People give many reasons for assisting others. Frustration isn’t usually among them, although that helps motivate New Brunswick entrepreneur Rivers Corbett.

Corbett, the co-founder of Relish Gourmet Burgers, spends a lot of time mentoring young entrepreneurs and speaking to high school students.

He strives to make youngsters realize that they can become entrepreneurs.

“I’m focused and

We’ve almost reached our target of getting surveys submitted by about half of the Atlantic Canadian startup community.

The response has been fantastic and I want to thank everyone who completed the survey. I especially want to thank those who were patient with my persistent nagging.

We’d still like to get more surveys in, so if you haven’t completed one, please do so today. It only takes three minutes and all the material is completely confidential.  You can find the survey form here.

I’m already starting to see a few patterns emerging. I will be writing about them first in our

Halifax’s topLog announced Wednesday its new product for application developers will soon be available on the Bitnami platform, which should help increase its distribution.

For the last two years, topLog has been developing software that helps notify developers and system administrators if there is a problem on their system and to sort out any troubles quickly.

The company will soon launch a “freemium” version, meaning that users can download a basic product for free and pay for additional functionality.

It is partnering with San Francisco’s Bitnami, which has a platform that offers

The Next36, an entrepreneurship non-profit based in Toronto, wants Atlantic Canadian startup founders to apply to join this year’s cohort of 20 founders for The Next Founders, a program to accelerate startup growth.

The Next36 has been around for five years, but for the first three years it’s been solely focused on growing undergraduates’ startups. The program allows undergraduates to take courses with business experts from across North America, as well as meet The Next36’s network of more than 300 of the top business influencers in Canada.

The participants in The Next Founders have

Fielding a question from a judge at the BioInnovation Challenge last year, Graeme Powell hesitated for a second, then said that, no, his company is not just making a walking stick with a bathroom scale in it.

The company, Doctor’s Orders of Fredericton, is designing a “smart cane” to help speed the recovery of people who have had surgery like knee or hip replacements. The design will help individuals accelerate their recovery, and it will also provide the medical community with data that should improve recovery times overall.

“We know from professionals we’ve spoken to that offsetting

We’re into the home stretch with the Entrevestor Survey, and we’re really heartened by the response from the startup community.

Almost half the startups in the region have completed the survey, and I can’t thank enough the people who have taken the time to submit the form.

But we still need to receive more surveys. The more founders that complete this form, the better our data is for the entrepreneurial community. We want to be able to leave this exercise with a clear picture of what is happening in the startup world, now that startups are becoming a substantial slice of the regional

One of the benefits of schlepping across the Cobequid Pass on a regular basis is that it gives me time to decompress from the chaotic nature of running one of Canada’s best accelerator programs. Typically that means tuning into CBC’s Vinyl Café. The show is an hour-long variety format featuring short stories. On a recent trip one of their stories got me thinking about our value proposition as a

After refining its educational databases that track the progress of First Nations students, Dadavan Systems is demonstrating its commitment to social good by acquiring B-Corp (Benefit Corp.) certification.

A growing U.S.-based initiative, B-Corp certification requires companies to prove that they meet high standards in terms of social and environmental practices, accountability and

We’re into the final week of the Entrevestor Survey, and are thrilled with the response we’ve received from the startup community.

So far about 100 founders have taken the three minutes to complete the survey and help out both Entrevestor and the startup community.

Just how much this survey helps the community became apparent to me on Wednesday when I presented our data to the Island Advance luncheon in Charlottetown, sponsored by the Greater Charlottetown Chamber of Commerce and the PEI BioAlliance.

I was able to give a solid overview – backed by data – of the growth and economic

The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation has issued the following press release:

NBIF'S TOP RANKING SHOWS NEW BRUNSWICK AS HOTBED FOR INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

FREDERICTON, NB, February 5, 2015 – After a record year of investing in startups, the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation (NBIF) was ranked the third most active venture capital fund in its category by the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (CVCA) in their 2014 report on investment in Canada.

"One of the major challenges of venture capital investing is having enough viable startups to invest in, or what