Trevor MacAusland is about half-way to his goal.

In the autumn of 2011, the Executive Director of PropelICT announced the tech advocacy group in New Brunswick would start an accelerator called Launch36 with the goal of nurturing 36 companies over three years. Last night in Fredericton, seven teams pitched to a packed auditorium and successfully completed the program. Added to the 10 teams that completed the program in June last year, Launch36 has now debuted 17 companies, meaning MacAusland is just about half way to his goal.

Of course he’s way ahead of schedule, as he’s at the half way point after only two cohorts and originally expected it would take three cohorts to reach this point. Another reason he and his board have overachieved is that the makeup of the accelerator is far more regional than he could have hoped for. And the story of how the teams in the most recent cohort kept changing shows the flexibility and inventiveness of the program.

Here’s a quick glance at the seven debutants from last night, which we’ll profile in the coming days:

• Analyze Re, Halifax, is developing cloud-based risk-assessment software for the reinsurance industry.
• Crossing Mobile, Saint John, is devising games that people can play on smart phones to enhance their experience at sports events.
• RUMAnalyltics helps ecommerce websites become fast and efficient, leading to greater conversions and increased sales.
• Seeets, Charlottetown, operates Maritime Rideshare, an online platform to help people arrange rides with one another between cities. It hopes to expand across Canada.
• UpMyGame, Halifax, has come up with an app for iOS-based phones and devices that helps coaches video their athletes and use the video as a coaching tool.
• Wicked Ideas, Saint John, will soon launch an online platform for public debate in which journalists research a controversial subject and invite the public to discuss it.
• WP Status, Charlottetown, is developing a dashboard to help people who oversee websites on WordPress back up, update and manage the sites.

There was also an observer in the latest cohort who also pitched last night – Raphael Paulin-Daigle is a 16-year-old high school student who also pitched his company Shopulse, which helps small retailers sell off excess inventory over the internet. After his pitch, Thomas Rankin of Innovacorp tweeted “Best. Pitch. Ever.”

What’s interesting is that the graduation list never quite matches the list of teams at the beginning of each cohort. One team went through the first cohort but declined to pitch for various reasons. And WP Status Co-Founder Scott Gallant actually started the cohort as part of the Seeets team. Early in the program he realized WP Status, which he was already working on, had potential and he ran with it as a different company.

Also in the most recent cohort, a team called Execute Skate was designing a piece of hardware that would provide analytics for skateboarders. The four entrepreneurs had previously gone through the Starting Lean program at Dalhousie University and learned that they worked well together, and had complementary skills. When they discovered possible roadblocks in October, team member John Gleeson stood before his classmates and declared that the four had discovered they were a great team. Even if things didn’t work out with their skateboarding device, he said, they would endeavor to continue working together because of the rapport they’d developed.

One night in January, driving back to Halifax from a Launch36 meeting in Moncton, they all agreed the problems facing Execute Skate were insurmountable for the time being, so the team would withdraw from Launch36.

Two interesting things happened. First, no one thought of the Execute withdrawal as a failure – not a hint of it. It’s part of the lean startup ethos that entrepreneurs who discover problems early on are triumphant because they avoided a huge waste of time and money. Gleeson and his teammates are still revered by their colleagues.

The second thing that happened is that Gleeson and two other Execute members, Connor Bell and Nina Nedic, joined the UpMyGame team to provide Founder David Keefe with some of the talent he needed to drive his company forward.

So is MacAusland halfway through his mandate, or maybe more than half way. If you add in the team the declined to pitch in the first cohort (and it’s still working on its project), Execute and Shopulse, a total of 20 teams have gone through Launch36 in 16 months.

And all of these teams are still working in the region in one form or another. Ponder the significance of this for a moment: almost 20 high growth companies are now at work because of this program. Not all will succeed, but some like LeadSift of Halifax are generating buzz across the country. I can’t think of any other economic development program that can boast such success so quickly with so little public money.