The days of making easy money from coding are over, says former Stripe UK CTO turned founder Emma Burrows
If you work in tech, you’re likely in one of two camps: thinking about using AI agents, or already deploying tens of them.
That’s why Emma Burrows cofounded Portia AI, a platform which helps businesses build and use AI agents securely, in-house — and which secured £4.4m in a seed round led by General Catalyst back in April.
Emma's no stranger to a breakneck sector: before founding Portia, she was UK chief technology officer at payments giant Stripe, and previously built out the ecommerce stack at Charlotte Tilbury.
In this week’s episode of the Sifted podcast, Emma joins editor Amy Lewin to talk about what AI agents can and cannot do, the very real risks they pose to junior engineering jobs — and why she doesn’t feel ‘mum guilt’.
Key moments:
0.00: Intro and about Portia AI
3.00: How companies are using AI agents
9.00: Impact of AI agents on junior engineers
15.07: What AI Emma uses to code
16.00: Transition from Stripe to founding a company
19.15: Being a female founder in AI
22.40: On 996 and hustle culture
24.30: Emma's angel investing
25.40: General Catalyst relationship
27.30: The AI Act
33.00: Quick fire questions and outro
Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast
Get to know the brightest and boldest names in European tech with Sifted’s weekly podcast, hosted by Amy Lewin. She interviews the founders, operators and investors building Europe’s most exciting startups and, in conversation with Sifted’s expert journalists, pulls back the curtain on the most intriguing companies they’ve been reporting on.
- No. of episodes: 124
- Latest episode: 2025-07-17
- Business Entrepreneurship Investing
Where can you listen?
