For some of us, summer music festivals bring to mind relaxation and enjoyment. For Darren Gallop, they mean a heavy workload and more revenue for his company, Marcato Digital Solutions.

Based in Sydney, Marcato provides organizational software to music festival organizers around the world. The Software-as-a-Service platform will be used by 146 events this year, the first year it’s handled more than 100. Some clients run several events and therefore get a discount, so Gallop said that overall the company’s revenues have risen by a respectable 30 to 35 per cent year-on-year.

“It’s a

SageCrowd, the Halifax-based learning science software company, has issued the following two press releases:

SageCrowd Launches Learning sciences white paper

The brain's natural learning cycle

Boston, June 3, 2015 – Learning science software company sageCrowd, announced it has published and made available on its website, The Brain’s Natural Learning Cycle. Based on two years of research, this paper contributes to the learning industry's understanding of the learning implications of the brain’s natural process for creating skill-based memories and behavioral change.

The white paper

Phillip Curley of Fredericton-based HotSpot Parking and Christopher Cowper-Smith of Halifax’s Spring Loaded Technology have made the shortlist for the 2015 BDC Young Entrepreneur Award, joining two other Atlantic Canadians as finalists in the competition.

BDC, the federal government’s business development bank, announced the finalists in a statement this morning for the competition that seeks to find the country’s leading entrepreneur aged between 18 and 35. The other Atlantic Canadian finalists are Martin O'Brien of the Cascumpec Bay Oyster Company in Prince Edward Island, and Melissa

After settling on its 15^th design iteration, Spring Loaded Technology is finally ready to unleash its “bionic” knee brace on the world.

As it opens its new headquarters and manufacturing facility in Dartmouth this month, the company that grew out of Dalhousie University’s Starting Lean class is preparing for a pre-sales campaign it hopes will validate demand for the product. Spring Loaded has

In many ways, The Rounds exemplified what happened in fundraising by Atlantic Canadian startups last year. It was a record year largely because companies like The Rounds tapped angels and government-owned agencies. 

The Rounds, a Halifax startup that operates a social network for medical professionals, announced a capital raise of $1 million in April 2014 from Innovacorp and a host of angels.

If you want a quick visual presentation of startup financing in 2014, check out our infographic here.

Our artist Roxanna Boers has done a great job capturing in a single image the various nuances of how Atlantic Canadian high-growth companies raised money last year.

We look at total funding, the sources of funding and major deals. We even break down sources of institutional funding in the

The least-noticed part of the Ascenta Health Ltd. exit may be the most interesting: it is the development of a new company around the Ascenta Skin product.

Ascenta Health, whose NutraSea brand of nutritional products are made naturally from omega-3 fatty acids, said last month it had been bought by Nature’s Way, an affiliate of Dr. Willmar Schwabe Pharmaceuticals of Germany. And a single sentence in the announcement said Founder and CEO Marc St-Onge would “move on and retain ownership in Ascenta Skin, the company’s newly developed high-end skincare brand.”

Though the financial details

Sydney-based Techlink Entertainment has suspended operations and laid off about 60 employees.

Techlink’s specialty was producing VLT games that accepted prepaid cards rather than cash with the goal of alerting players when they’d spent a certain amount.

Such machines had been mandated in Nova Scotia under the province’s responsible gambling rules. But the provincial government ended Techlink’s responsible gaming contract last year, saying its My-Play system was flawed.

The company had received financial backing from Nova Scotia Business Inc., which had approved equity investments and

Things are going so swimmingly at Xiplinx Technologies that CEO Brent MacDonald is going back to where he was three years ago – in the PropelICT accelerator.

Xiplinx, the Saint John company that helps manufacturing plant managers monitor data from around their factories, was recently accepted into the Propel Build program. That’s the advanced accelerator for growth stage companies, and the

As the incoming chair of the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, Cathy Simpson intends to help more startups achieve the kind of accelerated growth that pushes companies and regions forward.

Simpson also aims to get more women involved in science, technology and management. To that end, she is leading youth initiatives that demonstrate that women can succeed in the innovation sector.