As many of you know, startups are the leading creators of new jobs and new wealth in the American economy. That is why towards the end of each year I like to highlight a handful of local startups creating good-paying jobs here in southeast Wisconsin that we should watch grow in the coming year.

So here it is, my list of 11 southeast Wisconsin-based startups we should watch in 2017:

Access HealthNet contracts with health providers across the US to offer comparable bundled services to employees of partnering companies with self-funded insurance plans. The company creates price transparency and injects quality consumerism into the healthcare marketplace. This results in the lowering of healthcare costs to employers and employees while also providing benefits to health systems providing the services. In 2016, Access HealthNet gained the backing of BrightStar Foundation and other local angel investors.

BetterLoanOfficers.com is a reputation management software for loan officers and mortgage companies.  Loan officers can create, share and market consumer reviews to uniquely differentiate amazing service and experience.  Mortgage companies can improve the loan survey experience and identify trends and opportunities to improve loan officers, branches or across the company.  Veteran local technology executive Dave Rice earlier this year bought the assets and took over the management of BetterLoanOfficers.com and is currently overseeing a pivot from being a business to consumer (B2C) platform to a business to business (B2B) platform that will launch in January of 2017. Ethos Development Group, the parent company of BetterLoanOfficers.com, is likely to raise a Series A funding round in 2017 so it can hire a team to operate the business to scale. Long-term, Ethos believes the software they are building for mortgage industry could be applied to other industries.

Read about the other 9 companies here.