Ready for the busiest eight days on the Halifax startup calendar?
You better be because five events that speak to the entire community will take place in the Nova Scotia capital between Sept. 22 and 30. It begins with MentorCamp on Monday, followed by the new Startup Empire conference, the Entrevestor-Entrepreneurs’ Forum dinner, Startup Weekend and Invest Atlantic. DemoCamp had been scheduled for Sept. 24, but a notice on the Volta website says it has been delayed until November.
MentorCamp is a session that exposes a handful of promising startups to mentors from around the region and around the globe for an intense one-day instructional session. In its fourth year, the companies invited to the event include Vidsnippets and Athletigen, both of Halifax, Qimple of Moncton and Sky Squirrel of Inverness.
Startup Empire will be held for the first time at the Cineplex in Park Lane, and is an opportunity for startup founders to rub elbows with entrepreneurs from around the world. The speakers include: Don Harrison, Head of M&A, Google Inc.; Daniel Debow; Senior VP, Salesforce; April Dunford, COO, Tulip Retail; John Baker, President and CEO, Desire2Learn; and Michael Litt, Founder and CEO, Vidyard.
Dan Martell, the CEO of Moncton-based Clarity, will host a fireside chat and oversee a “Clarity Zone”, in which entrepreneurs will receive advice.
The Entrevestor-Entrepreneurs’ Forum dinner – at the Niche Lounge starting at 4 pm on Thursday, Sept. 25 – will feature two discussions led notable leaders in the community. Rob Barbara, Partner at Build Ventures, will lead a discussion on regional equity tax credits, and Innovacorp CEO Stephen Duff will chair a talk on mentorship. The goal is for all attendees to join in the discussion. Tickets are still available here.
Startup Weekend is an international movement that gathers people together, forms them into teams and sees which can come up with the best company in a single weekend. The next Startup Weekend Halifax will begin Friday, Sept. 26, at 6:30 pm at Room 2600 of the Killam Library at Dalhousie University.
The fifth annual Invest Atlantic conference, to take place Sept. 29 and 30 at the World Trade and Convention Centre, will shine a spotlight on a problem that hounds every startup community — how to encourage more wealthy individuals to invest in local young companies?
The main Invest Atlantic conference takes place on Sept. 30 at the World Trade and Convention Centre in Halifax. It is preceded on Sept. 29 by a PitchCamp, in which a select group of new companies compete to see who can deliver the best 60-second pitch.
The keynote speakers at the main conference are coming from North Carolina: Michael Cain Sr. is the member manager at Wilmington Investor Network and chairman of the Angel Resource Institute, and Brett Martin is the founder and CEO of Castle Branch Inc.