 From the heart of Silicon Valley, it's The Cube. Covering CloudNow's seventh annual Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. Highly smarten with The Cube on the ground at Facebook headquarters. We're here for the seventh annual CloudNow Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation. Welcoming back to The Cube, Edith Levine, who was a winner of one of the awards tonight. Edith, welcome back to The Cube. Thank you so much, it's great to be here. You are the co-founder and CEO of solo.io. So solo, I think, Han Solo, Star Wars, I know there's a different impetus for the name there. But I want to talk about, you've been on The Cube before talking about the technology, but I'd love for our audience tonight, you are here receiving an award for being one of the innovators, Top Women, in Cloud. Tell us a little bit about founding of the company, what was the inspiration from a technology perspective, but also as a female technologist, not easy to get funding. Tell us a little bit about your backstory. Yeah, so I worked in the start-up most of my life, so I was an entrepreneur in a company. I wasn't founding them. So I worked in one company, got acquired, then moved to another one, got acquired, then I was the City of Cloud Management Division in EMC. Much easier to be in the big company, but what drive me to actually start at solo was because I really saw the need and the need of actually solving a real problem in the industry, but as you said, it's not easy. So in the beginning, I was very naive. I said, well, I already did a lot of open source project, already have a really good kind of like, a background of doing and innovative and so on. I should just get the money, right? So yeah, no, it's not working like this. It's harder to get the money. I'm also working, I'm specifically in the East Coast, which make it even harder. And I was, I'm the only founder, which means that it's even making it much, much harder. So when I started to actually raise money in the beginning, there was a lot of question like, for instance, why don't you have a partner and so on? I was insisting on taking one because I felt that I can enter the product myself right now and there's nothing to say yet. So there's no point of being the business and I'm a smart dude, I will learn that. And that worked really, really well. So I took the money eventually from actually in the West Coast from a true venture and the amazing Puneet, which is amazing, amazing investors. So, you know, it just was like clear to me that that was the guy who need to go with me. And we started the company like a year and a half ago, but part of the reason that I call the company solo, it's kind of like in a way to explain that I can do it, right? We can do it even that I'm a woman and even that I'm, you know, I'm tech, I can do these things by myself. So that's part of it. I hope you have stickers and pins for when people walk into your offices, I can do it, we can do it. That's a great name and I love the history behind that. But you fought some pretty big uphill battles, but in a short period of time, getting funding, what's your advice to your peers either in this generation now or, you know, women in the next five years who have a great idea, they have the technical expertise like you do to move forward and just sort of absorb that friction that's going to come your way. How did you do that? So actually my motto is really simple, just be the best. So like, I had a great mentor before we set it, right? I mean, people will try to distress you in your way and try to explain why you're not doing a good job and try to explain why they're doing a better job. But in the end of the day, people cannot, at least for me, I'm a big data driven person. Data is the most important thing. So what I did is just instead of talking, I just was doing, right? And, you know, it was hard in the point to kind of like ignore that, right? Because, you know, we're doing really well. Our idea is really good. And again, and again, and persistently we're doing well that eventually it was just, you know, you can't ignore that. So it wasn't an easy ride. No, definitely not. You make it sound easy, but your persistence and your determination clearly are essential. Tell us about the culture that you want to, as your company as solo.io continues to grow. What are some of the parts of wisdom that you're going to insist that your leadership team has? Like some of those maybe softer skills that are essential, not just the technical expertise, in order for this fast culture of we can do this to flourish. Yeah, so I mean, I have an amazing team. And I have to say like, this is what I'm trying to do. My motto is that, you know, I know what I'm good at, but there's stuff that I'm less good at. And my job is to basically surround myself with an amazing A plus team and just let them go, right? So that's exactly what we're doing. I mean, I'm in charge, you know, I'm the CEO and I overlook of all the company doing a lot of the engineering, you know, the work of the managing the engineering, but I have an amazing lead who is going out to this job. I have, you know, I'm doing a lot of the product, but I did brought a strong, strong people next to me. So if it's my VP of sales and, you know, my field CTO. So I think that the most important thing in the company right now, and this is what we're working on, is the openness. You know, we're not making any decision, we're just sharing it with the amazing engineering team. And I think this is the key. You know, it wasn't simple. I mean, there were people who didn't fit and there was people that we needed to let them go because very precise about that, you know, we should be the best. And in order to be the best, you need to have the best people. And you want more of the best, because you're hiring, where can people go to find out more information? The website? So yeah, they can totally go to the website and just, we are everywhere, like Twitter and LinkedIn, so you can just find us. And yeah, just come and work with us. It's really cool, it's going really well. You've such a great energy. Thank you so much for joining us on the program. And also congratulations on the award that you've won tonight. Thank you so much. I want to thank you for watching theCUBE. Lisa Martin for theCUBE on the ground at Facebook headquarters. Thanks for watching.