For a team that squeaked into the competition, Afri-Sea from Saint Mary’s University exceeded expectations at the International Business Model Competition on the weekend.

The company, which uses compounds from seaweed to mitigate the effects of drought, made the finals at the event at Brigham Young University in Utah, ending up placing fifth and winning US$5,000.

Not a bad performance, when you consider the team from the Halifax university’s Master of Technology Entrepreneurship and Innovation program missed the finals of the Canadian competition held at Dalhousie University in March.

Timbre Cases, the Fredericton startup dedicated to making the best guitar cases available, announced funding Monday that will finance its final push to get a product into the market.

Founded by music aficionado Peter McMath, Timbre Cases will soon launch the DNone, an upmarket acoustic guitar case that’s aimed at music professionals. McMath said he will soon reveal a few high profile endorsements for the product, but he’s keeping the names under wraps for now.

The release of DNone will foreshadow the release next year of a second product that will target the broader market of guitar

Startup Canada Halifax, the Halifax chapter of the national organization Startup Canada, has issued the following press release:

Startup Canada Halifax engages local entrepreneurs in initiative to reduce startup failure through financial literacy

Startup Canada Halifax is convinced that Entrepreneur financial literacy is a key element in generating jobs and revenue for the Nova Scotia.

On May 7th at 5 PM at the Volta Center on Spring Garden Road, Local Entrepreneurs and small business owners will participate in a local installment of a national initiative to reduce startup failure

Erin Flood, the COO of Fredericton’s HotSpot Parking, was recently accepted into Tech Women Canada in San Francisco. Last week she posted this blog on her website:

My Promise to New Brunswick

The glass ceiling is still there, waiting for the unwary woman who thinks she will be treated the same as a man. The difference today is that strong women are consistently punching their way through and the working world is placing increasing value on those who are successful. We are starting to see an increase in the number of women at the top who act as a beacon to people like me who are just

With California’s drought raising concerns about food supply, Gregg Curwin is well placed to begin producing leafy greens out of his indoor farm near Truro.

Many of Atlantic Canada’s vegetables are grown in California. Curwin, president and CEO of TruLeaf Smart Plant Systems, said that’s problematic.

Nutrients are lost during transit and storage, and California’s drought is highlighting the

The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, the agency responsible for developing innovation in the province, has issued the following press release:

NEW BRUNSWICK STUDENTS GET RECORD FUNDING TO WORK IN UNIVERSITY LABS

FREDERICTON, N.B.—The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation (NBIF) today announced $1.4 million to fund 111 graduate and 62 undergraduate student researchers at five post-secondary institutions across the province, the largest amount in its 12-year history.

Awarded in partnership with the New Brunswick Department of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour (PETL), the

As of today, Entrevestor has no sponsorship from government.

Since we began almost four years ago, this website and its quarterly Entevestor Intelligence reports have been dedicated to reporting on and promoting the Atlantic Canadian startup community, and telling the stories of its entrepreneurs.

We began in 2011 financing our journalism with sponsorship from a few government organizations and universities. We continued to have sponsors for our publications until yesterday. Our only sponsorship now is for our Entrevestor luncheons with BDO, a private company. We believe we’ve been

There’s a new trend developing in Canadian technology, and it ain’t happening in Atlantic Canada.

This is the year of the tech initial public offering in Canada, with companies like Shopify, Hootsuite, Stingray and Vision Critical likely to list their shares on public markets. In an IPO, a company selling shares on a stock exchange for the first time after a rigorous regulatory approval process.

These companies are generally more advanced than any Atlantic Canadian startup, so it’s not fair to criticize the East Coast startups not joining in the party. But it is fair to question why

HotSpot Parking is moving into the U.S. in partnership with Charlotte, N.C.-based mobile payments specialist Passport – a move that will soon increase HotSpot’s accessible market by 100 times.

The Fredericton startup announced Tuesday that it has struck a partnership with Passport under which the North Carolina company will use Hotspot’s technology to link merchants in with the Passport

Ooka Island, the P.E.I. software company dedicated to teaching children to read, has launched the web-based version of its program in time for Charlottetown’s Reading Town week starting on Saturday.

The company, which hired a new CEO and raised capital last year, has competed a year-and-a-half of work on a new product and website. Both will be launched this weekend as part of the reading