Given that they named the company GoInstant, no one should have been surprised when the founders decided to exit quickly.

Still, we were surprised–I sure was–when the news broke last Monday that the Halifax co-browser company was selling to Salesforce.com for just over $70 million.It was only last September we were reporting that the developers led by Jevon MacDonald and Gavin Uhma had raised $1.7 million from a dream team of Silicon Valley investors.

Not to mention, it wasn’t that long ago Radian6 was acquired by Salesforce.com and Q1 Labs was bought by IBM. The GoInstant selling price

Halifax-based 2nd Act Innovations said Wednesday it has opened a sales office in Silicon Valley to be staffed by its new senior vice-president of sales, Chris Strachan.

The company has developed the Ortis4 platform, which helps small and medium-sized businesses to efficiently organize, store and retrieve documents. Earlier this year, 2^nd Act raised $1.1 million in capital, including equity investments worth a total of $500,000 from GrowthWorks Atlantic and Innovacorp.

 “We are ecstatic to add a player of Chris’s calibre to our team,” said CEO Andrew Doyle in a release.

“Chris has

About a year after launching Livelenz Inc., Joel Doherty ran into an extremely grateful early adopter of the company’s data-analysis technology for quick service restaurant, or QSR, franchisees. This client, an Albertan who used Livelenz at his 11 franchises, had just come from meeting with his accountant and was delighted to learn that Livelenz had saved him $144,000 in the first year alone. He now employs Livelenz at 19 franchises.  

It’s this sort of value proposition that has allowed Livelenz to build up 4,500 clients, to develop strong relationships with leading international

Oh, to have Sean Liptay’s problem for a minute.

The co-founder and CEO of Selectbidder expects his vehicle-resale company to be profitable by the end of the year, and must then decide whether to proceed with a seven-figure fundraising, a round he has already discussed with potential investors from the private sector.

“In six months’ time, we’re going to be at a crossroads,” said Liptay in an interview Monday. I’d asked for the interview to follow up on his presentation at the Launch36 Demo Day in Moncton two weeks ago. I wanted to check a few facts, and find out why he was so bullish on

 Onboardly Media Inc., a new customer acquisition platform, is launching in Moncton today with the goal of driving clients to venture-backed startups.

Founders Renee Warren and Heather Anne Ritchie kicked off a company that will use a blend of strategies – public relations, content marketing and social media – to help startups find adopters and users over a prolonged period.

“Our own startup's customers are other startups,” explained Ritchie, a PR exec who I met through her work promoting Clarity.fm and the Launch36 Demo Day. “We've built a three-month process that combines PR, Content

Nova Scotia Business Inc. has invested a further $800,000 in Dartmouth e-voting outfit Intelivote Systems Inc., helping the company to enhance its product line, market its services and possibly find a buyer.

The industrial agency said Friday its venture capital unit, headed by Peter MacNeil, increased its investment in the e-voting concern to $2.8 million, following on from two previous investments worth $1 million each.  Intelivote also raised money from the First Angel Network early in 2010.

Intelivote has one of the most advanced electronic voting systems in the world, able to lower

Halifax-based co-browsing startup GoInstant has agreed to sell out to Salesforce.com of San Francisco for more than $70 million, exiting less than a year after raising $1.7 million from a host of mainly Silicon Valley investors.

A person familiar with the deal said that Innovacorp – the Nova Scotia government’s innovation agency and the only Nova Scotian investor in GoInstant – will make a “significant” return on its $100,000 investment, which closed last July.

GoInstant’s technology allows two people in two locations to use two mouses to share a PC screen, allowing companies to work

For the second time in a year, an Atlantic Canadian company will attend SeedCamp New York, the prestigious tech mentorship gathering in the world’s financial capital.

Jordan Smith, a Halifax entrepreneur whose OneLobby operates a social network for conference attendees, is heading to New York next week to attend the event. Last year, Patrick Hankinson, another Halifax entrepreneur, attended SeedCamp New York with his company Compilr and was chosen as one of four finalists to go to the global SeedCamp event in London.  This year, Hankinson is attending as one of the mentors.

Launched

Erik Gingles describes himself as a “socialist entrepreneur’’ and believes his eponymous SaaS product will make money while helping worthy causes.

Gingle (he dropped the ‘s’ so the name looks a bit like Google) is a mobile live streaming app developed for iOS, the Apple mobile operating system, and Gingles plans to license it to charities to help with their fundraising.

Presenting his business case at the Launch36 Demo Day last week, Gingles noted that “raising money is a bitch”, especially for charities because the fundraising field is too crowded, and they often pay too much to

Micah Peterson last Tuesday asked potential investors for $500,500 in funding for his customer support software company Twofowzand – $500,000 to help roll out the product, and $500 to take his wife on a trip to Halifax.

The Petersons’ third child had arrived about two weeks earlier, and Micah assured the audience at the Launch36 Demo Day that his wife’s vacation would be for the good of the company. There’s no word yet on whether he’s drawn any funding, but he sure drew a few laughs.

The crowd also chuckled warmly when he shared his impression of existing knowledge-based software used