Meet the Scalers: Clare Elford, CEO, Clue Software

In this video, CEO of Clue Software Clare Elford discusses the two phases of her company’s growth rate to date. Clue, which provides specialist software for policing and managing investigations, was first founded in the 1980s and successfully raised Series A funding in 2021.  

techUK: How did your company start and what sets you apart? 

Clare Elford: I'm Claire Elford. I'm CEO of Clue Software. And Clue is software for managing intelligence and investigations. Clue actually has had two phases of its life. So Clue was first founded in the late 1980s and was one of the first systems for computerizing investigations. And for many years grew in policing, so it was used in specialist crime teams in policing. In the early 2000s, it went through a period of a bit of lack of investment in the product and in growth. 
 

techUK: Tell us about your company's rapid growth. 

 
CE: I came into Clue in 2015 and very quickly was massively excited about the opportunity. So we had a number of police customers who had been using Clue for many years, very loyal, loved the software, but really the software was in need of a complete rebuild. So we put money into Clue, we rebuilt the software, and have spent the last 10 years growing both inside of policing, but actually a lot of the growth has come in lots of different markets. 

techUK: What has enabled you to grow and scale so far? 

CE: So over the last couple of years, so we went out for our series A funding in 2021, and that was because, for the years before that, we'd grown really nicely, but very organically. And we had product market fit in so many different markets, so we could see the opportunity to just scale a lot quicker. So we went out for external investment to really be able to grow the team and just speed up the growth, basically. 

techUK: What challenges to future growth do you face?  

CE: I think the size of the market opportunity for Clue is enormous. It's such a big problem, the scale and complexity of the threats is just increasing rapidly. So the demand for software, for managing that is huge.  

I suppose our biggest barrier to growth is making sure that we really do focus on the areas where we're going to get the quickest return on investment. In other words, we could go out wide, but we actually need to really, really focus. And I suppose if we have more resources and more funding, we could go faster. But we are, we've got a lovely growth rate, but we are trying to grow efficiently and sustainably. 

techUK: What policy changes might help you continue to grow and scale?  

CE: I think from the perspective of a lot of who we sell to in the public sector, I think we're quite realistic about the fact that this is the long game, so we are in it for the long run. So I think on the procurement side, there are definitely opportunities for decisions to be made faster and for those procurement cycles to not be so onerous. But actually, I think we have also had some really good experiences where there's a real need and there's some funding available, things can move very quickly. So there's pros and cons on that. 
 
I think from the business side of things, one thing I'd really like to make sure that we keep is the EMI scheme. So we've used that to incentivize - all of our employees, every employee gets share options and the benefit for them is that they get a very tax efficient way of having a share of the success in the company. And that has, over the years as we've scaled and really attracted some very high calibre people, that's been very attractive. So that's, please don't take that away would be my request. 

techUK: What is the value of techUK membership to you and your company? 

 
CE: Massively, in the early days I spent a lot of time here so for me it was great networking. I had been in software for many years but actually the world of criminal justice, law enforcement was very new to me, so I came here to lots of events, roundtables, lots of access to senior leaders to really understand their strategy and what was important to them. So for me personally, it really, really helped me understand this world. 
 
And as we've grown, I've had many members of the team be involved. I have Matt Horne, who is chairing the national Security Forum. Laura Eshelby, who's my head of economic crime now, participates in quite a few events. For us as a business, it really helps us to understand what's going on in the market and really engage with either the industry or even other suppliers and partners, so it's been fantastic.