Now that it has signed its first customer and identified its first project, Saint John-based Wicked Ideas, which is devoted to the constructive online debate of controversial issues, is looking for its first group of investors.

The company, which recently graduated from the Launch36 accelerator for start-ups, uses journalism and other content to frame a calm discussion about controversial issues with the goal of understanding them.

Founder and CEO Lisa Hrabluk says Wicked Ideas is looking for $250,000 in funding, which will help it build its website, develop its business, and pay

Xiplinx Technologies, a New Brunswick company that helps manufacturers monitor compliance activities in their production lines, has drawn about $500,000 of funding, and could double that amount by early May.

All in, the company that graduated from the Launch36 accelerator’s first cohort last June is hoping to book about $1 million in equity and non-dilutive funding in its first round, said CEO Brent MacDonald in an interview.

Xiplinx (pronounced Zip-links) allows manufacturers to use hand-held devices to record and analyze in real time what is happening on the factory floor to improve

A year ago, Shivam Rajdev sat in a Halifax restaurant and explained that he and a few colleagues wanted something more exciting in life than their jobs at a reinsurance back-office consultancy.

In the year since, he and some friends have followed a winding path to arrive at their own young company that plays on their experience in the reinsurance business. They have formed Analyze Re, a highly acclaimed company whose software-as-a-service product helps reinsurers assess risk.

Reinsurers insure all or part of a normal insurer’s portfolio of policies, helping them to diversify risk.

Armed with a new round of funding and head of business development, Kris McNeil hopes 2013 will be the year his company Solace Power lands the first customer for its wireless energy technology.

Solace Power was founded in 2007 with the goal of developing a system to deliver electricity without power cords and batteries. In its sixth year, the company has a working prototype and is now looking to license its technology to an end-user, probably in the military equipment space.

 “We’ve got a number of promising discussions on the go,” said president McNeil, ensconced in a meeting area in

Joining venture capital funds across the country, GrowthWorks Atlantic is protesting the federal government’s decision to phase out funding for Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Corporations, saying it will hurt entrepreneurship in the outlying parts of the country.

GrowthWorks Atlantic is a Halifax-based fund that has $27 million under management, including $21 million invested in 19 Atlantic Canadian companies. It has raised money over several years by attracting funds from retail investors who are incentivized by federal and provincial tax credits.

However, the 2013 federal budget

Last June, after the Launch36 DemoDay in Dieppe, N.B., I met Scott MacIntosh, the CEO of SwiftRadius, and one of his employees, Chad Griffin, who was about to spin off a company called Adeptio from the software consultancy.

I didn't quite catch the significance of what they were telling me, but in subsequent interviews I learned that there is in essence an incubator for scalable businesses operating within Fredericton-based SwiftRadius.This month, in Progress Magazine, I take a look at SwiftRadius and other tech consultancies that are forming units to turn out scalable products. The

Over lunch in Charlottetown one day last summer, Scott Gallant and Jordan Patterson were grousing about one of the pains in their industry, and it resulted in the creation of their company, WP Status.

The company provides support for people who oversee websites using WordPress, and it was one of the eight companies that just graduated from the Launch36 accelerator. How it got to this stage is a great example of how a good accelerator will adapt to allow companies to change, break apart and come together.

Gallant is seasoned at web-design while Patterson’s strength is more at the

The Centre for Entrepreneurship Education and Development is looking for a few good entrepreneurs. Actually, it has 15 really good entrepreneurs and is looking for another 15 up-and-comers to learn from them.

CEED has launched a new Entrepreneurs in Residence program, in which 15 leading Nova Scotian entrepreneurs  will give one-on-one instruction to less experienced counterparts.

“CEED is 20 years old this year and one of the core principals has always centred around mentoring,” said President and CEO Heather Spidell.  “We began to wonder, how could we formalize it a bit? How can we

Allan Gates of Bonfire Stories has produced a video of the Launch36 DemoDay last week, which you can find here.

It certainly captures the excitement I remember from the first DemoDay last June. Wish I'd been there.

Though he has yet to graduate from high school, Raphael Paulin-Daigle has no qualms discussing the global potential of his fledgling business, Shopulse. In fact, he discussed it with hundreds of tech specialists last week at the Launch36 Demo Day, and got a rousing applause.

The company is developing a retail site where small boutiques can sell surplus inventory online, saving the merchants time and not tying up prime retail space with stuff shopkeepers want to get rid of. He has another company as well, Idealinput, which helps businesses get marketing consultants to give feedback on