Software Defined Interviews
Software Defined Interviews
Software Defined Talk
Episode 122: Hardened Runtimes, the CEO Job, and Raising as an All-Woman Founding Team, with Emily Long
1 hour 7 minutes Posted Apr 23, 2026 at 11:00 am.
To Do List Overload
AI Productivity Trap
Overton Window For Work
Deadline Or Magpie Mode
Emily Joins The Chat
Handwritten Lists That Work
Avoidance As A Signal
Using AI Without Losing Thinking
No Sycophants Allowed
Fail Fun And Learning Fast
What Adera Builds
CEO Vs COO Reality
Context Switching And Burnout
Fundraising And Rejection
Fundraising Rejection Math
Bias in Investor Questions
Handling Pitch Disrespect
VC Strings and Board Seats
Always Be Relationship Building
KubeCon Booth Strategy
Edgy Branding That Scales
The Great Purging Journal
Identity vs Startup Borg
Post-it Notes and Perspective
Where to Find Emily
Final Wrap and Links
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Show notes

Whitney and Coté talk with Emily Long, CEO and co-founder of Edera, about building a hardened container runtime that secures infrastructure foundations instead of chasing detect-and-respond alerts. Emily describes how Edera lets teams swap in a new container runtime without re-platforming or adopting yet another zero-trust migration, and why the "zero days as the new hotness" landscape makes that kind of structural change worth doing.

The conversation also covers her jump from COO to CEO - the ambiguity of the COO title, what actually changes when you're the one absorbing every decision - and what it's like raising a deep-tech Series A as an all-woman founding team, including the downside-vs.-upside question pattern VCs fall into and the now-classic "I just Googled Kubernetes and I know more than you do" pitch moment.

They open with a long detour on to-do lists, Claude Code, and whether AI tooling just keeps expanding the list of things you feel obligated to do.

You can watch the video version of this episode as well, if you prefer that kind of thing.

Special Guest: Emily Long.