Be audacious.

That was the message Yobie Benjamin had for Atlantic Canadian entrepreneurs when he delivered the keynote address at the Engage 2015 Conference in Halifax this week. The celebrated entrepreneur and funder called on East Coast startups to be as audacious as possible, because it’s the only way to grab the attention of major venture capital investors.

“You need to have audacity –

My grandfather, artillery officer H.P. MacKeen, shown on the left, wrote this poem in Ypres in September 1917, two months before the Battle of Passchendaele.

 

The White Cross

It isn’t a medal or order,

It carries no ribbon or braid

But a token still

As on Calvary Hill

Of the greater sacrifice made.

 

It stands as a lonely sentinel

O’er the place where the hero sleeps

As it charts a new course, Frederiction business incubator Planet Hatch has parted ways with Sally Ng, who has been its executive director since it opened more than two years ago.

Ignite Fredericton Chief Executive Officer Larry Shaw confirmed in an interview Monday the board of the economic development agency thought it was “best to decide to move on” with a new head of Planet Hatch.

“We

Days after leaving his job with Salesforce.com, Jevon MacDonald wanted to discuss the prominent place the tech community holds in the recently released One Nova Scotia Coalition report rather than his own plans.

MacDonald is best known as the co-founder of GoInstant, the Halifax startup that San Francisco cloud computing giant Salesforce.com bought for a reported $70 million in 2012. Since

VidSnippets, a video searching and editing tool, is gathering names of individuals and organizations interested in participating in a free 30-day trial. The company will select the participants in the trials, which will begin later this month and continue through December and January. 

Started at the Masters of Technology, Entrepreneurship and Innovation program at St. Mary’s University in

At the Entrevestor Luncheon in Sydney in the spring, it didn’t take long for the 100-plus attendees to zero in on one essential thing missing in the local ecosystem – an incubator.

The event, which was sponsored by BDO Canada, asked the diners to discuss how the ecosystem could be improved. And while most people enthusiastically applauded the mentors in the Cape Breton city, they thought

A thorough redesign of the B4 Change program at the University of New Brunswick will assist social entrepreneurs by working with regional partners to deliver more tailored and individualized programming.

A social entrepreneur is someone who founds a for-profit or non-profit venture with the aim of addressing a social or environmental issue. The sector is increasingly relevant as charities

Health QR, the Halifax startup whose mobile app helps patients improve success with their medical prescriptions, launched its product in a reception at the Volta startup house last night.

As well as launching the product, the two-year-old company is spreading its wings. CEO Patti Ryan is taking it through the Canadian Technology Accelerator in Philadelphia, which specializes in health-related

Backed by $2.7 million in venture capital funding, Immunio is rapidly gaining clients for its software that battles breaches of company data.

The Montreal- and Dartmouth-based company aims for ease of use in its product that allows companies to embed protection, offering greater security and flexibility than a firewall.

“Our protection is actually inside the application,” said Chief

Calvin Milbury hopes New Brunswick improves its standing the next time the Conference Board of Canada ranks the innovation performance of Canadian provinces. And the President and CEO of the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation is taking steps to improve the performance.

For example, NBIF is participating in the Conference Board’s conference on innovation in Fredericton next month.

In