Chicago Tech Community Rallies Together For a Great Cause

This past Thursday, the Chicago tech and fintech community came together for the third annual T4Youth table tennis tournament. 3Points has been a co-organizer of the event each year after co-founding it in 2014, and we do it because we truly believe in the cause it supports — the tournament benefits the Chicago Tech Academy (ChiTech), a four year contract high school in University Village that exposes low-income students to STEM and entrepreneurship courses. ChiTech not only provides a way for the tech community to give back, but it gives important training to young people who, in a few years’ time, will strengthen Chicago’s tech workforce themselves.

This year, the event moved to a new venue, AceBounce, and we continued to set new records.

We had 43 teams enter the tournament this year, and you can see the diversity of the companies just in the medal podium: Enova took home the trophy with a final round thriller over Google, and DRW, the 2014 champs, came in third. We also had 24 participants in the C-level Challenge, where Emmi Solutions CTO Nimesh Patel earned his second straight title over a competitive field.

Most importantly, we set a record for fundraising as well. After raising $50k in 2014 and $80k last year, this year’s tournament raised over $100k ($101,225, to be exact) for ChiTech.

We had 19 sponsors, and we are very proud to say that three of our clients were among that group. Trading Technologies, who placed fourth, sponsored the King of the Court competition for those who had been knocked out of the main tournament. Chicago Stock Exchange didn’t send a team but still wanted to help out, so they sponsored the late night pizza (perhaps the most important sponsorship of all). And DRW stepped up in a big way, serving as the event’s Gold Sponsor while also sending two teams from DRW umbrella companies (Cumberland Mining and Vigilant Global).

Overall, the event was a blast, and it was inspiring to see so many from the Chicago tech community come together for a tremendous cause. And we’re already getting ready for an even bigger and better version next year. Want to learn more? Visit the Twitter handle and hashtag, or the T4Youth website. And if you’re ready to register for next year already, doing so before January 31 will save you $100 on team registration.

We’re very excited about the future, both for this event and the Chicago tech scene as a whole. We’ve come a long way already, but we’re just getting started.