The mood was joyous and full of humour among the two Build Ventures partners the day after the New England Patriots won the Superbowl.

Patrick Keefe, a Patriots fan, was delighted his team had prevailed the night before. And his partner Rob Barbara, a New York Giant supporter, was pleased that there was no longer a sore point that the Pats had lost two Superbowls to his team.

“This has really been the only strain in the relationship and now it’s gone,” joked Barbara over lunch at a Turkish restaurant in Halifax.

Barbara and Keefe are now about 18 months into their venture capital

There’s a theme of community running through the story of Ongozah.

The Moncton startup founded by Topher Kingsley-Williams, Denis Daigle and Dan Gillis is developing a platform that will help community groups crowdsource the various things they need. And to nurture the company, they relied on a new community startup facility in their hometown.

Ongozah – a Swahili word that means everyone

We’re afraid we have had to cancel the Entrevestor Luncheon, which had been scheduled for Moncton on April 15.

We’d like to thank the people who helped us with the event – especially Sally Ng of Planet Hatch and Doug Robertson of Venn Innovation.  We have reimbursed the money of anyone who bought tickets.

Entrevestor and BDO are now working together on plans for further events and will let the community know once we have decided on our next event. 

Eyeread, an online product that helps to teach children to read, will make its first public appearance Saturday at the new Halifax Central Library.

Leah Skerry and Julia Rivard Dexter, the principals the Halifax web-design consultancy Norex, and a team of educators will let children test the product that they have been developing in conjunction with Dalhousie University and University of

Yves Boudreau is so thrilled to be participating in prestigious San Francisco-based accelerator 500 Startups that his voice seems to glow with Californian sunshine. 

Being one of just two Canadian companies to get into the internationally respected accelerator is especially meaningful to the entrepreneur because his first business ended in bankruptcy.

“I’m learning so much I’ll be a wise

If there was a Deal of the Year for in the Atlantic Canadian startup community in 2014, it would undoubtedly have gone to Verafin’s $60 million financing by American private equity fund Spectrum Equity.

Rumours of a whopper of an investment began to circulate in Verafin’s home base of St. John’s in the spring, and it lived up to expectations when CEO Jamie King announced it last May. Now

Fresh from a global conference on the new economy, Wesley Booth of Wolfville is putting together plans to launch Feddishes, an online service that arranges the delivery of prepared meals.

For the last year or so, Booth has been working as the communications and events co-ordinator at the Acadia Institute for Data Analytics in Wolfville. And he’s been working on a few ideas that would marry two of his great loves: cooking and tech startups.

He got a chance to research his business plans when he was in California last month to attend the Global Innovation Summit.

Here’s the story: Booth

Note: Brandon Kolybaba, founder and CEO of Cloud Brewery, posted this blog on his Koly-Blah-Blah’s Raw Blog last weekend. While I don’t agree with all of it, it’s forceful and thought provoking so we’re republishing it here. – Peter Moreira

It's starting to look to me like we chose "Never"

Over a year ago now the Ivany Report came out. In summary, Ray Ivany said "It's now or never". At the time that's all anyone I knew was talking about, but what's actually changed since then? We set up a coalition in Nova Scotia who I'm sure are all fine people with good intentions, but as far as I

Halifax-based Atlantic Motor Labs has received a $250,000 equity investment from Innovacorp to help develop its more durable motor for the oil and gas industry.

Founded by Braden Murphy, Atlantic Motor has developed a motor that combines features of piston and turbine motors to improve the efficiency in the drilling head. It offers a simpler, more robust and longer-lasting drill motor than those used in more than 70 per cent of the world's drilling rigs.

Innovacorp said in a statement the innovation should reduce motor-related down-time while drilling by 30 per cent and save the oil and

Gerry Pond, the driving force behind the East Coast startup community, has received the first-ever BDC Entrepreneurship Champion from the Business Development Bank of Canada.

He received the award during a reception in Toronto last night. Tonight, by coincidence, he will be the first speaker at the Startup Grind Halifax meeting at the McInnes Cooper officee.

The BDC Entrepreneurship