The good patrons of Picaroons Brewtique may soon be helping to produce medical compounds each time they hoist a pint at the Fredericton microbrewery.

Picaroons is in talks with Fredericton biotech Mycodev Group Inc. on a plan to help the startup produce chitosan, a compound that has a range of industrial uses, including pharmaceutical ingredients, water treatment, fertilizer and cosmetics. Chitosan is usually extracted from the shells of shellfish, but Mycodev founder David Brown has devised a way to produce it from fungus.

“The fungus is a lot better in terms of the constant supply,”

When I asked Ulrike Bahr-Gedalia what her three priorities will be as the new CEO of Digital Nova Scotia, she paused and answered: attracting talent, bringing women into ITC, and technical education.

Then she added advocacy for digital industries.

She looked down the list I’d jotted down, laughed and said, “I guess that’s four, isn’t it?”

That one episode from our interview Thursday gives some idea of the energy and ambition of the first full-time CEO of the association for IT industries in Nova Scotia. It also should shed some light on the magnitude of the task before her.

Digital

Seeets, the Charlottetown startup that operates a web-based rideshare service in the Maritimes, is setting its sights on an expansion into Ontario later this year after improving its existing service.

Seeets is the operator of Maritime Rideshare, an online marketplace that matches people driving between Maritime cities with people looking for a lift. The service has been in existence for almost a year and a half and its co-founders recently completed the Launch36 accelerator, during which they focused on an expansion strategy and ways to improve the service.

“Throughout Launch36, a lot

When Steve Mallett entered the Launch36 accelerator last autumn, he did so as one of the most experienced entrepreneurs ever to go through the tech development program.

Based in the Saint John suburb of Quispamsis, Mallett is the CEO of RUMAnalytics, a software-as-a-service product that accelerates the speed at which browsers call up e-commerce sites so clients aren’t driven away by slow browsing before the site gets a chance to sell its wares.

It’s the product of a guy who launched his first web enterprise in 1999 — a pure-content site called OSDir.com, which provided news, blogs and

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