Our greatest hope today is that your holidays are happy and that your undertakings in 2015 will be fruitful and fun.

For many of us in the Atlantic Canadian startup family, 2014 was great year. The biggest achievement was probably PropelICT crushing its target for Launch36, but it was not alone. There was the $60 million funding by Verafin, and exits by UserEvents, Compilr, Newpace and G2

At the Enactus world championships in Beijing in October, Jonathan King and his team came tantalizingly close to once again bringing home the trophy as the world’s top social entrepreneurship program for university students.

King is the head of Enactus Memorial, the student-run organization at Memorial University of Newfoundland that runs projects to improve the standard of living and quality

Matthew Stenback and Adam Puddicombe returned to St. John’s this month from three months of intense mentorship at the FounderFuel accelerator with a new target market for their company Brownie Points.

The two former business students from Memorial University in Newfoundland were among the first Atlantic Canadians to attend the Montreal-based accelerator. During the intense course, they

Deloitte, one of the Big Four global accounting firms, has agreed to buy Fredericton-based tech consultancy SwiftRadius, marking the second time this year an accounting practice has bought an Atlantic Canadian tech company.

The companies did not reveal the value of the deal, only saying it will close in January. In May, Saint John-based Ambir Solutions, one of Atlantic Canada’s leading technology consultancies, said it would join EY Canada (formerly Ernest & Young) as part of its business consultancy division.

In a statement last week, Deloitte said the transaction will enhance its

Mark Brand, one of the leading social entrepreneurs in Vancouver, will be the keynote speaker at the Starting Point conference to be held at St. Mary’s University from Feb. 18 to 20.

The Starting Point conference is designed to bring together student entrepreneurs and educate them in fundraising, developing ideas, social entrepreneurship, and other facets of starting their own businesses. The organizers expect about 150 student entrepreneurs from across Canada.

The highlight of the three-day event will be a keynote address by Mark Brand to an audience of as many as 600 people.

Denis Kay has been a scientist for a long time, but he’s most thrilled by his current role working on a promising drug for Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s is an escalating problem in aging societies. It’s estimated that the worldwide annual market for Alzheimer’s drugs is already $3.8 billion, although the cost to society is far greater.

“Sometimes I can’t sleep at night because of my excitement over the drug and working for a small biotech venture,” said Kay, who is a founder and chief scientific officer of Charlottetown’s Neurodyn Life Sciences.

Kay is energized because Neurodyn’s

Caetum, a Halifax company that emerged from St. Mary’s University’s graduate program for startups, is preparing to launch an online product next year aimed at solving a huge pain for clinical researchers.

The company is producing a digital platform that helps clinical research sites budget for their projects, something that can be a surprisingly large challenge.

Though there is software on the market that helps with such tasks, it is expensive and includes lots of features that researchers don’t need, said co-founder Mandy Woodland in an interview.

The three founders of Ceatum — the

A few years ago, my partners and I at Rho Canada Ventures began to notice the opportunities occurring in Atlantic Canada, and I started spending more time here.

Today, we feel really lucky I did.

We’ve found a rich vein of tech companies on the East Coast, and we were able to invest in them before many of our competitors had heard of them.

We set up Rho Canada in Montreal in 2006 with the

QRA, a Halifax startup that helps manufacturers detect design problems, has become the first Canadian company accepted into the headquarters of Disruption Corp., a support facility based in Washington, D.C.

Disruption, founded eight months ago by globetrotting startup backer Paul Singh, announced Monday night it has struck an agreement with Innovacorp to “set up shop” in the Disruption headquarters and help recruit Canadian tenants. QRA, which will still be based in Halifax, will be the first of these tenants.

“Disruption is not investing in us, but their deal with Innovacorp will have

A diverse group of entrepreneurs — from a 15-year-old to a group of nursing students to a pair of St. Francis Xavier University professors —have been named winners of the second annual Spark Cape Breton entrepreneurship competition.

Innovacorp, the provincial innovation agency, has announced eight winners will divide the total prize money of $200,000, up from six winners in the first competition last year.

Innovacorp, the Atlantic Provinces Opportunities Agency and the Nova Scotia Economic and Rural Development and Tourism Department — all clients of Entrevestor — organize the