A dozen companies from across the Maritimes will gather in Saint John on Saturday to vie for a coveted spot in the second cohort of the Launch36 Accelerator, organized by PropelICT.

Speaking during a break at the National Angel Capital Organization Summit in Halifax yesterday, Propel Executive Director Trevor MacAusland said the finalists for the Autumn 2012 cohort comprise five teams from New Brunswick, five from Nova Scotia and two from P.E.I.

“The quality of the teams has made this a very, very difficult process,” said MacAusland. “And their ideas range from aerial drones to skateboard analytics.”

Launch36 began last year as a Moncton-based accelerator that aims to take on 36 companies within three years. The first cohort of companies ended up producing 10 graduates in June, comprising nine from New Brunswick and one from Nova Scotia, and the executive has aimed to make the program more regional this time.

Mission accomplished. The representation is distributed evenly among the three Maritime provinces.

Beyond the bare numbers, there is an interesting dynamic at play that will help to develop the ecosystem for young companies in the region. Last month, Dalhousie professors Mary Kilfoil and Ed Leach launched their Lean Startup course, which doesn’t teach students about entrepreneurship so much as help them to launch a business, with a special focus on customer validation.

MacAusland said a quarter of the teams pitching in Moncton tomorrow are participating in the Lean Startups course, either as students or alternates, and he is greatly impressed with the quality of their pitches.

Furthermore, Kilfoil and Leach have assembled a network of mentors to help with the course, which means there are now more formalized mentorship groups in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. That will help to regionalize the network of mentors, which is a key component in developing the ecosystem.

At the session tomorrow, 24 mentors will evaluate the candidate teams, each of whom will deliver a four-minute pitch and then spend the day meeting with mentors.

MacAusland hasn’t decided yet whether he will announce the companies chosen for the cohort, as some of the teams have asked that they not be named publicly. He also can’t say yet how many teams will be accepted into the accelerator. A few months ago, he was insisting it would only be six this time, but he admits now he is impressed with the quality of the submissions and it will be difficult choosing only six.