Will budding entrepreneurs use an online tool to help them determine whether their business idea has legs? And, more importantly, will they pay for premium content to help them successfully build their business? That’s the question I, along with four teammates, have been pondering for nearly 14 hours straight (it’s almost 11 o’clock on Saturday […]
A few high-profile members of the national media descended on Eastport, Maine, this week. James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic, and Kai Ryssdal, host of the well-known public radio program Marketplace, visited Eastport as part of their American Futures project, which is looking at “reinvention and resilience across the nation.” Basically, Fallows and his wife […]
How do we create an entrepreneurial ecosystem in Maine? The question is not meant to imply Mainers aren’t entrepreneurial. We certainly have a workforce known for its hard work and resourcefulness. But we can’t rest on our reputation for “Yankee ingenuity.” What I’m talking about when I say we need to foster an entrepreneurial ecosystem […]
A few days before Statoil announced it was pulling the plug on its $120 million offshore wind energy project in Maine, the Maine Public Utilities Commission raised the possibility that a larger pool of money is available to support offshore wind projects than previously thought. This is significant because one of the challenges the PUC faced […]
Kerry Gallivan, CEO of Chimani, on Tuesday morning will pitch his business to a live radio audience of 3.5 million people. Chimani is Kerry’s brainchild. It builds mobile apps that visitors to U.S. national parks can use to find out everything from which hiking trail to take to where to jump on a shuttle bus. […]
TD Bank, which traces its roots back to the founding of Portland Savings Bank in 1852, has officially dropped its historic hometown as its corporate headquarters. The bank is now officially based in Cherry Hill, N.J. The company had held Portland and Cherry Hill as dual headquarters since 2008, when Portland-based TD Banknorth merged with Cherry […]
On Wednesday, Beth Brogan and I broke the news that Kestrel Aircraft Co., which employs about 40 people at Brunswick Landing, is late on paying rent, vendors, and has been unable to cover employees’ insurance premiums. Alan Klapmeier, Kestrel’s CEO, confirmed the financial struggles, but said renewed funding is on its way that will right […]
The Maine Department of Economic and Community Development has a new logo, which it slipped into the program for the 2013 Base Redevelopment Forum, which began today in Portland. Doug Ray, the DECD’s communications director, confirmed for me on Wednesday morning that it was a new logo, but that the department hadn’t made any big announcement […]
It is just past 7 p.m. when Chris Hall, CEO of the organization formerly known as the Portland Regional Chamber (more on that later), announces he is out of things to say. The crowd of 500 people packed into the State Theater for the chamber’s 159th annual awards dinner respond with applause and laughter. Not because […]
At a breakfast event in Portland, Tom Chappell, founder of Tom’s of Maine, gave a talk about entrepreneurship and why it makes good business sense to embrace a triple-bottom-line approach. Chappell was the first in Envision Maine‘s new speaker series, entitled Pioneers of Maine’s Next Economy. The idea being that well-known entrepreneurs have experiences to […]
This blog has been archived and is no longer being updated.
