Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his youngest daughter, Phoebe Gates, have plenty in common. All three Gates children attended Seattle’s private Lakeside School, like their father. They are ambitious, avid readers, and both have built companies of their own. But there is one stark difference that changes the whole story: one dropped out, and one did not.
It is easy to guess who is who.
Phoebe completed a B.S. in Human Biology at Stanford in 2024, reportedly in three years. Unlike Bill, who became the ultimate dropout legend, Phoebe has said on a podcast that her parents drew a hard line: finish Stanford first. And finish she did. Phoebe shared, “I knew I had to make it happen… I wanted to watch my mother deliver this year’s commencement speech as a graduate.” That mix of grit and goal-setting feels unmistakably Gates.
For Phoebe, staying at Stanford did more than check a box. It helped shape her path. She met Sophia Kianni, her future co-founder, and used the university’s startup ecosystem the way many modern founders do, building through classes, taking swings, absorbing rejection (including an early rejection from Stanford’s Lean Launchpad), and refining the idea until it became a real product. That journey eventually led to Phia, their fashion and shopping platform. Even with Phia taking shape, the rule held. The company could wait. The degree could not.
Even Bill, the rare billionaire who proved the dropout route can work, has publicly emphasized the value of education for most people. In a LinkedIn post, he wrote, “I didn’t graduate from college, but the evidence is clear that a degree is still the surest path to landing a good job in today’s economy.” The same thinking shows up in how he talks about parenting and wealth. He has said he does not want to build a dynasty, and that his children should have the space to build their own success.
As he put it in a podcast appearance with Raj Shamani, “It’s not a dynasty. I’m not asking them to run Microsoft. I want to give them a chance to have their own earnings and success.” In that spirit, it has been widely reported that the three Gates children will inherit a combined 1 percent of his estimated fortune, which, based on a net worth pegged around $118 billion, works out to roughly $400 million each.
Melinda French Gates too has spoken about grounding their children in routines that feel normal to most families, including school life, chores, and allowances, along with a clear-eyed awareness of how rare their circumstances are. In that framework, education is not only about opportunity. In the Gates family, education has often been the front door to opportunity, even if the patriarch famously took the side entrance. It is a view Melinda has voiced plainly too. During a Gates Foundation speech, she once said, “That leaves only one path out of poverty: education, a college education.
