For about a decade, Siu O’Young has been wrestling with a problem: How can unmanned aircraft — commonly known as drones — fly safely in a sky filled with aircraft?

A native of Hong Kong, O’Young is a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland and is now developing a young company called Seamatica Aerospace Ltd. in the Genesis Centre, the university’s commercialization incubator.

Seamatica is exploring commercial opportunities for unmanned aircraft and tackling the vexing problem of flying them so they are not a danger to other planes.

“The whole thing is collision avoidance,”

When Ian Earle encountered a common problem with his digital camera last year, he had no idea it would lead to a business that helps chip-truck owners and street vendors.

The third-year computer science student at Dalhousie University has teamed up with classmate Colin White to form Pixel, which is developing a small mobile printer that can operate off of a phone, tablet or computer.

The genesis for the project was the fact Earle couldn’t find a cheap, convenient way to print photos from his camera. He is a passionate photographer and wanted prints from his digital camera without the

We want to wish a Happy New Year to all our readers, and close out 2013 by drawing your attention to the Techvibes home page. There you’ll find Entrevestor’s wrapup of the year – the first of what we hope will be frequent Entrevestor posts on Techvibes.

As Atlantic Canadian startups move aggressively outside the region in search of capital and customers, we believe news about these companies should also find a broader audience. So we’ve reached an agreement with Techvibes, Canada’s national online tech publication, to pick up our articles from time to time. This will include material from

We’ve had a great year at Entrevestor, and one of the joys has been meeting and chatting with so many dynamic people in the startup world. So we’d like to take a moment to thank you for your support and friendship, and for educating us in the strange ways of innovators.

This festive photo shows how much our family is embracing innovation. It’s a custom-made Entrevestor ornament, designed by

Like most youngsters, Jonathan Robichaud is excited about putting snacks around the chimney for Santa and his reindeer. In the Robichaud household, Santa is left chocolate chip cookies and a latte, and his reindeer get carrots and celery.

What sets Jonathan apart from most kids is the content of his wish list. The nine-year-old tech lover’s letter to Santa requested robotics equipment and

Robert Niven walked into the CarbonCure Technologies holiday party earlier this month with an expression that was equal parts elation and weariness. Not only had the company’s Founder and CEO spent the week closing a few sales deals, he had also announced a $3.5 million round of financing led by BDC Venture Capital to fund R&D and expand its sales team.

The Halifax cleantech company, which is pioneering a low-carbon process of manufacturing concrete products, was part of a healthy trend that developed in the Atlantic Canada startup community in 2013 – a growing flow of institutional money

One of Atlantic Canada’s premier digital media companies had the honour this year to re-digitize a true national icon — The Canadian Encyclopedia.

Raised Media won the contract to redevelop the esteemed publication’s online product, which involved upgrading both the user interface and back end, adding several features and recoding more than 19,000 submissions.

President and co-founder Mike Rizkalla said the project for the Historica Foundation, the organization that oversees the encyclopedia, was a challenge, and the team is proud to have contributed to improving Canadians’ access to

Dartmouth-based ABM Integrated Solutions, one of Atlantic Canada’s largest IT and communications service providers, has signed an agreement with global telecom technology company Alcatel-Lucent to offer unified communications solutions to clients.

The two companies issued a press release this week saying that ABM has become one of the Paris-based company’s Enterprise Portfolio Partners.

What this means is that the ABM will now be able to offer clients a range of Alcatel Lucent services in the field of unified communications. Now a $20 billion-plus business, unified communications brings

We need an East Coast startup hashtag.

After talking to several people on the matter, it’s become clear that social networking within the regional community is being hindered by the lack of a hashtag for the Atlantic Canadian startup community.

So consider this a call to arms for all of us to use #startupeast in posts about Atlantic Canadian startups and the ecosystem.

The #startupeast hashtag was first developed last year during the East Coast Startup Festival in Fredericton, and I think it’s the most concise hashtag for our community. There are still a few people that use it, but it

December 17, 2013

Ensuring Future Success of NS-Grown Business

Pilot Program Addresses Retirement Challenges of Rural Business Owners and Out-Migration of Youth

The Nova Scotia Youth Succession Program was launched on December 17, 2013. The two-year program is a collaboration of four Nova Scotia-based non-profit organizations who are tackling two common rural challenges – the closure of local businesses due to owner retirement and young people leaving their community to find work in other provinces.

Through the program, retiring business owners are connected and matched with