Launch36, the Atlantic Canadian technology accelerator, will graduate its next six companies tonight at an extravaganza in Saint John, N.B., bringing the companies that have gone through the two-year-old program to 26.

Propel ICT, the New Brunswick technology association, announced the program in 2011 with the goal of launching 36 companies in three years, and it is well on track to meet the goal. What’s interesting is that its third cohort of companies, which will pitch tonight at Launch36’s DemoDay, shows no signs that the accelerator is lowering the bar to let in more companies.

The

It was the quintessential investor-entrepreneur lunch, the pitch resoundingly perfect, the potential riches laid bare.

It ended with a commitment and a hand-shake. The investors would take the lead in assembling a syndicated round for our Big Data analytics company, MediaBadger. Two weeks later, they decided to take on the whole round themselves. We signed a term sheet a few weeks after that. The team was gearing up.

Two months passed, and we had no investment. We were told to put hires on hold, though the money would come after just a few more hurdles were cleared.

Another month and

Innovacorp on Friday released the names of the 25 entrants in the I-3 Technology Start-Up Competition that have been invited to compete in Round 2.

A few of them have been covered previously in Entrevestor, and we’ve linked to those stories. Some of the companies have websites, and the URLs of these sites are provided. We’re looking forward to learning more about the other companies.

The next public event in the competition will be the announcement of the winners and runners-up in the five zones, which will take place Jan. 27.

Here are the 25 Round 2 participants:

 

Zone 1

When he emigrated from Serbia to Canada in 2005, Milan Vrekic had just $1,250 and a suitcase. The young computer enthusiast made mistakes in his new home, but he survived then thrived. Now aged 29, Vrekic has already co-founded one successful company – secure document-sharing venture TitanFile – and is currently Executive Director of Volta Labs, the mentoring and co-working hub in Halifax, where he helps other entrepreneurs attain success. 

Vrekic’s history reads like a classic immigrant-made-good story, but that perspective minimizes his early struggles. After arriving in Vancouver, he

Milan Vrekic, entrepreneur and Executive Director of Volta Labs, shares four things he learned from observing Waterloo’s Communitech, that city’s hub for the commercialization of innovative technologies.

1. The only sustainable model is that built by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. This is one reason why many U.S. venture capital funds require their partners and associates to have been part of at least one startup. Government agencies are an important part of the ecosystem, but they are the feeders, not the drivers of the system. The Ontario Government understood that very well, very

DeCell Technologies Inc., a Halifax biotech startup that is improving skin grafts for wound treatment, has landed about $500,000 in investment to finance clinical trials and its first processing system.

President and CEO Paul Gratzer said in an interview Wednesday that the company has landed a $250,000 equity investment from Innovacorp. It has also received financing from private individuals, including long-standing biotech entrepreneur Steve Arless of Montreal, who has joined the company’s board.

Gratzer said the $500,000 financing marks an initial close of DeCell’s seed round, and it

Last night on Dragons’ Den, we witnessed two groups of Halifax children who exemplify all that’s great about student entrepreneurship.

The special student episode featured Hope Blooms, a north-end community garden project that grows its own ingredients for salad dressing, which it sells at $7 a bottle. The group has earned $4,000, which is being poured into their college tuition fund.

Six of its 43 members asked for $10,000 and ended up with $40,000 as well as a promise from four Dragons to help them build the business. (Only Kevin O’Leary, still awaiting that visit from the Ghost of

Two New Brunswick companies this week have been named to lists of Canadian tech companies making impressive strides.

Smart Skin Technologies of Fredericton was named to the CIX Top 20, a list of leading young tech companies recognized by the Canadian Innovation Exchange. And RtTech Software of Moncton was named to Deloitte’s 2013 Companies-To–Watch.

Smart Skin has developed a technology called Quantifeel, which detects pressure on surfaces and produces real-time graphics on devices or computers showing where pressure is being exerted. The latest application for the technology is testing

Entrevestor and Progress Media today are proud to release our Entrevestor Intelligence report on Big Data in Atlantic Canada.

The report outlines how the Atlantic Canadian startup community fits into the global revolution in data analytics – the opportunities, the challenges, the progress so far.

What we learned is that companies involved in this space are resonating with investors, and that the segment is growing. It’s also improving healthcare, as companies begin to probe how society can benefit by using health-related data to improve processes.

The reason for the segment’s growth

The success of the Startup Weekend St. John’s this past weekend is matched by the buzz in the startup community in the Newfoundland and Labrador capital overall.

I was lucky to attend the Startup Weekend in St. John’s and it gave me a chance to catch up on what’s going on in the burgeoning community. New companies are coming into the community, and established ones are moving toward traction and funding. In broad terms, there’s excitement that something is building.  

“There’s a strong buzz here with new companies forming all the time,” said Jason Janes, the head of Startup St. John’s,