Pamela Castrucci is the latest entrepreneur to discover the benefits of crowdfunding. On Nov. 12, she created a campaign on the popular crowdfunding website Kickstarter seeking $10,000 to help her build Voice Kite, a software product that will allow people to more easily preserve and share memories by tethering digital photos with audio recordings. As of Friday […]

Top Gun, the startup accelerator run by the Maine Center for Entrepreneurial Development, keeps getting bigger. MCED on Thursday announced the Top Gun Class of 2015, which contains 35 companies spanning the manufacturing, aquaculture, food production and IT industries. That’s the most companies ever accepted into Top Gun, a result of the increasing number of quality entrepreneurs applying […]

— In a dystopian future, everyone works for the Company and is siloed into a job based on an aptitude test. Your job is to build websites for the Company. Working for the Company has its benefits, and you could rise in the ranks if you perform well. But there’s also a rogue element that wants to topple the […]

— Unless you’re a Luddite who spurns SmartPhones and avoids the Internet, it’s likely you’re familiar with TED talks — those short, often insightful talks about “ideas worth spreading” given by everyone from graffiti artists to astrophysicists to entrepreneurs. The phenomenon that is TED — the acronym stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design — began as a one-off conference in […]

The group of investors known as the Maine Angels has invested north of $10 million in early-stage companies since it formed in 2003. To date, no investor in the group has ever received a return on those investments — or what’s known in venture-capital lingo as a successful “exit.” However, that long-sought-after milestone may be on […]

— The San Francisco Bay area has Silicon Valley. New York City has Silicon Alley. The Midwest has Silicon Prairie. Maine has, so far, lacked such a catchy moniker to elevate its technology scene in the eyes of others. But Dave Kerpen is on a one-person campaign to change that. His suggestion: Silicon Lobster. OK, […]

The Maine Center for Entrepreneurial Development has for the past five years held an annual showcase event where entrepreneurs who have graduated from its Top Gun startup accelerator program pitch their business to a panel of experts and live audience. The entrepreneurs’ sole reward has been feedback from experts and validation from potential customers. Next year, however, one entrepreneur will walk away […]

The diversity of the crowd at this year’s PopTech was clear to me as soon as I got inside the Camden Opera House, took off my dripping rain jacket, grabbed a cup of coffee and saddled up to a table where I met Makram. Makram is an imam of a Muslim congregation in Minneapolis and is […]

Brunswick, by virtue of its tech-savvy small business owners, has Maine’s strongest digital economy, according to Google Inc. Each year, Google partners with independent research firm, Ipsos, to evaluate the online strength of local small businesses across all fifty states. After weighing various factors, such as the likelihood of small businesses having a mobile-friendly website, maintaining an […]

The Maine Angels is one of the most active angel investment groups in the country, according to the most recent Halo Report, a national survey of angel investment activity. The group, a collection of affluent individuals who pool their resources to invest in and mentor early-stage companies, closed 14 deals during the second quarter of 2014, enough to have it listed […]