When I ran into Patrick Keefe, the new head of the regional venture capital fund, during Atlantic Innovation Week, the one thing he wanted to talk about was the book he’d just finished, Startup Communities by Brad Feld.

Feld is a serial entrepreneur and a pillar of the startup community in Boulder, Colorado. The recently published book is intended to be a roadmap for the development of entrepreneurial communities – such as the one now developing in Atlantic Canada. It’s been featured widely in tech blogs the past few weeks. Even though Keefe was more impressed with it than I was, it’s

ABK Biomedical of Halifax aims to have its treatment for uterine fibroids ready to roll out in Canada within 18 months with the help of a $1.25 million fundraising round announced yesterday.

The company, which was developed by researchers at Dalhousie University, has received a $500,000 equity investment from a group of Atlantic Canadian angels, $250,000 in venture capital from Innovacorp and a $500,000 loan from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.

ABK Biomedical also announced that it has hired a chief executive, Pat O’Connor, a former executive with Boston Scientific, one of the

The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation and Cox & Palmer yesterday launched the province’s fourth Breakthru competition, which tests entrants’ ability to write business plans and awards winners a total of $250,000 in cash and professional services.

The winner will receive a $100,000 cash investment from NBIF, along with professional services from such firms as Cox & Palmer. The two runners-up will each receive $50,000 plus legal, marketing, and accounting services.

Applications for the biennial contest must be received by NBIF by Dec. 20. The winners will be announced at the Breakthru

As it achieves a preliminary close on its first round of funding, LeadSift has signed a deal to market its lead-generation product through Salesforce.com – a deal that came together because of an article on Entrevestor.com in May.

Halifax-based LeadSift is announcing as early as today a $500,000 preliminary close on its first round of funding, which includes a $250,000 investment from Nova Scotia’s innovation agency, Innovacorp. 

That announcement is coming just four days after San Francisco-based Salesforce, the social media company that bought Radian6 of Fredericton and GoInstant of

Alpha Dog Games’ website describes better than I can what it will unleash on the world in a couple of weeks: a “visceral WHACK ‘N’ SMASH action-adventure game in a dark fantasy world.”

Yikes.

Alpha Dogs is a mobile gaming company based in Bedford, N.S., founded by three veterans of the game development industry to capitalize on the growing market for simulation games on mobile devices. The company will release its first offering, called “Wraithborne”, in the next few weeks, and hopes to establish it as a franchise, with many more iterations of Wraithborne to follow.

“We’re trying to

Springboard Atlantic, the organization that supports the commercialization of research at the region's post-secondary institutions, will host a technology showcase in Halifax on Wednesday in association with the National Angel Summit, which opens that evening.

The Springboard Atlantic Technology Showcase is being held 9 am to 4 pm at the World Trade and Convention Centre in Halifax and will highlight the innovation produced by researchers and others at the 19 universities and colleges across the region. Admission is free, but entrants must sign up byTuesday.

"Atlantic Canada has seen

Breviro Caviar Inc, which is commercializing a rare caviar taken from the shortnose sturgeon, has secured a $500,000 venture capital investment from the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, bringing its total equity raise to $2.5 million.

Fredericton-based NBIF, which backs startups and scientific research in the province, issued a statement this morning saying Breviro is the only company in the world to hold the necessary license under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species to farm and sell roe from the shortnose sturgeon. This caviar is in high demand in global

Matt Eldridge and Adam MacDonald have decided to follow that age-old advice about working on your greatest passion, and they’ve figured out a way to combine their proficiency in software with their love of golf.

These two veterans of the Moncton tech community are preparing to launch Foursum – a mobile app for golfers -- at the Professional Golf Association Merchandise Show in Orlando, Florida, in January. Foursum allows golfers to input four basic stats from each hole they play, so they end up with a range of data in a personalized databank. The data can be instantly shared with an

The Regional VC Fund, which launched last week, was created largely to solve the lack of capital in Atlantic Canada.

It was an age-old complaint from entrepreneurs in the region: there simply wasn’t enough capital in these parts to nurture world-class businesses. But now that problem will abate – abate, but not vanish – with the creation of the new fund. And because the problem of scarce capital will linger, the creation of this new fund should be considered just a first step toward a healthier financing regime.

The three Maritime provinces last week announced that the yet-to-be-named

A Prince Edward Island web designer is crowdfunding for a digital project he hopes will benefit research into diseases or other charitable causes.

Brad Pineau of Charlottetown has created Coding for Cures, a not-for-profit startup that will produce products with all the profits going to charities. Pineau’s day job now is owner and CTO of Timeless Medical Systems and Timeless Technologies, which are P.E.I.-based software development companies.

“I’ve always been sort of fascinated by how diseases are cured,” he said in an interview Friday. “It’s not something I could work on because I’m a