As a former small business owner, Gillian McCrae knew the challenges local merchants face attracting customers and getting a return on their marketing dollars.

The Charlottetown native pondered the problem and came up with a unique solution — merchants could attract customers and build loyalty by offering them gifts.

McCrae launched the idea on Prince Edward Island and it immediately

Sherri McFarland is working for a day when certain dental patients can improve their oral health with a sort of illuminated mouthguard smeared with compounds extracted from common Nova Scotia plants.

McFarland is the co-founder and CEO of Fenol Farm, a Mount Uniacke-based life sciences startup that recently won the $100,000 first prize for the Annapolis Valley area in Innovacorp’s I-3 Competition. And the aim of this young company is to use a combination of light and natural compounds extracted from plants to cure oral health problems in certain patients.

The company is developing both

An added feature of this year’s Big Data Congress will be the Research and Development Connector, which aims to link businesses with university researchers.

The event takes place Monday from 1 to 4 pm at the Saint John Convention Centre. It is sponsored by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, known as Nserc, T4G Ltd., and Springboard Atlantic. The computer science faculties at University of New Brunswick and Dalhousie University have also helped to organize the connector.

Here’s how it works:  the room will be filled with about 20 researchers in computer

The Nova Scotia Commission on Building Our New Economy, which filed its report last week, took note of the accomplishments of the startup community, and asked me to produce a few recommendations on how to enhance the performance.

The Commission, headed by Acadia University professor Ray Ivany, was charged by the previous government with examining the Nova Scotian economy and recommending ways to improve it. (I was going to write “fix it”, but that would be distorting the actual mandate.) The report called for a huge change in culture, in which business growth is encouraged, rewarded and

While the Ivany commission’s 243-page report makes for interesting reading, it’s not quite as interesting as people’s responses to the tome.

After all, the commission on the Nova Scotian economy last week called for a change in Nova Scotians’ attitudes, so it’s paramount to understand what those attitudes are. After listening to people discuss the report, and reading social and conventional media, I think there are two attitudes that sing out for change: the belief that the Maritime way of life is superior to that of places like Toronto because we’re not corrupted by wealth, and the

One week from today, the second Big Data Congress will kick off in Saint John with a host of internationally renowned thinkers and, very likely, a huge turnout from the startup community.

Last year, about 600 people braved the cold to attend the inaugural Congress – an astonishing number given the time of year and the fact the event had not been held before.

The goal for that conference was simply to provide a showcase for what Big Data is and how it can help all businesses and organizations.  This year, organizers T4G and the New Brunswick Information Technology Council want to build

We want to thanks the well over 100 entrepreneurs that that have responded to our survey of the Atlantic Canadian startup community, and remind others to please get the surveys in.  

We’re delighted with the response we’ve got so far. We just need to work this week with the startups who’ve told us they’ve been meaning to respond. There are a lot of people who have said they just have to get around to it. Now is the time to get them in.

So far, only four people have declined to participate. Their reasons are mainly because they have left the region, have only one free app or feel they’re

Paul LeBlanc says he suffers from “a serious case of corporate ADD,” so it’s no surprise the entrepreneur juggles several ventures and is always on the lookout for more. Any idea offering a unique product can catch LeBlanc’s attention and enthusiasm.

“Critical things to business success are a unique product, intense focus and an extraordinary dose of hustle. Those things are lightning in a

Heimdall Networks of Sydney on Wednesday captured $225,000 in prizes by winning the I-3 Technology Start-up Competition, Innovacorp’s event that aims to find the best new startups in Nova Scotia.

Founded by Jim DeLeskie, Heimdall Networks is developing software that protects corporations and governments against distributed denial-of-service attacks. The company won a $100,000 seed investment as the overall winner, on top of the $100,000 in cash and services it won for placing first in the Cape Breton region. It also won $25,000 in cash as the contest’s top information technology company.

Applications are now open for Canada's Business Model Competition, the Halifax event that will allow a team of university students the right to attend the International Business Model Competition at Brigham Young University.

Teams interested in competing in the competition must submit their video application by Monday, Feb. 17. The competition will be held at Dalhousie University March 14-15.

Dalhousie University professors Ed Leach and Mary Kilfoil initiated the program last year, creating a Canadian base for the competition that had already been going in the U.S. for a couple of