Phoebe Gates, the youngest daughter of Invoice Gates and Melinda French Gates, is following a well-known path to startup success: launching an organization out of a school dorm room. Alongside her Stanford roommate Sophia Kianna, the 23-year-old is trying to shake up e-commerce with an A.I.-powered procuring assistant referred to as Phia.
The concept—an app and cellular extension that lets customers examine costs throughout greater than 40,000 websites—got here from the duo’s personal frustration with on-line procuring. “There felt like there was this large white house for, what ought to we really purchase and why doesn’t everybody have a private shopper of their pocket?” mentioned Gates whereas talking at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 yesterday (Oct. 28). “We have been losing a lot cash on junk.”
What began as a category challenge quickly turned critical after Gates and Kianna acquired a $250,000 grant from Stanford. Phia formally launched in April this yr and rapidly caught the eye of main buyers. In September, the startup raised $8 million in a seed spherical led by Kleiner Perkins, attracting a star-studded group of backers that included Sheryl Sandberg, Michael Rubin, Hailey Bieber and Kris Jenner.
Like many Gen Z, Gates and Kianna are avid social media customers. Along with documenting their startup journey on TikTok and Instagram, they co-host a podcast, The Burnouts, on Alex Cooper’s Unwell Community, the place they’ve interviewed friends starting from Paris Hilton to Tommy Hilfiger.
In addition they take an unconventional strategy to consumer suggestions. “Each different week, we’ve got 40 of our energy customers come to the workplace and ‘roast’ the app,” mentioned Gates. A latest session impressed the crew to discover including sizing suggestions—a characteristic they hope to construct by analyzing return information and consumer measurements.
Phia, which has already gained greater than 600,000 customers, locations a robust emphasis on the secondhand market. The platform integrates with roughly 150 resale websites and contains 350 million secondhand objects in its search database, reflecting the founders’ concentrate on sustainability.
“Now we have sufficient garments proper now in existence to decorate the subsequent six generations of people,” mentioned Kianna, who has a background in local weather activism and have become the youngest United Nations advisor in U.S. historical past in 2020. “Shopping for an merchandise secondhand really represents an 80 p.c discount in carbon footprint in comparison with shopping for new, and it’s lower than 75 p.c of the fee.”
Phia additionally promotes extra conscious procuring via options that remind customers of an merchandise’s retained worth. Somebody contemplating a $100 fast-fashion piece, for instance, can see how rapidly it depreciates in comparison with higher-quality objects.
Gates and Kianna plan to roll out extra personalised options as Phia learns about prospects’ tastes and preferences. By leveraging A.I., Gates mentioned, the startup can “gather that information very, very cheaply to, long run, energy personalised suggestions.”
One would possibly assume Gates would flip to her dad and mom for assist navigating the startup world, however she says she’s extra inquisitive about studying from business leaders equivalent to Spanx founder Sara Blakely and designer Danielle Guizo—and from Phia’s customers themselves.
Regardless of describing her father a “genius,” Gates identified that his experience isn’t essentially in vogue. “He’s not evaluating his wishlist objects for his spring break journey,” she mentioned.
