Mark Brand, one of the leading social entrepreneurs in Vancouver, will be the keynote speaker at the Starting Point conference to be held at St. Mary’s University from Feb. 18 to 20.

The Starting Point conference is designed to bring together student entrepreneurs and educate them in fundraising, developing ideas, social entrepreneurship, and other facets of starting their own businesses. The organizers expect about 150 student entrepreneurs from across Canada.

The highlight of the three-day event will be a keynote address by Mark Brand to an audience of as many as 600 people.

Denis Kay has been a scientist for a long time, but he’s most thrilled by his current role working on a promising drug for Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s is an escalating problem in aging societies. It’s estimated that the worldwide annual market for Alzheimer’s drugs is already $3.8 billion, although the cost to society is far greater.

“Sometimes I can’t sleep at night because of my excitement over the drug and working for a small biotech venture,” said Kay, who is a founder and chief scientific officer of Charlottetown’s Neurodyn Life Sciences.

Kay is energized because Neurodyn’s

Caetum, a Halifax company that emerged from St. Mary’s University’s graduate program for startups, is preparing to launch an online product next year aimed at solving a huge pain for clinical researchers.

The company is producing a digital platform that helps clinical research sites budget for their projects, something that can be a surprisingly large challenge.

Though there is software on the market that helps with such tasks, it is expensive and includes lots of features that researchers don’t need, said co-founder Mandy Woodland in an interview.

The three founders of Ceatum — the

A few years ago, my partners and I at Rho Canada Ventures began to notice the opportunities occurring in Atlantic Canada, and I started spending more time here.

Today, we feel really lucky I did.

We’ve found a rich vein of tech companies on the East Coast, and we were able to invest in them before many of our competitors had heard of them.

We set up Rho Canada in Montreal in 2006 with the

QRA, a Halifax startup that helps manufacturers detect design problems, has become the first Canadian company accepted into the headquarters of Disruption Corp., a support facility based in Washington, D.C.

Disruption, founded eight months ago by globetrotting startup backer Paul Singh, announced Monday night it has struck an agreement with Innovacorp to “set up shop” in the Disruption headquarters and help recruit Canadian tenants. QRA, which will still be based in Halifax, will be the first of these tenants.

“Disruption is not investing in us, but their deal with Innovacorp will have

A diverse group of entrepreneurs — from a 15-year-old to a group of nursing students to a pair of St. Francis Xavier University professors —have been named winners of the second annual Spark Cape Breton entrepreneurship competition.

Innovacorp, the provincial innovation agency, has announced eight winners will divide the total prize money of $200,000, up from six winners in the first competition last year.

Innovacorp, the Atlantic Provinces Opportunities Agency and the Nova Scotia Economic and Rural Development and Tourism Department — all clients of Entrevestor — organize the

When he was working as a chemist in Iran, Mostafa Aghaei developed a solution from natural polymers that successfully combatted the erosion and movement of sand dunes – a huge problem in the desert nation.

When he came to Canada three years ago, he became an entrepreneur and began looking for local applications for his unique nanocoil product; a natural solution that becomes a fixative when it hardens.

And now he’s on the right track. Aghaei’s company, Biopolynet of Fredericton, has recently struck a partnership with Iron Ore Company (IOC) of Canada, to use the nanocoils to prepare iron

After a career spent proving his adaptability, Gary Dinn is now focused on preparing Atlantic Canadian companies for the global market through his role at a regional mentoring group.

Dinn has recently taken over as CEO of Propel-ICT, the group that runs Launch36, the biggest business accelerator east of Montreal.

Under the banner Propel 2.0, Dinn and his team are aiming to launch 420

The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation’s current Breakthru competition will be dramatically bigger than the 2013 edition, both in terms of number of participants and total prizes.

The New Brunswick innovation agency announced this morning that it received applications for the biennial startup competition from 62 teams representing 108 entrepreneurs from all over New Brunswick. In the 2013 event, there were 47 entries.

The total prizes will almost double to $750,000 in cash and in-kind services. That’s up from $406,000 last time out.  

“This is the highest number of Breakthru entries

Bungalo may be the only company working out of the Volta startup hub in Halifax that can legitimately claim expansion into Prince Edward Island is part of an international growth strategy.

The online cottage rental platform did just that this week, and the “international” part is convincing because the company began life in Iceland.

The tech startup, which is in the process of raising $1 million, has dual headquarters in Reykjavik and Halifax and believes the Canadian market is perfect for its product, which connects cottage owners and vacationers.

Having signed up 500 cottage owners