Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been doing a bit of work in the exempt market dealer segment, a class of asset I didn’t even know existed until now. You don’t hear much, if anything, about it here on the East Coast, but it’s an increasingly active market in Western Canada.

I think it’s something we should be more aware of, given the need for capital among regional companies in the coming decades.

So what is the exempt market? It’s a market for securities of issuers who are exempt from releasing prospectuses. For the purposes of this column, we’ll consider them young companies that

Today, we launch our Reader's Views section, in which we publish contributions from members of the Atlantic Canadian investor and entprepreneur community. We're starting with Brent Newsome, CEO of NewPace of Bedford, N.S., writing on the need for collaborative political discourse. Got a view? Let us know and we may publish it.

By Brent Newsome

On two mornings recently, I listened to the Minister of Finance and the Halifax Chamber of Commerce spar over their views of Nova Scotia’s economic dilemma on the province’s most popular morning drive time radio show.  Each party dissected the

 Last week I tried to explain the landscape of entrepreneurship in Atlantic Canada to someone from Toronto. Before I continue, I should explain what I mean by “landscape.”

The person was in Halifax because he needs to learn more about entrepreneurship in the region; he plans to come here regularly to build contacts. I told him that he can’t develop deep relationships in Atlantic Canada by only visiting Halifax. For better or worse, there are at least four communities of entrepreneurs in the region, and the links among them are tenuous at best.

One of our challenges in Atlantic Canada is

SimplyCast, the Halifax-based multi-channel marketing company, announced today that it has launched Version 7 of its software, as we reported in November.

SimplyCast is one of the more ambitious companies I follow here, and has been since its inception.  CEO Saeed El-Darahali was never content just to be another software-as-a-service company and took the time and money to find the staff to develop a unique platform-as-a-service company. Though I often write in praise of exits, I admire El-Darahali for stating openly that he does not want to exit this business until he’s established it as

Fresh off a new investment in Newfoundland, GrowthWorks Atlantic Venture Fund has invested $1.75 million in three companies nestled in the bustling tech community of Saint John.

GrowthWorks announced Tuesday it has invested $1.1 million in Enovex Technology Ltd., $400,000 in Spinzo Corp. and $250,000 in MedRunner Health Solutions Inc. The funding announcement comes hot on the heels of the labour-sponsored venture fund leading a $750,000 funding round by Adfinitum, the St. John’s-based advertising data bank.

“The fund is delighted to announce it has invested nearly two million dollars in

Viewpoint.ca , a Halifax-based online property data and brokerage site, is gearing up to enter the Ontario market this year if a regulatory case forces greater competition in Toronto. And the company may have to raise capital to do so.

Founder and CEO Bill McMullin said in an interview last week that the company is interested in expanding into other provinces, but has to wait until the bodies overseeing real estate data willingly share that data with the site. So far, the company has only had success doing so in Nova Scotia, but it believes Ontario will open up later this year. And the

New Brunswick owned the technology podium last year.

The Vancouver-based tech site techvibes announced its startup awards on Friday and the Radian6-Q1 Labs-Gerry Pond grouping raked in the silverware.

Marcel LeBrun, Chris Newton, and Chris Ramsey of Radian6 captured the award for Canadian Entrepreneur of 2011, based obviously on the sale of their company to salesforce.com for about $326 million. Radian6 also won the Most Significant Acquisition Award.

Gerry Pond, an original investor in Radian6 and Q1 Labs (which sold out to IBM) was named the Canadian Angel of 2011.

Another

Fresh from its astonishing success in 2011, the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation has kicked off 2012 by announcing a new competition – the R3 Innovation Challenge.

The new competition is aimed at established companies that have a commercially viable idea for a new product or service, but need to perform some R&D to validate or develop the scheme. It will award two New Brunswick-based companies $50,000 worth of research each. The money will be paid to a post-secondary institution or research organization, which will assign a researcher to collaborate on the idea.

“Innovation is

 Trite as it is to say it, 2011 was one sweet year for the Honibe brand.

I’m sure I’m not the first hack to use that corny line about the line of solid honey products produced by Island Abbey Foods Ltd. of Charlottetown. And given the growth of its business, I doubt I’ll be the last.

The company, which produces the world’s only products made of solidified honey, tripled its network of retail outlets in 2011, began work on its new plant in Charlottetown’s BioCommons, and expanded its product lines.

“Last year, we launched our first natural health product,” Island Abbey President John

 Tanya Shaw had to look it up when I asked how many scanning outlets Unique Solutions has now opened in malls in the U.S.

“Sorry,” she said over the phone Friday as she waited for the window to open. “The numbers are changing daily.”

Seconds later she delivered the update: the company has installed 22 mybestfit scanning booths in the U.S., of which 10 are fully operational and the remainder are installed and training staff.

“By the end of February we’re in 45 locations, and by the end of June we’ll be in 160,” said Shaw, the founder and CEO of the Dartmouth-based company. “That’s