innovations, FoodTender Solutions and TopLog, aiding the funding process of three recent graduates from Moncton-based technology accelerator Launch36.

Halifax-based TopLog has also received a $250,000 equity investment from Innovacorp, meaning it now has landed about 80 per cent of its seed-round target of $500,000.

The venture capital arm of the Business Development Bank of Canada said last summer it would extend convertible notes of $150,000 each to recent graduates of Canadian accelerators that it deems to be investment ready.

Spring Loaded Technology of Halifax has received almost $250,000 of funding from members of the First Angel Network, and is continuing to raise money on its seed round of funding.

CEO Chris Cowper-Smith confirmed this morning that the company has raised just under $250,000 at the Halifax-based network’s autumn meetings. In October, the company won the $35,000 BioInnovation Challenge, the pitching competition at BioPort Atlantic. These and other fundings are contributing to a round that the company hopes will raise a total of $1.3 million.

Having started at Dalhousie University’s

LeadSift, the Halifax company that mines social media for business leads, has announced the launch of its platform to allow small and medium-sized businesses to use its product. The following is the press release the company issued this week:

LeadSift Announces its Self Serve Platform to Provide Quality Social Media Leads for Small and Medium Sized Businesses

Platform Analyzes Millions of Twitter Conversations in Real-Time to Provide Only the Best Most Relevant Opportunities to Grow Businesses

HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA, CANADA – LeadSift <http://leadsift.com>, known for its ability to sift

CarbonCure Technologies, the Halifax cleantech company dedicated to low-carbon concrete products, has closed a $3.5 million Series B financing led by BDC Venture Capital.

The company has been accelerating the sales of its eco-friendly concrete solution in the past year, and Founder and CEO Robert Niven now wants to use the additional funds for the research and development of precast and ready mix products.

Concrete, the world’s most common construction material, is responsible for 5 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions because traditional processes cure concrete blocks by heating

GrowthWorks Atlantic, the labour-sponsored fund based in Halifax, has made follow-on investments in several of its portfolio companies amounting to more than $2.5 million in recent months.

The fund has benefited from exiting two successful investments in the past year: its sale of stock in publicly traded film company DHX Media, and the sale of its holdings in Halifax pharmaceutical services company STI Technologies Ltd. to Toronto-based private equity firm Imperial Capital.

CEO Tom Hayes said in an interview Monday that GrowthWorks has rechanneled some of the proceeds from these exits

Sam Bromley of Whitecap Scientific Corp. and Sarah Murphy of Sentinal Alert captured first place at the Pitch101 St. John’s event at Memorial University on Friday, capping off two weeks of events for and by entrepreneurial students in the region.

I previously reported on the Pitch101 event at Acadia University last month, but have overlooked a few other happenings at universities, such as the presentations by Dalhousie University’s Starting Lean  course two weeks ago and by St. Mary’s University MBA students last week.

Bromley and Murphy are both experienced members of the startup