Start-Up East Innovacorp

Matthias Bierenstiel and Tuma Young are co-founderd of Maskwiomin, a traditional Mi'kmaw medicine that they have developed for commercial production as a skin ointment. Maskwiomin is made from the oil of birch bark and is used to treat skin conditions such as rashes, eczema and psoriasis. Still in the early stages of developing the company, the birch bark oil soap has rave reviews from early clients.

After becoming a mom, Nisha Sarveswaran wanted to jump into entrepreneurship and Kraken Sense was born. Kraken Sense provides real time pathogen detection in food production. They are challenging the long-standing standard of pathogen detection and helping to provide a better solution for keeping food and water safe.

Phycus Biotechnologies makes biome friendly ingredients for cosmetics. Phycus’ main focus is replacing the use of crude oil in the production of cosmetics and providing a safer product to consumers with a friendlier production process for the environment. Christian Euler joined the team as a recent PhD graduate and has since become Director of Research and Development with the company. He is the first on the team to relocate to Cape Breton and has been settling in well. 

President and CEO Mark Masotti shares the start-up story of the new bioeconomy company, AlterBiota. AlterBiota has developed a proprietary way to produce graphene that is not only more efficient but also better for the environment. The company is in the process of moving operations to Cape Breton in order to have better ability to scale, with the support of the Verschuren Centre and Innovacorp.

Gavin Andrews is the co-founder and CEO of Mabel Systems, an inventory tracking solution that has been in development for 2 years. Recently rebranded from Tracker Inventory Systems, Gavin has worked through the pandemic to develop a camera that helps monitor inventory flow in a non-intrusive manner. Having built his career in R&D manufacturing roles around the world, he was ready to take the plunge with his own business to solve a pain he had seen firsthand. 

From being on the path to becoming a teacher to switching to physiotherapy, Paul Travis never considered entrepreneurship. Fast forward and after identifying a pain in the health sector, Paul is now almost three years into building his tech company. Here is Paul's start-up story.