Any year that features a 2,800% gain on an exit would be a pretty good year for a fund manager, but Calvin Milbury believes the Radian6 exit was only one facet of a successful year for the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.

During an hour-long interview in NBIF’s boardroom in Fredericton on the first day of fiscal 2013, Milbury discussed the sale of Radian6 to Salesforce.com, which bagged $9.25 million for NBIF, and the exit of Q1 Labs, which wasn’t an NBIF portfolio company.

They were the highlights of the fiscal year that ended March 31, but Milbury was more interested in talking

Ad-Dispatch, the Dartmouth-based augmented reality company, will announce today that it is spinning off its audio and video production division into a separate company called Current Studios to ensure better use of its talent and resources.

Headed by seasoned producer Richard Huggard, Current Studios will offer broadcast radio and television production in addition to online web video, animation, and 3D modeling.

The group hopes the new branding will, among other things, help in sales to Atlantic Canadian companies by reminding them that there’s a source for top-quality production

Since moving to the cloud a month ago, Celtx has released 14 new products and now the company is gearing up for a couple of more launches – big launches.

St. John's-based Celtx is one of the world’s leading makers of pre-production software for the film industry. Its free software allows filmmakers – whether they’re directors, cinematographers, writers or whatever – to do all the preparations they need for filming on their PC or device. First funded in 2006, the company now has almost 2 million users (those who have logged in 5 times or more) in 170 countries operating in 34 languages.

 Even though he co-founded Startup Kitchen to discuss technology, Suhaim Abdussamad’s favourite podcast is the interview with the operator of a gourmet food truck.

On New Year’s Day, the Fredericton-based video-blogging site broadcast an interview with Jamie Lynch, who had just launched a mobile gourmet business called Fresh Mobile Bistro. Seated before a PC, Lynch described the process of starting his business with $45,000 from BDC and the Canadian Youth Business Foundation, and told why his business is different from other food trucks. It was a bit of a departure for a website devoted

 We in the media missed a little item this week, but it merits a bit, maybe quite a bit, of attention: SimplyCast has launched a Chinese version.

The Dartmouth-based company is already a global leader in multi-channel marketing and CEO Saeed El-Darahali is now making good on his ambitions to dominate this business worldwide. The former Innovacorp exec never lacked determination, planning SimplyCast at inception as a platform-as-a-service enterprise rather than a simple software-as-a-service solution, meaning the company could develop new products more quickly and inexpensively than

Karma Gaming, the Halifax startup out to marry regulated lotteries with video games, is on the verge of closing a $750,000 second round of funding and hopes to bring in a third round by September.

Chief Executive Paul Leblanc and Chief Innovation Officer Jay Aird said in an interview today that they’ll close the second round in the next two weeks. Their first round was a $500,000 funding from Groupon CTO and Dalhousie University alum Paul Gauthier and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. Acoa will also play a role in Karma’s second round, which will include about $250,000 in

The results of one of New Brunswick’s ambitious accelerator programs will be on display next Wednesday in Moncton as five companies from the McKenzie Accelerator pitch at an Angels’ Den.

Last autumn, two new accelerator programs began in New Brunswick:  PropelICT’s Launch36, which we wrote about last month, is designed to bring companies to the market-ready or investment-ready stage; and the McKenzie Accelerator is designed to take concept companies and prepare them for seed funding. The idea is that a company can go through the McKenzie Accelerator and be ready to enter Launch36.

Victoria Lennox’s voice was muffled as she spoke into her cellphone, but the message she was delivering came through loud and clear. After holding a week of town hall meetings with entrepreneurs across Nova Scotia, entrepreneurs and small-business owners were letting her know that they wanted less confusion in the programs that support them.

 “We learned quite a lot,” she says of her first week touring Canada as the executive director of Startup Canada. “We learned that there are a lot of services in the province, but what people want is to bring them all together to smooth the way.”

It would be wonderful if Nova Scotia were designated an “intelligent community” next year. The fact that the province is beginning the process of seeking the designation should result in economic paybacks, say the campaign’s organizers.

 Digital Nova Scotia, the umbrella organization for the provincial IT industry, recently announced that it’s entering the competition for the 2013 designation of the world’s most intelligent community, awarded each year by New York’s Intelligent Community Forum (ICF). The announcement followed Digital Nova Scotia’s second annual Leaders’ Summit, which was

The establishment of a buyout fund in Halifax is a nice addition to the growing number of investment groups in the region, and could help with one problem facing the Atlantic Canada – succession in prosperous businesses.

SeaFort Capital Inc. announced Monday that it will set up shop under the leadership of president Rob Nomandeau. The chairman will be MP Scott Brison and the board and investors include Scott McCain, Donald Sobey and Rob Sobey.

Without having spoken to anyone involved in the company (I’m out of town), what I do find interesting is that the principals have chosen to