In the group’s first investment ever in Prince Edward Island, members of the First Angel Network have committed to sink more than $250,000 into Zengo Inc., which has developed a seal to plug leaks in tanks carrying hazardous or contaminating materials.

With this financing, the pre-eminent group of private individual investors in the region will have invested in each of the Atlantic Canadian provinces.

Founded by former police officer Glenn Cox, Stratford, P.E.I.-based Zengo has designed and manufactured the RUPTUREseal, a patent-pending device that fits over a tear in an industrial tank

Serial entrepreneur Dan Martell next week will announce a new startup that will operate out of his hometown of Moncton.

Martell will launch Clarity.fm at a ceremony in Moncton late next week and reveal the details of the new company at that time.

We’ve been sworn to secrecy but can say that Clarity.fm will address the problem of linking advisers with entrepreneurs who need their advice. People in the startup business often have trouble finding experts who can provide the specific advice they need, and this new venture will help to address that pain point.

Martell has some

As youmay have noticed, we're now winding down for the holiday season and are officially in Yuletide loaf mode. We've posted our final joint column with Progress Magazine for 2011, and are now putting our feet up. It's been a great three months since we launched Entrevestor.com, and we're really looking forward to enhancing our offerings in 2012.

We will have one more story for you this year -- a tantalizing nugget on Dec. 28. And that will be it unti lwe resume the service on Jan. 4.

We really appreciate -- a total understatement -- the way the innovation community has responded to

Omers Ventures, the new venture fund set up by the Ontario municipal employees’ pension fund, has begun to reach out to entrepreneurs in Atlantic Canada, looking for small companies that want to get big – really big.

The Toronto VC fund received $200 million in capital this year and will gain additional funds in the future as it builds up its capital to become a major player in Canadian VC. It has begun to develop a network of contacts across the country and has designated one investment officer, Damien Steel, to cover the eastern provinces.

Having joined Omers in September, Steel is

 The Maritime tech community will celebrate the holiday season with the regular get-togethers Cybersocial in Moncton and Third Wednesday in Halifax.

In Moncton, the lead-in for the Cybersocial on Wednesday Dec. 14 is a mini-workshop titled  “Intro to Agile Development” at The Moncton Club, 115 Queen Street, from 3:30 to 5:00 pm.

This will be followed by the Cybersocial from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. The headline company this month is HealthConnect, a Moncton-based provider of outsource services to the pharmaceutical industry.

The Third Wednesday gathering on Wednesday Dec. 21 will feature tech

There’s a buzz about venture capital now that’s growing ever louder. The buzz is growing to impressive volumes nationally, but here in Atlantic Canada it’s reaching unprecedented decibel levels.

The numbers are starting to show the reason for optimism. As I wrote last month, 2011 should prove to be a record year for VC investment in the region, especially in Nova Scotia. But statistics can prove a one-time aberration, and the chatter among investors right now goes beyond big investments in or exits by a handful of companies.

What’s happening on a national level is fascinating because

The trophy case for Atlantic Canadian startups gained a positively cluttered look yesterday as GoInstant of Halifax and SimplyCast of Dartmouth both brought home some silverware.

GoInstant, which launched in September with $1.7 million in venture capital investment, was voted the most impressive company at 48 Hours in the Valley, a program that brings Canadian entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley for two days of instruction. Late in the second day, all participants were asked to vote on the best presentation via texts or twitter, and GoInstant won.

C100 – the group of Canadian expats in

The hottest new tech company on Prince Edward Island is disrupting the data asset management market – not to mention a few stereotypes.

DiscoveryGarden Inc. was created by a librarian, who then recruited a religious studies professor, and financed the company through a grant from the Atlantic Innovation Fund. Yet the data asset management company is turning heads, winning awards and compiling a prestigious client list.

“We met our aggressive sales targets in our first year and will double it this year,”’ said vice-president Joe Velaidum in an interview. The company has pioneered

Innovacorp has received 65 entries for its CleanTech Open competition, more than doubling the Nova Scotian innovation agency’s internal target of 30.

Innovacorp has said it wants to find the best cleantech entrepreneurs in the world and encourage them to set up businesses in the province, so the competition is open to people with great ideas and business plans anywhere.

Though most of the entrants were from Nova Scotia, the competition did succeed in drawing competitors from as far away as China. The final tally is 48 Canadian entries, about 80% of which came from Nova Scotia. There