It’s been nearly five years since Jordan Smith stood on a street corner in Halifax wearing a sign that read: “New Grad, Need Job, advert/market/sales.”

Despite the recession at the time, he got 15 job offers that day, finally choosing a business development role with the Coast newspaper in Halifax. In 2011, he started his own company, OneLobby, which aims to be the premier analytics and data company for event and trade show exhibitors.

Now, Smith is on the move again. He has recently accepted a part-time role as entrepreneur-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick in

I want to make one final call for founders to get their surveys into us. We plan to calculate everything early next week so we’re putting a Sunday night deadline on the responses.

For those who are interested, we’ve had a fantastic response to the survey. Well over half the startups we contacted have responded. When we trim off companies that have fallen by the wayside or never really got started (this is the startup world we’re talking about), we’re comfortably over half the community.

And we’ve got some tremendous data from the people who have responded – all of which will be kept

This may be the perfect winter to illustrate the value of Jon Fraser and Victoria Smith’s new product. (At least we better hope there’s not a better winter for it.)

With the thermometer plunging and heating bills soaring, there probably won’t be a better winter to test Stromline Technologies, whose product measures and monitors fuel tanks in real time.

Stromline’s first product is StromSense, which is a sort of smart cap for an oil tank, or tank holding other liquid fuel. It screws on to a common oil tank and measures the level of the fuel in the tank. It then sends out readings via the

After a few years of producing dozens of smartphone apps, Moncton-based iCubemedia is focusing in on a single suite of small business products that its founder hopes will lift the company to a new level.

For the last five years, the brainchild of founder Guyverson Vernous has been putting out a range of apps for Apple phones and devices, most of which offer efficiency tools to small businesses. Though the company is relatively unknown in the region, its sales have soared, more than doubling last year so its revenue is well into six figures. Its customer base spans 20 countries around the

Homeowners may be a little safer and their homes better renovated now that a new series of online learning programs has been created by Nova Scotia-based energy-efficiency company Blue House Energy.

Shawna Henderson, company CEO, has written three programs for workers involved in building and renovating homes. Until now, Henderson said, there has been nothing generic that teaches workers

LED Roadway Lighting Ltd., a Halifax-based manufacturer of LED-based street lighting and wireless controls, announced today it has raised $9.5 million in equity funding, most of which has come from Founder and CEO Chuck Cartmill.

The company said $1 million of this investment comes from the conversion of debentures held by Nova Scotia Business Inc. into equity.

Cartmill said the investment will be used for working capital and the financing of inventory and for a reorganization of the company’s manufacturing facility in Amherst, N.S. But much of the call with reporters focused on his

Back in 2011, John Rowe, president and CEO of Island Abbey Foods, received one of the largest offers ever made by the investors of CBC’s Dragons’ Den — $600,000, plus a $400,000 line of credit — to help develop his Honibe Honey Drop.

Charlottetown-based Rowe initially accepted the offer, but turned it down when it became clear that the business he had started with his wife, Susan, was going

The McKenzie Accelerator, based in Moncton, is seeking applicants for its third cohort, which will include five new startups.

The McKenzie Accelerator is a 14-week program which provides business training, affordable workspace, mentoring and funding. At the end of the program, a Demo Day will be scheduled in which the startups will pitch their product idea to potential investors.

The deadline for submitting applications is March 14, 2014. Potential applicants are invited to look at the group’s website for more information. The email address is accelerator@mckenzie.edu.

“If you or

Perhaps the problem is with the word “startup.”

There’s an impressive support system developing for Atlantic Canadian startups, but the problem is that most of the support is focused on the startup phase. There’s less support for maturing tech, biotech and clean-tech companies.

At Entrevestor in the past year, we’ve written about five different accelerators and entrepreneurship courses offered by at least four universities.

There are other announcements expected soon on incubators, sandboxes and the like.

Business formation is a critical aspect of creating a broad group of

As it moves on from the Genesis Centre at Memorial University, environmental monitoring startup EMSAT Corp. is also moving on from the product development phase of its growth to focus on sales, marketing and business development.

Last week, the startup graduated from the Genesis Centre, Memorial’s incubation facility for high-growth, technology-based ventures, and now has its own office in downtown St. John’s. And it is in the final month of Phase 2 of its pilot project with a major Albertan client. The project is going well and the company is looking for new opportunities.

“This year