Omers Ventures, the new venture fund set up by the Ontario municipal employees’ pension fund, has begun to reach out to entrepreneurs in Atlantic Canada, looking for small companies that want to get big – really big.

The Toronto VC fund received $200 million in capital this year and will gain additional funds in the future as it builds up its capital to become a major player in Canadian VC. It has begun to develop a network of contacts across the country and has designated one investment officer, Damien Steel, to cover the eastern provinces.

Having joined Omers in September, Steel is

 The Maritime tech community will celebrate the holiday season with the regular get-togethers Cybersocial in Moncton and Third Wednesday in Halifax.

In Moncton, the lead-in for the Cybersocial on Wednesday Dec. 14 is a mini-workshop titled  “Intro to Agile Development” at The Moncton Club, 115 Queen Street, from 3:30 to 5:00 pm.

This will be followed by the Cybersocial from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. The headline company this month is HealthConnect, a Moncton-based provider of outsource services to the pharmaceutical industry.

The Third Wednesday gathering on Wednesday Dec. 21 will feature tech

There’s a buzz about venture capital now that’s growing ever louder. The buzz is growing to impressive volumes nationally, but here in Atlantic Canada it’s reaching unprecedented decibel levels.

The numbers are starting to show the reason for optimism. As I wrote last month, 2011 should prove to be a record year for VC investment in the region, especially in Nova Scotia. But statistics can prove a one-time aberration, and the chatter among investors right now goes beyond big investments in or exits by a handful of companies.

What’s happening on a national level is fascinating because

The trophy case for Atlantic Canadian startups gained a positively cluttered look yesterday as GoInstant of Halifax and SimplyCast of Dartmouth both brought home some silverware.

GoInstant, which launched in September with $1.7 million in venture capital investment, was voted the most impressive company at 48 Hours in the Valley, a program that brings Canadian entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley for two days of instruction. Late in the second day, all participants were asked to vote on the best presentation via texts or twitter, and GoInstant won.

C100 – the group of Canadian expats in

The hottest new tech company on Prince Edward Island is disrupting the data asset management market – not to mention a few stereotypes.

DiscoveryGarden Inc. was created by a librarian, who then recruited a religious studies professor, and financed the company through a grant from the Atlantic Innovation Fund. Yet the data asset management company is turning heads, winning awards and compiling a prestigious client list.

“We met our aggressive sales targets in our first year and will double it this year,”’ said vice-president Joe Velaidum in an interview. The company has pioneered

Innovacorp has received 65 entries for its CleanTech Open competition, more than doubling the Nova Scotian innovation agency’s internal target of 30.

Innovacorp has said it wants to find the best cleantech entrepreneurs in the world and encourage them to set up businesses in the province, so the competition is open to people with great ideas and business plans anywhere.

Though most of the entrants were from Nova Scotia, the competition did succeed in drawing competitors from as far away as China. The final tally is 48 Canadian entries, about 80% of which came from Nova Scotia. There

As it prepares to host angel organizations from across Canada next October, the Halifax-based First Angel Network is taking a lead in improving the standards of angel investing in Canada.

Ross Finlay, a founding member and de facto executive director of the Maritime group, spent last week at the National Angel Capital Organization Summit in Ottawa, and he and his executive are already organizing the next NACO Summit, which will be held in Halifax Oct. 24-26, 2012.

Finlay is now the vice-chair of NACO, the umbrella group for angel organizations in Canada, and also the chair of its new

PropelICT, the New Brunswick accelerator, has announced it is now accepting applications for its first five-month course in Launch 36.

For full details, please take a look at Propel's announcement here.

PropelICT announced in October that it would aim to take 36 seed level companies (with a preference for those setting up in New Brunswick) through its program in the next three years.

 

A Halifax startup pioneering a device that measures breast density may find its market buttressed by a wave of legislation sweeping the United States.

Densitas is a seed-level company launched by Dalhousie Associate Professor Mohamed Abdolell and serial entrepreneur Tim Burke. It is now developing the Densitas automated breast density measurement system, which will generate real-time breast density measurements each time a woman receives a screening mammogram.

The system, which the team hopes will be on the market in two years, can help to determine the risk of breast cancer. Women with