In the immortal words of the Bugs Bunny theme song, June 26 at the Dieppe Arts & Cultural Centre will be the “night of nights.”

Beginning at 5 p.m. at the suburban Moncton theatre, Propel ICT will raise the curtain on the 11 start-ups that have been toiling in the Launch36 accelerator since January, knocking their businesses into shape, taking on clients, and planning to raise capital.

Having spoken with few of them, I know that they’re looking at June 26 as the deadline to have everything in order to present to the rarefied crowd. No more rehearsing or nursing the part, you might say.

The Wallace McCain Institute for Business Leadership at the University of New Brunswick on Friday announced the 17 participants in its fifth annual Entrepreneurial Leaders Program, including three from outside the province.

The program helps growing businesses, typically five to eight years old, to advance successfully beyond the high-growth stage, so their earnings are sustainable, income streams are defined and their founders blossom into business leaders.

“After three years as a judge, it thrills me to see the quality and quantity of the high growth potential entrepreneurs we have in

Sackville, N.B.-based biotech Soricimed Biopharma Inc. said this week that the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. and Health Canada have given it the green light to proceed with Phase 1 trials for its main drug candidate, an anti-cancer agent called SOR-C13.

“Acceptance by the FDA and Health Canada of this application, along with the advancement of SOR-C13 to clinical testing, are two major milestones for Soricimed and key steps along the path to the drug's development and commercialization,” Jack Stewart, Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer of the company, said in a press

In a further sign that the ecosystem for startups in the region is continuing to evolve, Espresso Capital of Vancouver has hired Ben Forcier, Innovacorp’s former Vice-President of Investments, with primary responsibility for Atlantic Canada.

Differing from standard VC funds, Espresso issues short-term loans to tech and cleantech startups, especially those receiving support from the federal government’s Scientific Research and Experimental Development Program, commonly known as SR&ED. Espresso takes no equity and the loans of $100,000 to $1.5 million are customarily repaid in less than two

Afinin Labs Inc. of St. John’s is quickly becoming one of the stars of the tech community in Newfoundland and Labrador, largely because of the commercial potential of its stock-price prediction software, Zenquant. Recently, the company announced that it’s in the final stages of negotiations with a large financial institution to test Zenquant in a six-month trial.

The company was founded in 2009 by Memorial University researchers Garnett Wilson and Wolfgang Banzhaf. Zenquent applies algorithms based on minute-by-minute stock feed from the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange; then alerts

The quarterly Herald Magazine came out yesterday, and its theme is a favourite of mine -- innovation. My column in the publication calls for a regional equity tax credit. I argue that ETCs are a proven means of channeling capital into innovative companies. However, the overall pool of capital in the region is too small if investors only qualify for ETCs by investing in companies in their home province. Check out my old friend John DeMont's interview with Gerry Pond, Erica Fraser and Ray Ivany.

The recent news has not all been good for the First Angel Network, but Director and Co-Founder Ross Finlay is focusing on the positive, especially his chance to once again host the National Angel Capital Organization, or NACO, Summit in October.

``It will be fabulous,’’ Finlay said in an interview Friday. ``It’s going to be even better than the last one.’’

Anyone who’s spent time with Finlay might find it difficult to believe anything could be better than the last Naco Summit in Halifax in 2008. He’s never been shy about describing its wonders (and, incidentally, others agree with him)

Smart Skin Technologies, the Fredericton company commercializing a thin material that relays information to a computer when it senses pressure, has closed a round of funding from a group of blue-chip New Brunswick investors.

Though he declined to name his new backers or say how much they invested, CEO Kumaran Thillainadarajah said they were early-stage investors in Radian6, the social media analysis company that sold out for $370 million to Salesforce.com last year.

“We actually raised 33 percent more than our target,” said Thillainadarajah. “We literally couldn’t say no to these

Just as they used to say in an old TV commercial for Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale, the people putting together the regional venture capital fund are taking the time to get it right.

Of all the accusations that may be hurled against the planning committee, obsessive punctuality won’t be among them. Premiers Darrell Dexter of Nova Scotia and David Alward of New Brunswick said last year the manager of the fund would be announced in February, then word on the street said March.

Well, I’m hearing rumblings on this brief again and people familiar with the matter say there is a movement

The $540 million exit of Dartmouth-based Ocean Nutrition has taught us three things: Ocean Nutrition is a really good company; Atlantic Canada has a good ecosystem for young companies; and the knowledge economy in the region has matured in just two years.

ONC announced Friday that its owners, Clearwater Fine Foods and Winnipeg’s Richardson Capital, have sold the maker of fish-oil derived Omega-3 fatty acids to Royal DSM, a Dutch conglomerate involved in health, nutrition and materials. The fact that DSM has annual sales of about C$12 billion means that its massive sales force should be