The success of the Startup Weekend St. John’s this past weekend is matched by the buzz in the startup community in the Newfoundland and Labrador capital overall.

I was lucky to attend the Startup Weekend in St. John’s and it gave me a chance to catch up on what’s going on in the burgeoning community. New companies are coming into the community, and established ones are moving toward traction and funding. In broad terms, there’s excitement that something is building.  

“There’s a strong buzz here with new companies forming all the time,” said Jason Janes, the head of Startup St. John’s,

http://www.voltaeffect.com/Volta, the Halifax-based startup incubator, announced today it has become an Amazon Activator partner. Following is the press release describing the partnership:

 

Volta becomes Amazon Activate program partner 

 

November 12, 2013 -- Today, we are excited to announce a partnership with another major driving force in technology  - Amazon.com.

We are happy to say that Volta is an Amazon Activate program partner. Amazon Activate is a program designed to provide startups with the resources needed to get started building scalable solutions on the Amazon

Sentinel Alert, a cellphone app that can alert companies when an employee has had an accident, won the $15,000 first prize Sunday at Startup Weekend St. John’s, capping off a coming-of-age event for the city’s startup community.

Startup Weekend events have been held in 115 countries and several Atlantic Canadian cities but this was the first one in St. John’s. And the strong turnout and sponsorship were a testament to the work done this year by Startup St. John’s in developing a grassroots-based entrepreneurial community.

“This has been absolutely beyond our expectations,” said Jason

The Wallace McCain Institute last week announced a new funding by the Miramichi Technology Fund, which was financed by a $1 million donation by former premier Frank McKenna.  The following is a press release issued by the institute.

 

UNB’s Wallace McCain Institute supports new software start-up in Miramichi

 

The Miramichi Technology Fund, managed by UNB’s Wallace McCain Institute (WMI), recently announced an investment in a new software start-up in Miramichi, NB.

Patchell Brook Equity Analytics Incorporated (Equity Analytics) is a company focused on creating the software

My grandfather, Major H.P. MacKeen of the Royal Artillery, 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

Acknowledging that a treasured business venture is not going to succeed is tough for anyone, especially when the entrepreneur is only 17. But fledgling entrepreneur Raphael Paulin-Daigle recognizes that failure offers important lessons. When he closed his business Shopulse in early October, Paulin-Daigle was sad, but he knew that the experience had been valuable.

The Grade 12 student designed

The recent financings of Halifax-based startups Affinio and Analyze Re highlight one facet of the innovation ecosystem in Atlantic Canada that is healthier in 2013 than last year – the number and diversity of major institutional fundraisings.

In 2012, the startup scene in Atlantic Canada was characterized by a lot of exciting companies receiving seed funding – usually $200,000 to $2 million -- to finance the early stages of their growth. That was great, but it also meant that there were a cluster of young companies all scrambling for follow-on financing, each of them looking for rounds of

A year ago, Cam McDonald and Daniel Bartek were Dalhousie University students enrolled in the Starting Lean course. Yesterday, they announced their company Sage Mixology has signed a distribution deal with the biggest liquor purveyor in the world.

The speed with which Sage – whose third founder is Bobby Besant – is bringing its product to Liquor Control Board of Ontario outlets says plenty about the drive of its young team and their execution of a great idea.

Sage is dedicated to revolutionizing the ready-to-drink (RTD) alcoholic beverage market, the pre-mixed fruity drinks you can buy

It was great to see some friends from Arkansas at MentorCamp in Halifax last month.  It reminded me of our trip to Northwest Arkansas this past summer, when I witnessed what a startup community can and should be.

I was lucky enough in August to be one of a quartet of Atlantic Canadians – the others were Patrick Hankinson of Compilr, Shawn Carver of Fiddlehead and Gavin Uhma of GoInstant – serving as mentors in a MentorCamp held in Bentonville, Ark., the home of Walmart. Permjot Valia, the Founder of Halifax-based MentorCamp, invited us to come and serve as some of the international

Analyze Re, a Halifax company whose software-as-a-service product helps reinsurers assess risk, has received almost $1.4 million in funding from a range of venture capital funds and angel investors.

The company came together when a trio of executives — Oliver Baltzer, Adrian Bentley and Shivam Rajdev — took their idea for a SaaS product for reinsurers to the Starting Lean course at Dalhousie