After a day of impressive presentations, the second-last session of the Startup Empire conference in Halifax on Tuesday made people sit up because it detailed the harsh realities of the holy grail of the startup world – the exit.

Jeff Thompson, founder of Fredericton-based UserEvents, and Daniel Debow, Senior VP at Salesforce and founder of several startups, captivated the audience with a frank discussion of what it’s really like to be taken over.  They’ve each exited a couple of companies. And their dialogue – moderated by Patrick Keefe of Build Ventures -- was rich with practical advice

Doubling its previous capacity, PropelICT has named 20 companies from around the region to its next cohort, which will take place in Moncton, Fredericton and Halifax over the next three month.

The regional accelerator program refers its new system of mentoring young startups as Propel 2.0, signaling how it is increasing its ambitions and its ability to mentor young companies. Since it began its Launch36 accelerator three years ago, it has never had more than 10 companies in a cohort, and the classroom sessions have usually been held in Moncton.  Most of the Launch36 cohorts were capped at

Sentinel Alert, a St. John’s start-up that is developing a wearable technology devoted to worker safety, has become the first company from Newfoundland and Labrador accepted into the prestigious Launch36 technology accelerator.

The company has spent about a year prototyping and validating technology that can tell large companies and/or governments when a lone worker — such as a lineman for an electricity company — has had an accident or is in jeopardy.

Co-founders Sarah Murphy and Jason Janes attended the Launch36 selection camp in Moncton earlier this month and were accepted into the

 “Product manager” is a difficult position to define let alone master. And to help people do both, ProductCamp is coming to Halifax next month.

ProductCamp is a loosely organized get-together in which product managers, marketing professionals and people interested in product management can meet up, find areas of common interest and mentor on another on best practices. ProductCamp Atlantic

Neurodyn, the Charlottetown startup working on treatments for neurological diseases,  has issued the following press release:

Positive Phase 1a outcome for Memogain

Neurodyn Life Sciences Inc. announced completion of its first-in-human clinical study, demonstrating Memogain’s potential benefits over existing Alzheimer’s drugs;

•             increased safety in the absence of significant side effects,

•             more potent cognitive enhancement.

The Phase IA clinical trial addressed safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics of intranasally delivered Memogain in healthy young

Leah Skerry was shocked to learn that one of her friends struggled through high school without being able to read.

Her friend’s experience helped motivate Skerry to develop EyeRead, an affordable eye-tracking software able to assess and aid children’s reading.

The device is still being developed, and Skerry, a partner at Halifax web development and invention firm Norex, and her co-workers

[Ahead of the New Brunswick election on Monday, Planet Hatch Executive Director Sally Ng wrote the following column for the CBC. The piece was accompanied by this radio interview with Terry Seguin.]  

If you had asked me five years ago if I would still be in New Brunswick, I would have said, “Not a chance.”

Years after studying at Mount Allison University and the Moncton Flight College,

If you’re a Maritime startup launching a new product, it doesn’t hurt to be partnering with one of the world’s largest makers of hardware.

That’s exactly what digital signage specialist ScreenScape Networks of Charlottetown has done as it unveiled ScreenScape Connect this week in partnership with Round Rock, Texas, computer maker Dell Inc.

ScreenScape launched Tuesday the product to simplify the process and reduce costs for organizations that want to advertise on location-based TV monitors. The device looks like a standard flash drive and plugs into a high-definition TV, allowing

Ready for the busiest eight days on the Halifax startup calendar?

You better be because five events that speak to the entire community will take place in the Nova Scotia capital between Sept. 22 and 30. It begins with MentorCamp on Monday, followed by the new Startup Empire conference, the Entrevestor-Entrepreneurs’ Forum dinner, Startup Weekend and Invest Atlantic. DemoCamp had been scheduled for Sept. 24, but a notice on the Volta website says it has been delayed until November.

MentorCamp is a session that exposes a handful of promising startups to mentors from around the region and

Next Thursday, members of the startup community will have an opportunity to discuss a matter that has been on their minds for years – how to liberalize the patchwork of angel tax credits in the region.

Rob Barbara, Partner at Build Ventures, will lead a discussion on this subject at the Entrevestor-Entrepreneurs’ Forum dinner in Halifax. The goal is to come up with new ideas, maybe even a consensus, on how to improve the system for incentivizing angels to invest in startups.

(After this discussion, Innovacorp CEO Stephen Duff will chair a talk on mentorship, which is a follow-on