When Gregg Curwin met potential clients in New England last month, he tried using an early adopter pitch he’d just learned from Gerry Pond at the Entrevestor Dinner in Fredericton.

Curwin is the Founder and CEO of Truleaf Smart Plant Systems, a Halifax venture that grows plants in stacked trays under LED lights. He attended the dinner in Fredericton and was especially impressed by the strategy for signing up early adopters outlined by Pond, the chairman of East Valley Ventures.

“I was in the States, and used the early adopter pitch with the Truleaf pitch,” said Curwin. “They loved it

Banyan Capital Partners, a private equity firm based in Toronto and Vancouver, announced it has teamed up with management to buy the concrete division of Pennecon Ltd., a Newfoundland and Labrador construction and engineering company.

The parties did not reveal the financial details. Though this deal doesn’t fit squarely with our mission of reporting on Atlantic Canadian startups, it is another sign of institutional private capital flowing into private companies in the region.

The following is the Banyan press release:

 Management buys out the concrete division of Pennecon

TORONTO,

Bedford-based NewPace Technology Development Inc. has been bought by NewNet Communications Technologies of Arlington Heights, Ill., greatly expanding the sales power of the mobile technology developer.

NewPace, which is headed by founder and CEO Brent Newsome, will become a subsidiary of the NewNet messaging division, based in Amsterdam. The company will change its name to NewNet Canada, and Newsome will become a vice-president of NewNet Communications and general manager of the Canadian operation. NewNet, which is a portfolio company of Los Angeles private equity firm Skyview Capital,

When the organizers of the CoinCity conference on Friday took up a collection for the families of slain RCMP officers, the attendees could contribute in one of two ways – conventional money or Bitcoin.

It was fitting that the organizers of the Moncton event paid tribute to the fallen Mounties hours after their suspected murderer had been captured. It was also fitting that they used the collection to show the flexibility of Bitcoin.

Commonly known as digital currency, Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer payment system introduced as open-source software in 2009. It is a decentralized currency

The Pond-Deshpande Centre at the University of New Brunswick issued the following press release:

Eastern Canada’s First Social Enterprise Accelerator Launches Six New Businesses

(June 6, 2014, Halifax, NS) Eastern Canada’s first Social Enterprise Accelerator program gathered a cohort of individuals and organizations from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in the early stages of launching a new social enterprise and provided them with mentorship, expertise and investor exposure as part of a six-month program that started in January 2014.  Participants in the new B4Change Social Enterprise

Philippe Levesque wants his farm-in-a-box to help feed the world’s hungry, but the New Brunswick-based botanist and horticulturist must first raise $10,000 so that he can produce 200 boxes to validate his idea in Canada.

For the last year, Levesque, 34, has been working alone on producing a self-contained gardening model to share with the world. His solution: wooden boxes containing seeds,

Physician Associations and The Rounds Partner Up To Improve Healthcare For All Canadians

The Rounds Announces Partnership With The Society of Rural Physicians of Canada and The Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians

NOVA SCOTIA, Canada., June 3 -- The Rounds, the largest online community in Canada exclusive to physicians, and The Society of Rural Physicians of Canada (SRPC), the national voice of Canadian rural physicians, announced the first association partnership to improve the quality and efficiency of SRPC membership communication.

According to the SRPC, 31.4% of Canada’s

In a textbook case of a startup landing the perfect early adopter, Halifax-based Lamda Guard announced Wednesday that it has signed a deal with Airbus to jointly develop its technology to protect planes from laser attacks.

The world’s largest aircraft maker will cooperate with the Nova Scotian startup on the development of a transparent, flexible film that can go over the aircraft windshields

Cirrus9, a Saint John-based managed cloud and data center operator, has acquired Cloud-A of Halifax, forming an nationally focused IT infrastructure and cloud services provider with operations in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Alberta.

The companies announced the transaction last night in a press release, but declined to reveal the financial details other than to say it was an all-stock deal. Cloud-A Co-Founder and CEO Brandon Kolybaba will remain with the merged group, becoming Vice-President and Chief Marketing Officer.

The Cirrus9-Cloud-A union will combine two companies on strong

Last Friday was an important day for Andrew Coe and his company, DC2GO, which manufactures portable, customized data centres in Dartmouth. The company signed its first major sales contract.

But as he does every Friday, Coe drove out to the company’s prototype on a side road in Dartmouth’s Burnside Park.

Friday is the day when he runs its generator and makes sure all the components — the generator, cooling and security systems — are working smoothly.

But during conversation as he inspected the premises — really, a data centre built into a shipping container — he kept coming back to the