Fifteen years ago, Rose Ross brought a client an idea for an awards program built specifically for enterprise tech startups. The client passed. She built it herself — and the Tech Trailblazers have been running ever since, independent, judged by practitioners, and open for entries until 3 September.
PODCAST EPISODE | An Analog Brain In A Digital Age With Marco Ciappelli
Fifteen years ago, Rose Ross brought a client an idea for an awards program built specifically for enterprise tech startups. The client passed. She built it herself — and the Tech Trailblazers have been running ever since, independent, judged by practitioners, and open for entries until 3 September.
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There are couches on the upper floor at ExCeL London where the glass opens onto the water, and every June I promise myself I will sit there and have one unhurried conversation with somebody worth an hour. Every June I walk past them carrying a bag of microphones. Rose Ross and I both did exactly that at Infosecurity Europe, so we recorded this weeks later and six thousand miles apart, and it worked out fine. Good ideas survive bad timing.
Rose knows something about that. Fifteen years ago she brought a client an idea — an awards program for enterprise tech startups, the companies that had no category of their own. The client passed. She built it herself, gave it a better name than Global Innovation Awards, and asked Joe Baguley to judge. He said yes immediately. When someone like Joe says yes, she told me, you know you are onto something. Fifteen years later the Tech Trailblazers are still running, still independent, and now cover everything from storage and security to quantum and robotics, plus categories for the founders and the investors behind them.
I have been around enough award programs to have opinions. Plenty of them are a night out: you put on the jacket, you eat the food, you take the photo, and by Monday the trophy is a doorstop. What Rose built works differently, and the difference is by design.
Start with who does the scoring. Rose stays out of it completely, on the reasoning that nobody needs a PR person picking winners — she said it before I could. The judges are practitioners who know a category well enough to read a claim and tell whether it holds. Startups are scored against startups, apples with apples and pears with pears, so a young company is never dropped into a popularity contest against an incumbent. The criteria cover innovation, market readiness and leadership, and then each judge gets a free card: points awarded on instinct alone. I like that card more than I probably should. It concedes that expertise is partly something you feel and cannot fully write down, which is a rare concession in an industry that would prefer everything be a dashboard.
Then the shortlists go in front of a thousand CIOs, CISOs and technology buyers around the world, and the promotion keeps going long after the announcement — a weekly roundup of what the alumni are doing, coverage where it can be earned, a podcast recording with Rose for every winner. Risk Ledger took the security category a couple of years back and has just closed a $24 million Series B. The award keeps working after the award.
The best answer of the conversation came from a simple question. I asked what a win is actually worth. Rose moved through the exposure and the investor attention quickly, then spent the rest of it on the team. Not the founder. The engineers, the designers, the support people who put in eighteen months of long hours and rarely hear from anyone outside their own building that the work was good. That part, she said, is priceless.
I grew up in a city built by workshops. The Florentine bottega was a collective — the master, the apprentices, the hands that ground the pigment and prepared the panels — and the good ones understood that the work belonged to the room. Recognition is old technology. Older than any category Rose runs. An award engineered so that it reaches past the founder and lands on everyone who built the thing is doing something more useful than handing out a doorstop.
Near the end I asked whether technology today is money-driven or mission-driven. She declined to pick, which was the right call. Most people want both. She has never interviewed a founder who was in it purely for the exit. And without something worth caring about, you do not survive the years when the payoff is still a maybe.
Entries close 3 September at techtrailblazers.com. Firestarters is free for the earliest-stage startups. Sean Martin is on the judging panel this year, so put your best in front of him.
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Who on your team should be hearing this week that the work was good?
Let's keep thinking.
— Marco
Co-Founder ITSPmagazine & Studio C60 | Creative Director | Branding & Marketing Advisor | Personal Branding Coach | Journalist | Writer | Podcast: An Analog Brain In A Digital Age ⚠️ Beware: Pigs May Fly | 🌎 LAX🛸FLR 🌍
Marco Ciappelli is Co-Founder & CMO of ITSPmagazine, Co-Founder & Creative Director of Studio C60, Branding & Marketing Advisor, Personal Branding Coach, Journalist, Writer, and Host of An Analog Brain In A Digital Age podcast. Born in Florence, Italy, and based in Los Angeles, he explores the intersection of technology, society, storytelling, and creativity — with an analog brain, in a digital age.
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Rose Ross is the Founder and Chief Trailblazer of the Tech Trailblazers Awards, the first independent awards program built specifically for enterprise technology startups, which she launched in 2012. Fifteen years on, the program spans cybersecurity, cloud, storage, networking, AI, quantum and robotics, alongside CxO, investment and diversity categories recognizing the people behind the companies. Entries are self-nominated and scored by a panel of industry practitioners, and shortlists go in front of a wider group of CIOs, CISOs and senior technology buyers worldwide. Winners receive continued promotion through the program's alumni network and a podcast recording with Rose.
She is also the Founder of Omarketing, the London-based PR and marketing consultancy specializing in enterprise technology, which she started in 1998 after beginning her career in-house with British tech startups and NASDAQ-listed technology companies. Omarketing works across cybersecurity, cloud, storage, AI and adjacent B2B technology markets. Rose is a co-founder of TechBritannia and has been a Tech London Advocate since 2016. She studied International Business and German at Aston University, and describes herself as a technologist by osmosis.
The 2026 Tech Trailblazers Awards are open to companies under ten years old and no further than Series C funding. The Firestarters categories are free to enter for pre-VC startups. Submissions close 3 September 2026. ITSPmagazine co-founder Sean Martin sits on the 2026 judging panel.
LinkedIn | Tech Trailblazers Awards | Omarketing
EPISODE SUMMARY & QUOTES — Rose Ross | Tech Trailblazers Awards
An Analog Brain In A Digital Age With Marco Ciappelli
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EPISODE SUMMARY
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Fifteen years ago Rose Ross brought a client an idea: an awards program built specifically for enterprise technology startups, the companies that had no category of their own. The client passed, so she built it herself, asked Joe Baguley to judge, and the Tech Trailblazers Awards have run every year since. In this conversation with Marco Ciappelli, recorded weeks after the two of them missed each other at Infosecurity Europe, Rose walks through how the program works and why it was designed that way: startups scored against startups rather than dropped into a public vote against incumbents, judging handled entirely by practitioners who know the field, criteria covering innovation, market readiness and leadership alongside a free card each judge can award on instinct, and shortlists that go in front of a thousand CIOs, CISOs and senior technology buyers worldwide. She explains what a win delivers long after the announcement — alumni promotion, coverage, investor attention, a podcast recording — and then makes the case that matters most to her: the recognition reaches past the founder to the engineers, designers and support people who built the thing and rarely hear from anyone outside their own building that the work was good. Marco asks whether technology today is money-driven or mission-driven, and Rose declines the either/or, arguing that most founders want both and that nobody survives the uncertain years without something worth caring about. The 2026 awards are open to companies under ten years old and no further than Series C, with Firestarters free for pre-VC startups. Entries close 3 September 2026.
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3 QUOTES — ROSE ROSS
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**On the judge who made it real:**
"When somebody like Joe says yes, you know you're onto a good idea."
**On giving startups their own arena:**
"Comparing apples with apples and pears with pears."
**On what recognition is worth:**
"It's such a boost for the team, that recognition — they know it's from industry experts. That, in some ways, is priceless."
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3 QUOTES — MARCO CIAPPELLI
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**On what draws him to a company:**
"The ones that are most attractive to me are the ones that want to resolve a problem."
**On who is behind the founder:**
"You see the CEO, you see the founders. They're the ones in the spotlight. But there is an entire team doing what's happening in the background."
**On where investment is heading:**
"They are changing the model. You can do tech for good and still make money."
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BONUS PULL QUOTE (Rose)
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"Every single person I've interviewed, I have never got the impression they are purely there for the money."