When Melinda Gates said she raised her kids middle-class, she wasn’t joking. Sure, the Gates children grew up in a sprawling Washington estate with every imaginable luxury, but they were also expected to live life with a sense of normalcy. A recent example of that balance is Phoebe Gates, the youngest and arguably the most stylish of Bill and Melinda Gates’s children, who has stepped into the spotlight as a young entrepreneur.
At 22, Phoebe co-founded Phia, a fashion-forward e-commerce tool she created with activist Sophia Kianni. The app is pitched as “Google Flights for fashion,” offering a streamlined shopping experience with “no ads, no endless searching.” What’s surprising, though, is that Phoebe didn’t take a single dollar from her billionaire father. Naturally, one might expect Bill Gates to be involved, at least financially, in his daughter’s business. But Phoebe made it clear she wanted to carve her own path.
Recalling the moment she pitched the idea to him, Bill Gates told The New York Times, “I thought, ‘Oh boy, she’s going to come and ask.’” He added, “And then I would have kept her on a short leash and be doing business reviews, which I would have found tricky. I probably would have been overly nice but wondered if it was the right thing to do. Luckily, it never happened.”
Phia is designed to help users compare prices across online platforms, showing whether an item is overpriced and offering cheaper alternatives. From fashion to jewelry, the app aims to save users both time and money. The idea first sparked when the two 20-something best friends pitched it for an entrepreneurship class, inspired by their own experiences. Phoebe recalled spotting an Area dress she had bought for $500 being resold for just $150 on The RealReal. Meanwhile, her friend, Iranian-American Kianni, was already a seasoned pro at scoring deals through resale shopping. Imagine their euphoria when they discovered a shared passion so strong that they were ready to drop everything and dive in, if it hadn’t been for their mothers!
Despite the faith in her idea and her business partner, Phoebe is well aware that her privileged background will always cast a shadow of doubt over her achievements. “Growing up, I realized that people are always going to have thoughts about me,” she said in an interview with The New York Times. “If the business is successful, people will say, ‘It’s because of her family.’” She continued, “But I also feel a huge amount of internalized pressure.”
Regardless, the young co-founders are off to a strong start. They’ve secured backing from a venture capital firm, received mentorship from big names like Kris Jenner, and according to The Independent, podcast host Alex Cooper has signed Phoebe and Sophia to her media company. The duo will soon launch their own podcast, The Burnouts with Phoebe and Sophia.
Image – Facebook / Melinda French Gates
Interestingly, Melinda French Gates hasn’t taken an active role in her daughter’s career, though Phoebe still calls her “my rock.” “She saw it as a real opportunity for me to, like, learn and fail,” Phoebe shared. Instead of borrowing from her father, the world’s thirteenth-richest man with a net worth of $107 billion, Phoebe secured $100,000 in funding from Soma Capital and received a $250,000 grant from Stanford’s social entrepreneurship program. Additional backing included $500,000 from angel investors and access to a powerful network of female mentors.
As for Bill Gates and his truckloads of money, while he hasn’t cracked open his vault to fund Phoebe’s business, he has dramatically increased her future inheritance. What was initially set at $10 million has now grown fiftyfold to a staggering $500 million for each of his children. The three Gates kids are expected to inherit around 0.3% each of their Microsoft co-founder father’s $168 billion fortune (according to Bloomberg).
About Phia
Phia is the brainchild of Phoebe Gates and social entrepreneur Sophia Kianni. This AI-powered tool helps users instantly compare prices on the items they’re browsing. Currently compatible with over 40,000 shopping sites, it supports fashion purchases across a wide range of brands, from Louis Vuitton to Nike.
The young startup employs four full-time engineers, an operations manager, and a designer, all of whom hold equity in the company. “We, like so many consumers, want to shop smarter and make the most of our money,” said Kianni. “Great secondhand options exist, but they’re scattered across hundreds of websites, and no one has time to search them all. Our patented model solves that pain point by delivering instant price insights and better options to help customers make smarter, faster decisions with their money.” According to Fashion Network, Phia’s tech was developed in-house by engineers with experience at Pinterest, Meta, Amazon, and other top firms.
Phia is officially out of its pre-launch phase, and the free iOS app is now available for download.
