There is probably no better place in the world for Halifax startups Equals6 and Mindful Scientific to go through a mentorship program than Boston. So they were both pumped when they were accepted to the new Canadian Technology Accelerator in the Massachusetts capital.

The New England city’s world famous universities are perfect for Equals6 and its medical establishment is just as great for Mindful. And its active community of funders could be a boon to both.

The Canadian government announced Monday that it had selected eight startups to attend the first cohort of the CTA Program in Boston, and they include two Atlantic Canadian companies, Equals6 and Mindful Scientific. The government has similar programs in Silicon Valley and New York and just expanded it to Boston.
“The whole idea is to get the opportunity to bring high-growth companies and have them immersed in the local community for three months,” said Equals6 CEO Andy Osburn.

Equals6 has spent the last two years developing a career-related social network for students, where they can discuss job opportunities and academics with other students and potential employers. The company now has about 30,000 students registered and about 200 employers or universities, and is growing by about 15 percent per month.

Mindful Scientific is developing the Halifax Consciousness Scanner, or HCS, which has many potential applications, though the company has focused its efforts on a device to assess head trauma as its initial product. It has received considerable attention in the past year because of the growing concerns about concussions in sports.

Starting in April, they will spend about three months huddled with other startups (Mindful and another company are in life sciences and the rest are in tech) in facilities in Boston. Osburn said he will be in the Cambridge Innovation Centre, where 300 startups work. Ying Tam, the CEO of Mindful, said the company has seen one facility in Boston the size of four football fields full of nothing but life sciences companies.

Tam said Boston is definitely a life sciences hub on a global scale and he hopes to develop relationships with strategic partners and advisors when he’s in the city. The company has worked with five sports teams at Dalhousie University in the past year to test its product and build up baseline data for its brain scans. (The developers need a data bank of normal readings before they can show definitively that the HCS has detected brain trauma. Mindful plans to work with Dal again in the next school year and is in talks with several pro teams about testing the product.

The U.S. is key to Equals6’s expansion plans and it sees a wealth of students in Boston. Aside from all else, Osburn hopes to use his time to encourage more students at the large universities to register on the site. He said a social network commonly hits a tipping point when it reaches 100,000 subscribers, which could happen with Equals6 this year.

Both Mindful and Equals6 are in the process of raising money and hope to pitch to potential investors in Boston. Mindful has raised money previously from angels, and has benefited from the Atlantic Innovation Fund and Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency programs. Equals6, which raised $250,000 in venture capital from Innovacorp last year, is now raising about $500,000 to $750,000.