Revelling in Blank’s Wit & Wisdom

Steve Blank on Friday showed why he’s the entrepreneurship prof that other entrepreneurship profs talk about.

The serial entrepreneur and academic made two appearances at Communitech and displayed the wit and insights that have made him one of the most often-cited startup educators in the world. I missed the appearance by the father of customer discovery methodology at the Innovation Summit,

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Pond Reassesses Aging Population

The Atlantic Entrepreneurial Ecosystem conference attendees couldn’t stop talking last week about Gerry Pond’s Grey Grey Matter Matters.

Pond looked at one of Atlantic Canada’s biggest problems: a large aging population. His solution? Take old people’s wisdom to create businesses. That’s how the Maritime investor and entrepreneur arrived at Grey (old people) Grey Matter (the brain) Matters:

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8 Lessons From Ecosystem Conference

I found eight takeaways from the Atlantic Canada Entrepreneurial Ecosystem conference, hosted by the Sobey School of Business at St Mary’s University on Friday.

The first three come from Gerry Pond, former CEO of NBTel and founder and investor in several successful businesses.  The first is that scale matters. Promoting entrepreneurship has to operate at the regional level – individual cities and provinces lack critical mass. For me that suggests, among other things, more efficient and cheaper travel.

Second, Pond argued that the region needs to think creatively about new opportunities.

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Press Release: Brovada’s $15M Exit

Towers Watson, a publicly listed professional services consultancy, has issued the following press release:

Towers Watson to Acquire Brovada

Acquisition expands Towers Watson's insurance technology offerings

ARLINGTON, VA, September 14, 2015 — Towers Watson (NASDAQ:TW), a global professional services company, announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Brovada, a Canadian insurance technology business. The acquisition will enhance Towers Watson's position as a leading insurance software provider.

Brovada focuses on streamlining the communications between insurance

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Sickboy Uses Wit to Showcase CF

Jeremie Saunders is an actor and adventurer who has cystic fibrosis, and he’s bringing his light-hearted love of life to a series of unusual health podcasts.

Saunders is running a Kickstarter campaign to fund his Internet shows, which are made under the name Sickboy Podcast.

In them, Saunders and two friends interview people with different illnesses in order to shed light on the daily

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Teaching Students to Sell

Not long after Gerry Pond offered half a million bucks to any Atlantic Canadian university that initiates an international tech sales program, some people began to ask: what would such a program look like?

Daniel P. Strunk is pretty sure he knows the answer.

Pond, the chair of the East Valley Ventures investment group in Saint John, surprised the Atlantic Leadership Summit in February by

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Our New Site & Broader Focus

Right now, your eyes are gazing at something we’re pretty excited about.

Welcome to Entrevestor’s new website – which represents something far larger than a redesign. It’s an essential component of our first major expansion since we began four years ago this month.

Entrevestor now features two sites – one for Atlantic Canada and the other for Kitchener-Waterloo. You can move between them

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Navigate Set to Open in Sydney

After months of work, Sydney is finally getting its own incubator for tech startups.

Launched by startup enthusiasts Ardelle Reynolds and Lindsay Uhma, the Navigate Startup House is due to open Oct. 9 in downtown Sydney. The space will feature offices for four growing startups, and a common work area in which as many as 20 teams at the idea or early stages can work.

“People who are

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Furey Named CEO of BlueLight

BlueLight Analytics, the Halifax startup that helps dentists ensure they use optimal energy when curing the resin in fillings, has named J.P. Furey its new Chief Executive Officer.

The company said today in a press release that Colin Deacon, the founder who had been CEO for the past six years, would become President and Director. He will report to Furey, who had been CFO since joining the

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