The latest edition of Progress Magazine is on the stands and it includes my first-person account of going through THENEXTPHASE, the superb entrepreneurship course offered by Toon Nagtegaal and Shawn Carver.

Just a word of background: this was a unique story for us because Carol and I spent four days running Entrevestor through THENEXTPHASE program, learning about our customers' pain and working on strategy for the business. We emerged with what I think is an interesting story. But we also emerged with a stronger business and an understanding of both the potential and limitations of

Halifax consumer health products maker Origin BioMed is receiving a $350,000 investment from Nova Scotia Business Inc. which it plans to use to continue its recovery from a cash crisis earlier this year.

In an interview, Executive Chairman Carlo Shimoon said the investment that has been approved by the NSBI Board is part of a $1 million round of equity financing that will be used largely for marketing in the next six to nine months, at which time the company hopes to be cash-flow positive and ready for another funding round. The other parts of the funding are to be announced later.

He

UserEvents, a startup whose technology alerts corporations when customers are having trouble with online transactions, has attracted a $250,000 venture capital investment from the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.

Fredericton-based UserEvents has developed enterprise software called CxEngage that allows large corporations or organizations to instantly detect clients who are having problems with their website. Before the client clicks off in a huff, CxEngage allows the corporation’s call centre to phone the customer, sort out the problem and use the engagement to make additional sales.

After a year of selling their flagship product independently, the founders of CacheCase, which makes a combined phone case and wallet, are plotting a strategy to expand into the wider retail market.

Co-Founders Cam McDonald and Matt Biaros and Partner Zachary Levy can rightly claim to be serial entrepreneurs, even though they’re still studying at Dalhousie University. They set out last year to develop, manufacture and sell CasheCase, a phone case that has a pouch for money and a credit card or two. After a year of ups and downs they are ready to find a retail distributor.

McDonald said

Karma Gaming, the Halifax startup that is developing video games for regulated lotteries, has landed just under $500,000 in additional seed financing from a group of Atlantic Canadian angels, complemented by a $250,000 loan from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.

CEO Paul LeBlanc said the company has been in discussions with the angels for several months and has just closed the round. He added that the company is now looking for $3 million to $5 million in venture capital financing, which it will likely have to raise outside of the region.  

Karma has devised a solution for a

AioTV, a startup in which Innovacorp invested $1 million a year ago, has raised $8 million by selling a 44 percent stake to UTStarcom Holdings Corp., a publicly listed maker of broadband equipment and solutions for cable and telecom operators.

AioTV (short for All-In-One Television) is the brainchild of native Haligonian Michael Earle, who is now based in Denver though the company’s development and marketing teams are in Halifax. The company has developed a single-platform that can offer service using free video (such as YouTube), live linear TV (traditional networks) and video on demand

The team developing Ludo, a smartphone application that helps athletes efficiently arrange workout times with training partners, won Startup Weekend Halifax last night at Dalhousie University.

The event at Dalhousie was one of more than 150 Startup Weekends held around the world in the past two weeks, at which groups of entrepreneurs come together and spend 54 hours putting together a company. More than 5,000 startups have been launched through these events in the past few years.

This weekend’s event was the third hosted at Dalhousie, and organizers Ed Leach and Mary Kilfoil said this

The word “lean” along with its more unexpected connotations are invading the vocabulary of entrepreneurs these days – especially in Atlantic Canada.

The hot new entrepreneurship course on offer at Dalhousie University this year is titled “Starting Lean”, and it’s based on the “Lean Launchpad” methodology preached by Steve Blank of University of California, Berkeley. Last week, Austin Texas tech guru Ash Maurya spent two days in Halifax hosting seminars based on his book Running Lean.

So what’s the skinny on all this leanness?

The whole concept as it now exists is only a few years old,

Wooshii, the video crowdsourcing company that set up its North American office in Halifax last year, has been revising its business model with greater emphasis on the creative community as it works on a $1 million fundraising.

Manchester, U.K.-based Wooshii announced in March 2011 that it would set up a North American headquarters in Halifax, housing its development team and marketing executives for the U.S. and Canada. The company operates a crowdsourcing operation, meaning it lets video-makers (or what Wooshii calls creatives) bid on video contracts posted by buyers, usually

Six Atlantic Canadian tech companies -- Verafin of St. John’s, LeadSift, Livelenz, Carboncure, and TitanFile of the Halifax area and VidCruiter of Moncton -- have won awards or recognition in the past week, indicating the potential of the digital companies in this region.

Verafin, which makes fraud-detection and anti-money-laundering software mainly for small and medium-sized banks, was named to the prestigious 2012 Deloitte Tech Fast 50, which measures revenue growth over five years. Verafin, the only Atlantic Canadian company on the list, placed 25th due to its revenue increasing 358