Spark Nova Scotia has announced this year’s winners. The contest for rural and coastal high-potential, knowledge-based businesses is run in three regions — Cape Breton, North, and Southwest — and offers winners up to $50,000. Each geographical region functions independently, with its own applicant pool and local judges.

Here are the results:

NS Southwest

$50k First place: Ethan Doucette of 

The Calgary-based non-profit Top 7 Over 70 will hold its fifth awards ceremony in Halifax in May next year. The group runs an awards program that celebrates the new successes of adults over 70 and it is the first time the awards will be held in Atlantic Canada.

The group, which also raises funds for partner organizations, hosts an increasingly well-known biennial celebration, which began back in

Calgary-based Cashew Research, a startup offering AI-driven market research, has won Profitual’s first No-Pitch Competition, which was designed to assess companies based on their fundamentals, not their verbiage.

Profitual is a Fredericton-based company whose software assesses young Canadian companies’ prospects by analyzing their financial models and performance. It recently launched its No

Propel, Atlantic Canada’s virtual accelerator for tech-enabled companies, has announced the latest cohort joining its Traction & Growth Program. This group of founders represent a range of industries, from AI and health tech to retail, education, and clean technology.

“This cohort demonstrates the strength and creativity of Atlantic Canada's startup ecosystem,” said Kathryn Lockhart, CEO,

Port Williams, NS-based Scotiaderm, which produces a natural skin barrier formulation that protects against skin damage caused by exposure to urine, feces, sweat and chaffing, is one of five Canadian companies to receive funding from Natural Products Canada.

The company, led by CEO Johanna Mercer and CMO Dr. Ann Gordon, is launching early adopter marketing trials while conducting Class III

Jeff White, the CEO of the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, has posted a blog saying his organization is noticing a rebound in the startup community in the launch of new ventures and fundraising by portfolio companies.

The article highlights a resurgence in New Brunswick’s startup community, which White outlined last month at the New Brunswick Innovation Outlook event in Fredericton.

St. John’s-based Kraken Robotics, which specializes in next-generation sonar systems and unmanned platforms to carry them, is in the process of raising about $100 million by selling shares on the TSX Venture Exchange.

The company issued a statement on Tuesday saying Desjardins Capital Markets is leading a syndicate of underwriters for the deal. They will buy 37.6 million shares at $2.66 each,

The Axis Accelerator at University of New Brunswick Saint John has seats available for its six-month program for business-to-business startups from across Atlantic Canada looking to grow their revenues and prepare to raise capital.

The program will begin in September and require three to five hours per week from participants. It is aimed at positioning the founder of a company as its lead

Cape Breton–based sustainable promotional products company Ethical Swag is navigating the current economic chaos through the B-Corp certified systems it already had in place.

The Sydney company helps organizations make their values visible through ethically made, branded merchandise.  Over the last few years, the company has had strong revenue growth operating throughout Canada and the U.S. Even

For the first two-thirds of Toward Prosperity, the reader could be forgiven for thinking they’d picked up the wrong book.

In the title, this superb new analysis of the Atlantic Canadian economy by economist David Campbell and retired pollster Don Mills promises a path to affluence. Even the subtitle, The Transformation of Atlantic Canada’s Economy, makes it clear that things are changing in a