I’m pleased to be the guest speaker at a TecSocial gathering Thursday in Sydney – one of a few events Entrevestor will be attending in Cape Breton late next week.

I’ll be delivering a brief chat on communications for startups at the TecSocial get together from 5:15 pm to 7:15 pm June 4 at the Membertou Trade & Convention Centre.

My talk will focus on the need for startups to identify their key message and make sure the entire team can deliver it.  They have to communicate internally and to investors, customers, and the broader world.  It’s important because no one can achieve their

Futurpreneur Canada, a group that supports young entrepreneurs, has launched the fifth annual Spin Master Innovation Fund, a competition for innovative young people.

The national organization is looking for innovative Canadian entrepreneurs between the ages of 18 and 39 to apply to the competition by June 19.

The competition’s judges will select as many as 10 contestants to win a  development loan worth up to $50,000 and two paid trips to Toronto to attend mentoring events. Each winner will work with one of Futurpreneur Canada’s 2,800 volunteer mentors, specially selected to meet the

Densitas, a Halifax startup developing software that enhances mammography, his issued the following press release:

DENSITAS RECEIVES ISO 13485:2003 CERTIFICATION

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia – May 28, 2015 – Densitas Inc. announced today it has received 13485:2003 certification from the International Standards Organization (ISO).

This ISO standard specifies the requirements for comprehensive quality management systems for the design and manufacture of medical devices. Densitas is an early stage startup company that develops software for use in the digital mammography enterprise.

This

A guy from Cape Breton Island has launched a war with both Google and Apple, and investors like Rupert Murdoch and Twitter have bet $85.4 million that he’ll win.

Kirt McMaster is gaining fame in the tech world as the CEO of Cyanogen Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif., company that is developing a new operating system for smartphones. There is now a duopoly in these operating systems as 90 percent or

Halifax health-technology company Kinduct Technologies announced Wednesday it has signed five professional sports teams and two NCAA colleges to use the Kinduct Performance product.

The Performance product is an athlete management system that helps organizations that work with elite athletes find the information they need. The software helps these organizations collect, organize, share and

Working with other partners throughout the region, Planet Hatch is trying to rustle up a group of founders and other startup lovers to make up an Atlantic Canadian contingent at the International Startup Festival in Montreal in July.

Sally Ng, the Executive Director of the glistening startup hub in Fredericton, said in an interview Monday her organization and others in the region are trying to get a group together to fill a bus to attend the festival.

Now in its sixth year, the Startup Festival gathers together more than 2,000 founders, investors, and analysts from more than a dozen

The Venture Newfoundland and Labrador Fund, the new public-private investment body that will provide seed financing in the province, has announced its first close and should make its first investment within three weeks.

Pelorus Venture Capital Ltd., the subsidiary of GrowthWorks Atlantic that will manage the fund, said Tuesday that the contributions by the government of Newfoundland and Labrador, BDC Capital and Pelorus itself have all closed. Pelorus is talking to some institutions and potential angel investors about coming into the fund. It is working with the Newfoundland and Labrador

University of New Brunswick recently launched the second year of its Summer Institute, an accelerator that melds entrepreneurial fire with artistic passion. 

The three-month program differs from other accelerators that focus on sales, market research and typical research and development. Instead, the Summer Institute aims to help participants discover an issue they are deeply passionate

At some point this summer, Sean Sears hopes Canadian startups will be raising capital on his new crowdfunding platform, ICrowdx.

Sears and his colleagues at the Halifax investment-firm-cum-startup-lab Ogden Pond have been working on developing the online portal in preparation for regulators approving equity crowdfunding. Now that that has been achieved, they are in discussions with regulators

Last fall the C.D. Howe Institute published a report titled, "Measuring Innovation in Canada: The Tale Told by Patent Applications". Innovation is a fickle concept, and patents only tell part of the story. Yet when one sees that Atlantic Canada ranks last and well below the national average, it's hard to deny that we have a problem.

Readers of Entrevestor are well informed of the vibrancy of the East Coast startup scene, especially for its size. But venture capital and startup firms are not identical to innovation. They represent the fuel and ignition behind new ideas, and as any good Cub