How Enterprise Tech Awards Help Buyers Find Real Innovation

Evan Kirstel (0:02)

Hey, everybody. Really excited today to be joined by Rose Ross, founder and chief trailblazer at the Tech Trailblazer Awards. Rose, how are you?

Rose Ross (0:11)

I am wonderful, thank you. And thank you very much for inviting me on your show, Evan.

Evan Kirstel (0:17)

Well, thanks for being here. Really an exciting time for promising enterprise startups, and you know a lot about that, having been in the industry as long as I have. Yes, we're getting old here, but we've learned a few things about what separates good technology from good marketing, and what buyers can learn from great startups, including the award program that you put together for gosh, I guess it's been a decade.

Maybe introduce yourself, your background, and how do you describe the Tech Trailblazers Awards?

Rose Ross (0:50)

Sure. Well, my name is Rose Ross, and I'm the founder and the chief trailblazer at the awards. But by day, I also do PR for tech companies. So that's how I kind of fell into the award space.

And yeah, so the awards themselves have been running for, as you say, over a decade. We're in our 15th edition, so we're doing well. We're almost out of our teenage years. And we have been very much focused on the enterprise tech space. So whether that's mobile, telecoms, AI now, of course, we've included robotics and quantum now in the last couple of years. And the good reliable ones such as cyber security, blockchain, containers, networking, that type of thing.

Evan Kirstel (1:38)

Wonderful. And when it comes to awards, there are many of these out there.

Some are quite good, like yours. Some are rather uninteresting, uninspiring. What does someone buying enterprise tech, a real buyer, pay attention to when it comes to these kind of startup awards? Who are your startup awards?

Rose Ross (1:57)

Well, I think the thing is that it's interesting. I mean, obviously they're getting bombarded with an awful lot of information from both existing, the incumbent vendors and also from, you know, the hot kids on the new kids on the block. So I think one of the things that awards programs can help enterprise tech buyers is with giving them a bit of a short list. So looking at the type of, you know, the kind of success stories that they've had in the past, the kind of credentials that they bring to the party, you know, how long have they been established, what are their criteria, and looking at how that might fit. And obviously the quality of judges, and I think we'll have to do full disclosure on the fact that we're delighted, Evan, that you're joining us this year as one of our judges. So, yeah, we're very excited about that. So I think there is, it helps to filter through a lot of the messaging that they are receiving, a lot of the messages that are flying through the ether, whether that's on Reddit or on social media, through the publications that people have, and also the conversations that they have. So, yeah, I think it can be a helpful starting point for going, okay, well, what's new out there? What's innovative out there?

Evan Kirstel (3:14)

Yeah, helpful indeed. And speaking of helpful, why did you start the Tech Trailblazers Awards? What was the genesis of the idea?

Rose Ross (3:22)

Interesting little acorn that was planted. We were working with an events company, and we thought it would be a great idea for engaging with the startup and scale up community. So some of the new entrants into the market in the UK.

So we suggested it, they decided that it wasn't the right time for them. It was a bunch of true constraint that they couldn't oversee. But from that, I thought it was a great idea. It was something that had kind of been gnawing away the back of my mind going, I really think we should do this, but how do we do this? We're a PR company. We don't have the reach that a publication has. We don't have the credibility of an analyst firm behind us. So what can we do? So I thought, well, the only way this will fly is if we have amazing judges and who are really well respected in the industry. So I was at an event and was having a little water cooler moment with Joe Baggily, who is now the EMEA CTO of Broadcom. But at the time was the CTO of EMEA for VMware. And I was talking to Joe about this idea and he said, oh, that's really interesting. I think that would be great. And I thought, well, in for a penny, in for a pound. I asked him if he'd be a judge and he immediately said yes. I thought, okay, if Joe says yes, without hesitation, we must be on to something. So that was kind of the moment of it all coming together.