Last year, Lisa Walsh, founder of Newfoundland’s Indigena Skincare, was selling her products to top establishments and planning a rebrand, a product expansion and a spa. This year’s pandemic and terrible snowstorm slowed her plans and necessitated a pivot to online retailing. Now, Walsh finds herself having to be as resilient as the wild botanicals used in her skincare.

Walsh founded Indigena in

Halifax-based ReelData AI, which uses artificial intelligence to improve production in fish farms, has added Denmark’s Atlantic Sapphire to its growing customer list.

The deal means that ReelData’s technology will be used at Atlantic Sapphire’s farms in Denmark and the U.S., including its new Bluehouse plant in Florida, the world’s largest land-based fish farm.

Founded by Dalhousie University

WeUsThem Inc. has won the second Health Challenge Pitch Event, which focused on mental health. The Halifax-based advertising agency has developed imTeen, a technology that empowers youth to track and take care of their health by self-monitoring signs of common mental and physical illnesses.

WeUsThem is headed by Ashwin Kutty and Fatem Alshazly. As well as winning $100,000, the company also won

I was featured this week on the Growing Pains podcast, the second week in a row the Atlantic Canadian startup community has featured on the show. 

Hosted by Matt George and economist David Campbell, Growing Pains focuses on economic development issues in Atlantic Canada. It's a great source of insights on the forces shaping our region. 

I appeared this week after the release of our 2019

Seven universities in Atlantic Canada are co-ordinating efforts to support student entrepreneurs  by hosting virtual workshops.

Five virtual workshops for all entrepreneurs and three virtual fireside chats are being hosted by participating institutions. Students across all campuses can attend for free.

The fireside chats, called Women Leading Startups, are in partnership with the Canadian

Innovacorp has named five Nova Scotian companies to its six-month Accelerate Program, each of them receiving $50,000 in development capital and access to mentors and incubation facilities.

The Nova Scotia government’s early-stage venture capital agency on Wednesday released the names of the winners, who between them will divide more than $250,000 in funding.

The goal of the program, which

The first Ocean Startup Challenge has awarded $25,000 each to 14 companies – 40 percent more winners than it had originally planned.

Organizers had intended to announce 10 winners but said the judges decided to extend the group of winners to 14 due to the calibre of the startups. As well as all four Atlantic Provinces, the winners are based in British Columbia, Ontario and Washington, D.C.

The

One part of our Atlantic Canada Startup Data report that merits closer examination is our claim that the region has a problem with early-stage funding.

This sort of funding declined in 2019 for the first time in three years, and the pandemic will likely result in a further drop in 2020. And that is important because funding rounds of less than $500,000 are needed to bring young companies to the

Our Job of the Week column features an opening for a Product Marketing Manager at Dash Hudson in Halifax.

Dash Hudson is a visual marketing Software-as-a-Service company that helps its clients increase engagement on their social media. Its software, called Vision, is a one-stop spot for clients to manage, source and engage with the traffic of their photos and videos.

The Job of the Week column

Planet Hatch is preparing to launch a new program that prepares post-secondary students for the coming wave of employment opportunities, and it hopes to extend the program beyond New Brunswick.

The Fredericton-based innovation hub is working with the University of New Brunswick on the pilot of the Future of Work Skills-Development program, which it hopes to launch in the next few months.