One of the interesting aspects of Invest Atlantic and MentorCamp in September was the prominent role played by tech experts from Arkansas of all places.

There’s no obvious link between our home in the North Atlantic and the landlocked southern state that produced Bill Clinton, Sam Walton and Levon Helm. But one similarity is the state is developing innovative businesses, and two of its representatives were delighted to come to Halifax to share ideas and experiences.

April Seggebruch, VP Finance & Operations of Merchant View LLC, of Fayetteville, and Jeff Amerine, Technology Licensing

GMS Surface Tech, which produces green and odour-free surface cleaners, has received commitments of about $600,000 in a $700,000 second round of funding that it hopes will fund expansion in the U.S.

 

The company, which was started by chemistry professors at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., is raising $400,000 in equity investment, mostly from outside the region, said Chief Marketing Officer Joe Menchefski in an interview. The company has secured $140,000 in support from NRC-IRAP and is hoping to finalize the remainder of the raise with the Atlantic Canada

We’d like to welcome Daniel Boltinsky, our new student intern, to the team at Entrevestor. Daniel is a student at University of King’s College in Halifax and his first piece for us is running today.

We’ve asked Daniel to report once every two weeks on startups coming out of the region’s universities. His stories will run the gamut from students starting a venture in their dorm to medtech companies being spun out of millions of dollars of research.

This is, of course, an important component of the Atlantic Canadian innovation segment, and we’ve found Daniel to be a real go-getter who’s

Having closed a seed round of funding, Halifax-based social media marketing company InNetwork Inc. is already talking to venture capital funds about a follow-on round, likely in the middle of 2013.

Innovacorp, the provincial innovation agency, announced Thursday that it made a $250,000 equity investment in the company, which helps social media marketers reach key “influencers” in their target market. A group led by Gerry Pond of East Valley Ventures Inc. put in $240,000. 

In an Interview, InNetwork CEO Chris Keevill said the company is already in discussions about further funding with

The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation said Thursday it is teaming up with the New Brunswick government to provide $1 million to hire technical staff for research at the province’s universities and research institutions.

NBIF, an independent, not-for-profit corporation, and the Department of Post-secondary Education, Training and Labour will provide money to hire the technicians and assistants who undertake applied research with the potential for commercialization.

Of the total funding, $650,000 will fully fund more than 75 undergraduate and graduate students to train and work in labs

I’m pleased to announce that Entrevestor columns are now being published daily in the Chronicle-Herald, Atlantic Canada’s leading newspaper. Each business day starting  today, our columns will be included in the Insider email notice, the print edition of the newspaper, and online at thechronicleherald.ca.

I’m really delighted to be returning to the Herald, which I first wrote for as a high school student in 1978 (Yep, I’m getting on). I had a lot of fun covering City Hall, reported on the Buchanan government and learned the ropes of business journalism in the Herald business department.

Sometime in the new year, at a cattle farm in Port Hood, Cape Breton, Chris van den Heuvel will launch a software product that could save thousands of dollars each for hundreds of thousands of North American farmers.

Van den Heuvel is a software developer and the founder and sole proprietor of Fireblade Software, which monitors real-time data on cattle farms. By identifying areas of weak performance, Fireblade can help a farm save an estimated $7,500 per year, which goes directly to the operation’s bottom line.

“We’ve been using it on our own place and are just tweaking it before we do

GoVenture World, the Sydney company developing a massively multi-player online game to train budding entrepreneurs on what it’s really like to start and grow a business, has been named to a list of the 50 brightest startups in the world.

The company, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of eLearning company MediaSpark of Sydney, is nearing the alpha-testing phase as its developers continue to refine the game and work out kinks.

In the meantime, the company has been named one of 50 companies around the world to compete in the Startup Open, which selects a list of the leading startups in

If you think your startup idea is too early-stage for the Breakthru competition, Calvin Milbury would respectfully like to set you straight.

Breakthru, the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation’s biennial business plan competition, is essentially designed to guide novice entrepreneurs from the back-of-an-envelope stage to the early phases of incorporation.

“We’re actually looking for someone with an innovative idea who sees a commercial market,” said Milbury, the President and CEO of NBIF, in an interview during a break in the National Angel Capital Organization Summit in Halifax last

A dozen companies from across the Maritimes will gather in Saint John on Saturday to vie for a coveted spot in the second cohort of the Launch36 Accelerator, organized by PropelICT.

Speaking during a break at the National Angel Capital Organization Summit in Halifax yesterday, Propel Executive Director Trevor MacAusland said the finalists for the Autumn 2012 cohort comprise five teams from New Brunswick, five from Nova Scotia and two from P.E.I.

“The quality of the teams has made this a very, very difficult process,” said MacAusland. “And their ideas range from aerial drones to