And the Winner of the 2017 Tech Madness Bracket Is...

By Will Flanagan

April 03, 2017, 01:10pm CDT

After 63 matchups and over 65,000 votes, we are ready to crown the champion of the 2017 Tech Madness Bracket.

This year, GetSet will be cutting down the .net.

GetSet, founded in 2014, is a social edtech platform that connects students to classmates that are facing similar challenges in order to improve student retention and success.

The platform uses a natural language processing engine to collect data from students, including goals, backgrounds, fears, challenges, and more. GetSet then immediately connects students with matches so that individuals can find friends, foster peer influence, and build support systems. Today, the company also teams up with universities and schools to empower educators with techniques, information, and insight that will allow them to better help students overcome obstacles.

As a reminder, Tech Madness is our friendly annual competition designed to generate awareness and excitement for the city's tech ecosystem. Each matchup is determined by community voting, with readers just answering one question to decide who moves on - Who do you think will have the greater impact in five years? (And given the fact that I can think of one other social platform that began as a campus community - cough, Facebook, cough - I'd say that GetSet is a more than worthy victor).

Congratulations to GetSet and the other 63 tech companies and startups that made the 2017 bracket. (Finally, thanks to everyone who voted and shared).

We've posted the complete 2017 bracket below, as well as a breakdown on the Challenge at the bottom of the post. We'll see you next year.

Click 'View Full Bracket' to see all 64 teams.

THE INNO BRACKET BREAKDOWN:

Everybody gets one vote per matchup per day.
The bracket is designed to represent a snapshot of the entire 2017 tech ecosystem, complete with early-stage startups, public pillars, and representatives across every thriving industry in the city.
Seeding is based primarily on funding. For bootstrapped companies, seeding is determined by headcount and revenue. For public and acquired companies, we used Market Cap and the cost of the acquisition, respectively. For more information on how the bracket was assembled, see our overview here.
The seeding does NOT reflect an editorial statement on perceived value or “strength;” it’s just funding.
Because of this, do NOT approach the bracket like you would the NCAA one. (For March Madness, it’s logical to automatically pencil in top seeds through the first couple of rounds). Here, every “game” is a toss up and we expect to see a number of early upsets. Last year, our Final Four consisted of a 13, a 7, an 8, and a 1 seed.
These 64 companies were culled from the nominations that we received, as well as from internal research and reporting. There will be a number of companies not on this bracket that you believe deserve to be on here. And that's great; that's why this community's so strong. Let us know who you think we missed and we'll be sure to consider them for 2018.
Finally, like last year, if at ANYTIME you find yourself getting worked up over any seedings, omissions, inclusions, wins, or losses, shoot me an email immediately at will@chicagoinno.com and we’ll go grab a beer, take a few deep breaths together, and talk about how silly it is to get bent out of shape over a game that's architected specifically to generate excitement for the Chicago ecosystem.

The 64 Tech Companies:

The Tech Madness Bracket Reveal Event Was Sponsored By: