Today we have a winner from last year’s Tech Trailblazers Awards who has written in to share their success story having gone on to greater things since winning. This time, we’re catching up with Aimee Laycock, Chief Operating Officer at CLTRe. The company won the Firestarter Trailblazers Award – check out CLTRe in the list of last year’s winners here.

Aimee kicks off by answering the burning question which most people probably ask themselves, how exactly do you say “CLTRe”?

Could you give me a brief description of your company and what your focus is?

CLTRe (pronounced ‘culture’) specialises in measuring and providing deep insights into the security culture(s) of organisations worldwide. By improving their understanding of the factors influencing their security culture and identifying specific cultural strengths and weaknesses within their organisation, CLTRe provide companies with actionable data used to make better strategic business decisions, more effectively improve their security culture, and reduce risk by strengthening the understanding of what many believe to be their ‘weakest link’.

How has winning the Tech Trailblazers award helped you?

Winning the Tech Trailblazers award has helped increase visibility for our company, draw new customers and new employees. Our existing team, customers, and supporters were all super excited to share the news of the award with others.

What words of encouragement would you give to a company which is weighing up whether to enter the Awards?

Awards are nice-to-haves, not need-to-haves. Pursue those that makes sense to your business and to your plans.

Are there any tips you could give a company to help them with entering the awards?

Make sure you are as detailed as you can be, and that you write as if to your customers. However, do not leave the entry only to the marketing people – make sure the relevant people are involved – CEO, co-founders, CTO etc. (ED: this is clearly an important point which one of our judges recently included in his reply to “Do you have any advice for a company entering the Awards?” – read more here)

Do you have any advice in general for startup companies, trying to survive in the current economic climate?

Business first. Always. This is a point we drive everywhere – when considering our product development strategies, our marketing strategies, our focus areas, everything we do is to focus on business first. For a startup, this should mean that you put all of your efforts towards finding customers, and get them to the point of being paying customers.

How is the future looking for you? What’s next for you?

Our future is looking great, we are growing fast. We will be focusing on entering new markets, both geographically and across industry sectors.