Remote Staff Essential for Renderator

Though remote work has become commonplace in the innovation economy in the past year, a distributed team had already become essential for the business model of one Halifax startup before the pandemic.

Founded in 2016 by Mario Comando and Alessia Bosatra, Renderator makes high-definition, three-dimensional models of buildings, as well as technology for tracking how people react to the models.

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Energia Seeks Autumn Applications

The Energia Ventures accelerator is calling for applicants for its fall cohort, which will be its second program held this year.

The accelerator is part of University of New Brunswick’s J. Herbert Smith Centre for Technology Management & Entrepreneurship, commonly known as TME.  Energia accepts companies from around the world that are involved in energy, cleantech, cybersecurity and artificial

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Habit Forming Tech raises $500k

Halifax behavioural modification startup Habit Forming Technologies has raised just shy of $500,000 in an unplanned round of investment and is preparing for a second, more structured raise in the low seven-figures later this year.

Habit Forming Technologies and its platform, JackHabbit, aim to use artificial intelligence to help users develop healthy habits. The company plans to sell its system

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Black Entrepreneurship Loan Fund Opens

The Black Entrepreneurship Loan Fund is now open to applicants, and will provide loans up to $250,000 to Black business owners and entrepreneurs across the country.

On Monday, the federal government said Black business owners and entrepreneurs face systemic barriers in starting and growing their businesses, and the problem has been exacerbated by the pandemic. 

A partnership between the federal

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IGNITE Readies Investment Platform

With funding for many small-town startups languishing in the doldrums, rural innovation hub IGNITE is testing a new platform to match companies with investors, in hopes of making more capital available to entrepreneurs.

Talenca is being developed by IGNITE, with help from the engineering team at Yarmouth, NS-based e-commerce startup GlobalVillages, also an IGNITE resident company. The system

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Dear Life Aims to Modernize Mourning

The funeral industry ranks among the most staid bastions of the traditional economy, with practices that have changed little in centuries. To one Halifax startup, it looks ripe for disruption.

Dear Life’s goal is to move the process of memorializing a dead loved one into the digital realm. Its software lets users create interactive online tributes to people who have passed away.

President

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ONSIDE Forms Regional Teams

ONSIDE, the Nova Scotian organization that works to develop the startup ecosystem, has established five regional groups to bring the teachings of the MIT REAP program to communities across Nova Scotia.

MIT REAP is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program, an accelerator for regional ecosystems around the world. A team from Nova Scotia attended the

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Sandpiper Backs DeNova

Sandpiper Ventures, Atlantic Canada’s female-led investment fund, announced Thursday it has made its first investment -- in Halifax-based DeNova.

The early-stage venture capital fund, which is managed by women and targets female-led companies, is launching this year and has said its goal is to launch with $20 million under management. It did not reveal the amount it is investing in the clean

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Commercializing Fertilizer Research

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For Dalhousie PhD student Raphael Ofoe, participating in Dal Innovate’s Lab2Market program was not just a path to creating a viable business, it was a way to accelerate his work on solving one of the most pressing challenges facing both his home country of Ghana and the rest of the world.

Ofoe is a PhD candidate in Dalhousie’s agricultural science program. Last fall, he was

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