Raised Media’s Deadliest Catch Win

This is an Atlantic Canadian story of rugged people braving northern oceans and hauling in huge catches of fish.

But unlike so many business stories about the fishery, this one is set in an elegant office with exposed brick and movie posters on Barrington Street in downtown Halifax.

The office is the home of Raised Media, the Halifax digital media company that has masterminded the Deadliest

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Angel Funding Soared in 2012

Heimdall Networks CEO Jim DeLeskie declined to be interviewed about his company until January of 2013, preferring to quietly develop his software for about a year without any publicity. Sydney, N.S.-based Heimdall is developing a product that protects corporations and governments against distributed denial-of-service attacks, the type of stuff that the Anonymous group does to shut down websites. Heimdall’s market is a high-growth, high-interest sector with a lot of players and rapid advances in technology. DeLeskie didn’t want to tip his hand to competitors by going public too soon.

But

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Assessing the Regional Ecosytem

If there’s a date on which the Atlantic Canadian start-up community was born, it was June 26, 2012. The location was Dieppe, N.B., and the event was the Demo Day of Propel ICT’s Launch36 accelerator, at which community members from across the region and beyond witnessed 11 companies delivering tremendous pitches.

The really interesting things took place away from the stage that night. At the pub afterward, Propel ICT chair David Baxter and executive director Trevor MacAusland swore that the New Brunswick-based accelerator, which had graduated one Nova Scotia company, would grow by

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Startup House News: Sally Ng, ACOA

The appointment of Sally Ng to head the new startup working space in Fredericton means that Atlantic Canada suddenly has a network of startup pods across the region, led by passionate and energetic people.

Fredericton-based Knowledge Park Inc. last week announced that Ng would become Executive Director of the Commercialization Environment for Advanced Learning Technologies, or CEALT, and its ACcelR8 program.

Like Volta in Halifax and Common Ground in St. John’s, CEALT will provide working space for startups and organize events and peer-to-peer support activities to help the young

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CarbonCure Lines Up More Clients

CarbonCure Technologies, the Halifax cleantech company dedicated to low-carbon concrete products, has signed a licensing agreement with Northfield Block, a division of publicly listed Oldcastle Inc., the largest producer of concrete masonry and precast products in North America.

Taken together with recent agreements with Central Concrete Supply Inc. of California and Midland, Ont.-based concrete manufacturer Atlas Block, the Northfield agreement shows that CarbonCure is attracting clients that should soon generate top-line growth.

The ultimate parent of Northfield is Dublin,

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Research Ave.: Big Data for Healthcare

Big Data evangelists often say data analytics will improve and lower the cost of health care, and Research Avenue of St. John’s is working each day to make it so.

Research Avenue is a bioinformatics startup that is commercializing research at Memorial University of Newfoundland by analyzing genetic data to develop algorithms for predicting risks of developing diseases. The initial target is colon cancer, but the system could apply to other diseases.

Company president Tyler Wish said in an interview at the recent Face2Face conference in Baddeck that Research Avenue is examining a range

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NBIF Cherishes Expanded Role

New Brunswick has decided that innovation is going to be its engine of economic growth, and the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation is the engineer making sure the machine runs smoothly.Already this year, New Brunswick Premier David Alward has announced a new program highlighted by a commitment to fund innovation initiatives with $80 million over five years, as well as the creation of the New Brunswick Research and Innovation Council. And he has signaled that NBIF will play a key role in implementing the programs.

NBIF president and CEO Calvin Milbury says the enhanced mandate will mean a

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Startup Monthly Looks at Accelerators

Once again, I've got together with my friends at Startup Kitchen for Startup Monthly, and round-table discussion of what's going on in the region.

In addition to Suhaim Abdussamad and Robert Foley, we're joined this month by Jason Janes, a founding member of Startup St. John’s. Jason brings great insight to the panel and broadens our reach beyond the Maritimes.

Our topics this month are the wave of accelerators hitting the region and a look a few exciting young companies. Enjoy.

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Genesis Tech Modernizes US Jails

As you read this, prison inmates in Minnesota, Kansas, South Dakota and Alabama are ordering basic consumer goods, doing financial transactions or sending messages using technology developed in Nova Scotia.

Genesis Technology of Halifax has developed a system that allows inmates to organize their finances, communicate and order basic products, all from a kiosk in portions of jails that are open to the prison population. The company has installations in numerous facilities in the U.S., and CEO Chris Barker said the company’s target is to be in dozens of new institutions over the coming

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