The startup community in St. John’s is continuing to move forward this week with the opening of its co-working facility and a partnership with Startup Canada.

The innovation community in St. John’s ranges from 150-member multi-nationals like Verafin to single-entrepreneur startups like FundUni and dozens of companies in between. But since late last year, the community has been coming together to accelerate growth. It formed StartupNL late last year, an association that gained more than 100 members in its first few months. Now community members have formed Startup St. John’s, to become one

Jevon MacDonald’s tremendous speech to the Halifax Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday night was the third reminder I had seen in a week that Atlantic Canada needs to develop the technology community.

MacDonald, the chief executive officer and co-founder of GoInstant and a Salesforce vice-president, delivered a keynote speech that outlined his own career, the development of the Halifax tech community and the need to develop that community.

As I listened to it, I couldn’t help think about two new reports that came across my computer monitor in the last week. The first was a Statistics Canada

As Volta opens its doors for the first time this morning, the thing that really pleases its organizers is that they’re no longer the only ones doing the organizing.

That task is being undertaken more and more by the 10 tech startups occupying the shared office space on Spring Garden Road in Halifax. And that’s just fine by Jevon MacDonald, TitanFile Co-Founder Milan Vrekic, regional venture fund manager Patrick Keefe and the other people who have put the project together.

“I think the cool thing about Volta is how the community is already taking ownership of it,” said MacDonald earlier

In the last two years, I’ve sat separately with Iain Klugman and Gerry Pond and listened to their divergent views on developing start-up communities in Atlantic Canada.

Klugman, the CEO of the Communitech accelerator in Kitchener, Ont., said in a recent interview that we should look at Halifax, not Atlantic Canada, as a start-up community because such a community has to be “something you can get your arms around.” He added that Atlantic Canada could have several communities, but they should be more localized than one big regional family.

Pond, the celebrated New Brunswick-based investor

Saar Fabrikant is careful in describing B4Checkin Ltd.’s revenue growth, but he makes it clear that the picture is rosy.

Fabrikant is the president and chief executive officer of the Halifax company, which has developed a suite of cloud-based software solutions that allow hotels and hotel chains to carry out online reservations, check-ins, feedback and other functions.

The company earns money from customizing and installing the software for its clients — most of whom have been independent hotels or small chains — and in the monthly payments hotels make for using the software.

The

With its sales increasing rapidly, Halifax startup Novawise Inc. has closed a six-figure funding round from the First Angel Network to finance its international sales effort.

CEO David MacKinnon said Friday that the funding was worth “significant six figures”, and that the offering was oversubscribed by 50 percent. The company may end up selling its customer relationship management software to some members of the investment group, said MacKinnon, who described himself as “ecstatic” by the experience of working with FAN.  

Founded in 2011 by MacKinnon and Chief Technology Officer Steve

Peter Gifford may have trouble finding a place to launch the working prototype of his new offshore supply vessel, even though it’s only nine metres long.

The problem: it’s 16 metres deep — same height as, for instance, an IMAX screen.

Gifford is founder and CEO of ExtremeOcean Innovation Inc., a St. John’s startup that is developing a radical new vessel to serve the burgeoning market of offshore wind turbines.

The TranSPAR Craft looks like a New York taxi on top of a telephone pole, and the unusual design is one reason it has been lauded internationally and received three rounds of

Iain Klugman bristled when I referred to the Atlantic Canadian start-up community in a recent interview. A start-up community, explained the CEO of Kitchener, Ont.-based accelerator Communitech, is a smaller entity than something spanning four provinces. “Start-up communities define themselves, and they have to be first and foremost a place where people think they belong, where they believe they come from,” he said. “I don’t think people think of themselves as Atlantic Canadians.”

So my in-person interview in Kitchener with one of the most respected technology proponents in the country

[Editor's note: Blair Ryan, CEO of The Rounds of Halifax, contacted Entrevestor to respond to our article on Iain Klugman’s contention – printed previously on the Progress website -- that a startup community can’t span four provinces.We're publishing his remarks in full.]

I must say, I disagree with Iain Klugman (and with full respect; his achievements are undeniable). I lean and rely on the startup community in Atlantic Canada as much as anyone, I'm sure. I looked back quickly at the last seven people I went to for help or advice:

OneLobby CEO Jordan Smith (Fredericton via Halifax)

Moncton-based Picomole Inc., which is developing a breath analysis device that detects cancer, said yesterday its technology has produced preliminary accuracy of 98.5% in independent trials, which it believes makes it a world leader in detecting lung cancer.

The company has a working, portable prototype of its breathalyzer-like device that can detect lung cancer by identifying markers in breath samples and is spending 2013 performing clinical studies on the device and its infrared-based method of detecting cancer.

 In a press release Wednesday, the company said it had conducted a pilot