Cape Breton startups had to compete with Donald Trump, Jeff Hutcheson and Jim Balsillie at the Cape Breton Partnership’s Investor Summit on Thursday, but the young companies more than held their own.

The summit is the annual conference of the organization responsible for economic development on the island. The morning discussions highlighted Balsillie’s purchase and restoration of the Keltic

Pathogens’ growing antibiotic resistance is a global concern. Halifax drug discovery firm Appili Therapeutics Inc. is developing its own solutions, and scouring the world for potential drugs with which to grow the company.

CEO Kevin Sullivan said since Appili formed last year, its strategy has been to balance risk by acquiring drug candidates at different stages of development.

“Our strategy is

As it launches the pilot of its first product, Halifax-based Squiggle Park has been accepted into the Fierce Founders Accelerator, a new program in Kitchener-Waterloo for female tech entrepreneurs.

The Halifax educational technology company, formerly known as EyeRead, is one of nine startups from across the country to be accepted into the new program at Communitech, the ever-expanding innovation

About four years ago, a trio of game developers came together to form a Bedford-based gaming studio called Alpha Dog Games, and quietly began to grow.

The team started with three founders – two of whom, Jeff Cameron and Shawn Woods, are still with the company – and it took on staff as its production increased. In fact, Alpha Dog recently added its 17th employee.

“We have a few big games that

As a former cabinet minister in New Brunswick, Craig Leonard knows how quickly and decisively public opinion develops on social media. It helps him as the CEO of Eyesover, a new Fredericton-based social media monitoring company.

Eyesover is the brainchild of Ali Ghorbani, the dean of the computer science faculty at University of New Brunswick. Over the last decade, he has developed software that

Propel ICT is looking for a few good startups – with the potential of becoming a few great companies.

The regional Atlantic Canadian accelerator is hoping to identify successful startups that would be candidates for the Propel Growth program. This new initiative is designed to help scaling tech companies grow into global corporations.

Propel would like high-growth Atlantic Canadian tech companies with more than $1 million in annual revenue to contact the organization sometime this month. It will then invite the qualifying companies to an information session in early November to outline the

Soricimed Biopharma Inc., the Moncton-based biotech company developing peptide-based cancer treatments, has announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted orphan drug designation to its flagship compound for the treatment of pancreatic cancer. 

The FDA granted a similar designation earlier this year to the compound SOR-C13 for the treatment of ovarian cancer.

“Receiving orphan drug

Our Jobs of the Week column this week features opportunities for a data scientist in Fredericton and sales executive in Halifax.

SimpTek Technologies, a Fredericton startup that helps utilities and homeowners better understand and predict their energy usage, has an opening for a data scientist. SimpTek has developed two dashboards: one for the residential consumer that shows in real time how

Atlantic Canada should foster urbanization in order to build the kind of capital-attracting, wealth-creating culture the region needs, says New Brunswick-based academic and writer, Prof. John McLaughlin.

Exciting urban centres would be especially appealing to youth and new immigrants and would make it easier for people to share ideas and expertise, said McLaughlin, shortly after receiving his Lifetime Achievement Award from Startup Canada.

Canada’s population is aging rapidly. About five million Canadians are aged over 65, and the situation is acute in Atlantic Canada.  In 2014, New

Invest Atlantic, the pan-Atlantic conference for startups and investors, will open Wednesday in Moncton with a range of speakers from around the region and other startup centres.

The 2016 event – the first held outside Halifax – has assembled a group of speakers with the goal of helping all founders to understand the entire funding process. That is, companies regardless of their stage of