When the five finalists in New Brunswick’s Breakthru competition gather in their finest suits on Wednesday, you’ll know the Black Magic team by the cans of pink spray paint they’re carrying.

But there won’t be any paint smeared on their hands.

The trio of University of New Brunswick engineering students made the finals of the province’s business plan competition by producing a special formula that can remove industrial dirt and grime — even paint — in seconds.

Greg Bailey, Steven Likely and Garrett Nelson developed the product as part of their studies. They entered the Breakthru

Nathan Armstrong recently quit his job to focus full time on CeteX, the cleantech startup he and his brother Gregory started to help industrial facilities clean up wastewater.

Cetex is one of five finalists in the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation’s Breakthru competition, which will award $406,000 in cash and services to the three top teams at a dinner in Fredericton on Wednesday. Obviously the Armstrong brothers are hoping CeteX walks away with the gold for the prestige that comes with the win, but they also could use the $192,000 first prize (which includes as much as $160,000 in

If you’re in Atlantic Canada and reading this, the odds are good you’re going to an event next week.

There are big events in three of the four provinces, and we’re going to do our best to cover all of them.

Today, we’re beginning our coverage of East Coast Startup Week, to be held in Fredericton, with a profile of CeteX, one of the five finalists in the Breakthru competition put on by the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.  All the Startup Week stories will have the tag ECSW in the headline.

The Breakthru Dinner at the Delta Fredericton Hotel on Wednesday evening will be one of the

We have seen a pretty amazing wealth of information about financing models and structures come to light in the last 10 years. It wasn’t that long ago that VC and angel financing were dark arts that few entrepreneurs understood. We have always worked hard to demystify startup financing on StartupNorth and have done a long series of articles, which began in 2006 and shed light on angel investing as an option for entrepreneurs.

But the question we hear a lot is, “Should I have to pay an angel group to pitch them?”

I’ll keep it simple: generally the answer is No. By definition, angel groups

Karma Gaming, the Halifax startup that is developing video games for regulated lotteries, has signed three major customers this year.

So next year, its products will be available on three different continents.

Jay Aird, the company’s chief innovation officer, said the firm probably won’t receive substantial revenues from the deals until 2014, so it is now in the late stage of raising a follow-on round of venture capital funding that is seeking $4 million.

Karma has devised a solution for a problem that afflicts regulated lottery companies around the world: their clientele is aging and

There is probably no better place in the world for Halifax startups Equals6 and Mindful Scientific to go through a mentorship program than Boston. So they were both pumped when they were accepted to the new Canadian Technology Accelerator in the Massachusetts capital.

The New England city’s world famous universities are perfect for Equals6 and its medical establishment is just as great for Mindful. And its active community of funders could be a boon to both.

The Canadian government announced Monday that it had selected eight startups to attend the first cohort of the CTA Program in

The startup landscape in Halifax is going to change in the next year or so, and Spring Garden Road could soon be known for perky young entrepreneurs as much as for shopping fashion-istas.

 The innovation community in the Halifax area is now spread out across an array of pods throughout the urban area, most with their own coffee shops that they hang out at. But there are a few developments coming down the pipe that will change the way entrepreneurs work, gather and recaffeinate in the region’s largest city.

I am not being facetious when I mention the coffee shops. One of the hallmarks of

USA Today on Monday published my story on the Canadian tech scene, which said the heart of the industry is found in the small and growing companies.

It was a great opportunity to go beyond Atlantic Canada and chat with people covering the tech industry, including the listed companies, outside of Atlantic Canada. The most familiar name in the story to Entrevestor readers is Damien Steel, the OMERS Ventures Director who put together that fund’s deal with LeadSift of Halifax. The paper has a daily circulation of 1.8 million, the largest in the U.S. for print publications.

I’d like to thank

The most intriguing story at the Canadian Business Model Competition on Saturday was not so much the team that took home the gold medal as the team(s) who captured silver and bronze.

For the record, Spring Loaded Technology, which is developing a knee brace that adds power as well as stability to the knee joint, captured the Deloitte Smart Launch Award, which comprises $10,000 in cash and $5,000 in consulting services from Deloitte. (Yes, it’s the same Spring Loaded we featured on Entrevestor last week for attracting $100,000 in angel funding.)  As the winners, Chris Cowper-Smith, Shea

A year and a half after he set out to revolutionize the crowd-buying model, Emmanuel Elmajian is now adjusting the focus of his company Spinzo in a bid to ramp up its sales volume.

Elmajian formed the Saint John company in late 2011 in a bid to bring more price flexibility and “virality” (the ability of customers to share a promotion so it can go viral) into the crowd-buying model.

Popularized by companies like Groupon, crowd-buying lets merchants offer deep discounts on their products to anyone who buys an online coupon. The model is successful — Groupon is now worth $3.5 billion — but