Halifax-based Atlantic Motor Labs has received a $250,000 equity investment from Innovacorp to help develop its more durable motor for the oil and gas industry.

Founded by Braden Murphy, Atlantic Motor has developed a motor that combines features of piston and turbine motors to improve the efficiency in the drilling head. It offers a simpler, more robust and longer-lasting drill motor than those used in more than 70 per cent of the world's drilling rigs.

Innovacorp said in a statement the innovation should reduce motor-related down-time while drilling by 30 per cent and save the oil and

Gerry Pond, the driving force behind the East Coast startup community, has received the first-ever BDC Entrepreneurship Champion from the Business Development Bank of Canada.

He received the award during a reception in Toronto last night. Tonight, by coincidence, he will be the first speaker at the Startup Grind Halifax meeting at the McInnes Cooper officee.

The BDC Entrepreneurship

When Doug Robertson leads a discussion on international sales on April 15, he’ll be dealing with a subject close to his heart.

Robertson, the CEO of Venn Innovation in Moncton, has been preparing companies lately for entering overseas markets. So he’s looking forward to hearing other people’s views on how to improve Atlantic Canadian startups’ ability to sell in foreign locales.

Robertson will moderate a discussion on international sales at the Entrevestor Luncheon, sponsored by BDO, to be held at the Future Inns Moncton, starting at 11 am on April 15. The second discussion, to be led

To understand why Castaway Golf Technologies won the $287,250 first prize in the 2015 Breakthru competition, it’s best to consider why it changed its name in the middle of the six-month competition.

The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation announced Thursday that the Fredericton company founded by Matt Vance and Josh Ogden had captured top place in the biennial event.

When asked after the announcement what the prize meant, CEO Ogden mentioned coachability and making the changes needed to move forward.

“We’ve pivoted on a few things since we spoke before,” Ogden said Thursday,

Andrew Button has attended too many meetings about Atlantic Canada’s economic troubles. He has worked in economic development with a specialization in rural communities and found that the region’s economic woes became a hot topic in every discussion.

Yet these constant meetings never found concrete solutions to grow economic development in Atlantic Canada.

“Who was actually going to do this

My column last week suggesting a hackathon to find a home-grown solution to snow days drew a lot of response, which I’d like to share with our readers.

To recap, I suggested that the education departments or school boards hold hackathons to work on a tech solution for the amount of time students miss due to snow storms. Even as I write this, the Halifax Regional School Board, which had a week to sort things out, has canceled classes while it assesses buildings.

I said we need an online platform with which teachers could communicate with students when schools were closed, either

The Genesis Centre, an incubator affiliated with Memorial University of Newfoundland, has issued the following press release:

Ocean Technology Company SubC Imaging Wins International Business Award

Memorial University’s Genesis Centre is congratulating its graduate company SubC Imaging on winning the Outstanding Incubator Graduate Award from the U.S.-based National Business Incubation Association (NBIA).

Out of six possible award categories, SubC Imaging is the only Canadian company to receive an award. The NBIA Incubation Awards honour the top business incubators, client companies

Castaway Golf Technologies, a company that grew out of a young boy’s love of retrieving lost golf balls, has won the $287,250 first prize in the 2015 Breakthru competition.

The Fredericton company that is developing an automated system for retrieving, sorting and selling balls lost in water hazards received the news at the Breakthru dinner last night, attended by 540 people.

The first runner-up was Simptek, which is working on home automation systems that save energy. Third place was captured by NB Biomatrix of Saint John, founded by Jeff Jennings and Keith Brunt, who have discovered a

With the support of BDO, Entrevestor will once again this year host a series of Entrevestor Luncheons, beginning with an event in Moncton on April 15.

BDO, the accountancy and tax advisory consultancy, has agreed to sponsor four Entrevestor Luncheons this year. The luncheons are an opportunity for members of the startup community can come together to discuss ways to improve the regional ecosystem.

Last year, partnering with Entrepreneurs’ Forum, we held luncheons or dinners in each provincial capital in the region. The topics we discussed ranged from finding early adopters to mentorship

As Executive Director of The Mentra, Atlantic Canada’s new mentoring organization, Janna Hare expected to be matching mentors and mentees like a dating service. But she’s found that people want to choose who they work with.

So now, The Mentra is establishing MentraConnect, a cloud-based platform that suggests mentors based on an entrepreneur’s profile, but also allows mentees to search for