Last night, we gathered in Fredericton with almost 50 members of the startup community for the first Entrevestor dinner – an event that marks a beginning on many levels.

Most important, it was the beginning of two discussions that Entrevestor will perpetuate in the coming months. First, how can we build up a more effective mentorship network for the region’s entrepreneurs? And second, can we

Bluedrop Performance Learning, the St. John’s-based training software company, has been ramping up revenues at its new learning networks division, while reducing administrative costs following a major acquisition last year.

Now CEO Emad Rizkalla is hoping investors notice an improvement when the company releases its financial statements for the second fiscal quarter, which ended March 31.

“This will be the first quarter where you can look at the numbers and say this should be a public company,” said Rizkalla in an interview last week. He had a relaxed air, sitting in a meeting room in

When former Olympian Julia Rivard, the CEO of Halifax web design company Norex, wanted to help elite athletes raise money, she and her business partner Leah Skerry developed and launched Pursu.it, a crowdfunding site for athletes.

That was the autumn of 2012. Less than a year later, Norex incubated a second product, Hashpi.pe, which allows a unified display of hashtags across a range of social media channels. By this time, Pursu.it had become a not-for-profit, but there was a business opportunity to launch the crowdfunding engine as a separate business, which they did, calling it Swell.

Scott Stirrett doesn’t think every bright new graduate should join the professions. He believes many people would better serve themselves and society by becoming entrepreneurs. And he’s acting on his beliefs. The 22-year-old Dartmouth native has quit his job at Goldman Sachs in New York to co-found Venture for Canada, a not-for-profit that will connect top Canadian university graduates with

The Newfoundland and Labrador tech sector hopes to develop a startup organization in Corner Brook this year, and to have its first organization in Labrador early next year.

The plans for Startup Corner Brook, Startup Labrador and other communities are part of a concerted effort to harness the brainpower in the province’s smaller communities to help build new companies. It’s also in keeping with the goal of doubling the size of the provinces information technology sector by 2025.

The province now has a $1.6 billion a year technology sector, employing about 4,000 people. It grew from

Raphael Paulin-Daigle plans to accomplish two things next month — help Moncton attain the world’s highest acceptance rate of Bitcoin and graduate from high school.

The 17-year-old entrepreneurial wunderkind is organizing CoinCity 2014 on June 6, an event he hopes will educate people about the new electronic currency and encourage them to own some of the new currency.

Commonly known as digital currency, Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer payment system introduced as open-source software in 2009. It is a decentralized currency controlled by no central bank and can be transferred electronically

Clarity, the Moncton startup that connects experts with people who need their advice, yesterday launched a new video product called Clarity Live, which lets users attend video-based seminars with some of the world’s leading experts.

Clarity Founder and CEO Dan Martell said in an interview users can join Clarity Live for $97 a month, and that will allow them to join video-seminars, which will be held six times each month. Only eight people can join each seminar live and ask the experts questions in the online Q&A session. All the sessions will be taped and can be viewed online at any time

On Monday night in Fredericton, we’ll gather to discuss an issue that doesn’t receive enough attention: what can the community do to encourage early adopters?

It’s an issue of particular interest to East Valley Venture Chairman Gerry Pond, who will lead the discussion.

As I wrote last week, we’re hosting the first Entrevestor Dinner at the Kingswood golf club in Fredericton. (Tickets for the event are available here.) Every guest is invited to join in the discussion on critical issues in developing the ecosystem. We hope it will lead to lasting improvements.

New Brunswick Innovation

Almost a year after it pivoted to cater to business coaches, Adeptio is gaining more and more traction due to a model in which its best clients help to sell the product to other clients.

Charlottetown-based Adeptio launched in the summer of 2012, after it was incubated within Fredericton-based tech consultancy SwiftRadius. The company at that time had a hybrid product that helped consumers pursue wellness and improve productivity. People liked the product, but it was hard to draw money from this market, so CEO Chad Griffin and his team began to consider other markets.

Business coaching

Innovation Week kicked off in St. John’s yesterday with a blue chip panel dispensing advice and five young companies presenting their products at DemoCamp.

As is usually the case with startup events in St. John’s, Innovation Week is supported by a groundswell of support from the grassroots. StartupNL, which began in 2012, now has almost 250 members and many of them packed the Common Grounds co-working space for the first two events.

The first Innovation Week in St. John’s is featuring a series of events, including some aligned with established institutions like the Newfoundland and