HeadsUp, a startup dedicated to improving tradespeople’s communications with customers, captured the $25,000 first prize at Canada’s Business Model Competition on Saturday, edging out a strong field of finalists.

The university entrepreneurship competition’s winning team, comprising Mike Reid, Jeremy Tupper, and Dimitry Galamiyev, was a bit of a hybrid as its members came from three schools -- University of Waterloo, Dalhousie University, and Ontario College of Art and Design University respectively.

The two other winners were: Ourotech, made up of Duleek Ranatunga and Zain Roohi of the

Atlantic Venture Forum, an investor conference that showcases regional startups, is looking for founders to present at this year’s event June 10 and 11 at the Westin Nova Scotian in Halifax.

Critical Path Group, the company that organizes AVF, has released a call for presenting companies and is accepting applications until March 31.

The company said the two-day event will “bring together

When Dan Palotta speaks in Fredericton next week, he will make a passionate plea for more liberal operating rules for non-profits, arguing they can do more good with greater flexibility.

Palotta is one of the keynote speakers at the Social Impact Dialogue that will take place Monday and Tuesday to kick off the East Coast Startup Week – the winter entrepreneurship festival in the New Brunswick capital.

The influence of the Pond-Deshpande Centre – whose dual mission is for traditional and social entrepreneurship – is strong in the Startup Week, so there is a heavy emphasis on impact

There’s nothing predictable about inspiration. Frances Leary’s journey toward becoming a socially responsible entrepreneur began with a study of Bigfoot in the swamps of Louisiana.

Halifax-based Leary established Wired Flare, her online communications company, in 2011.

It has become the 13th company in the Maritimes to gain the status of Benefit Corporation, a designation that communicates

Dalhousie University has issued the following press release:

Canada’s Business Model Competition to host student entrepreneurs from universities across Canada

Halifax - Dalhousie University’s Rowe School of Business is excited to be hosting Canada’s Business Model Competition on March 13 and 14. Thirty teams of student entrepreneurs from more than twenty universities across Canada will compete for $50,000 in prizes presented by Deloitte.  The final competition will take place on Saturday March 14 at 2 pm in the Kenneth C. Rowe Building and is to the public.

Canada’s Business Model

Startups in Atlantic Canada focused more on selling than hiring in 2014, and business specialists believe the region’s high-growth companies are better off as a result.

Today, we’re releasing our first Entrevestor Intelligence report of 2015, including the results of our latest survey of the region’s startups.

The companies that shared data with us revealed that their total revenues

A group of high-growth entrepreneurs heard last night that the economic development of their city, region and country depends on their own success because tech is the engine for modern growth.

Paul Singh, the founder and CEO of Washington, D.C.-based Disruption Corp., told a Tech Cocktail Halifax event that modern economic growth depends on high growth companies, and their success or failure

When a group of graduate computer science students in Fredericton sat around discussing cyber-security last year, two voices that carried the most weight were those belonging to the parents of young children.

The group understood the dangers the internet poses for kids, and Smart Castle Labs was born.

This young startup is developing a device that will help protect children when they use the internet and do more than simply filter out inappropriate websites. It will use sentiment analysis and other functionality to battle cyber-bullying, internet luring and other online evils.

“Our

Less than a year after Spot Interactive took on the Discovery Centre in Halifax as its first client, the video-based e-commerce company has quickly amassed a customer base of 600.

The young Charlottetown and Montreal company’s growth is seen in the fact that it recently doubled its staff to 12 and took on investment from private backers. But the strongest evidence is that Spot Interactive had impressive revenue in 2014, considering it was its first year of sales. But in the first 10 weeks of 2015, its sales have been 25 times those of all 2014.

The reason for such astonishing growth is

After wowing the audience at DemoCamp last autumn, Halifax-based Glitch Wizard is now hoping users upload more images on to social media using the app.  

Founded by developers Connor Bell and Allan Lavell, Glitch Wizard is an app that uses filters to distort images, GIFs and videos to give them a computer-crash aesthetic. Glitch Wizard allows the user to have fun with their images rather than