- Phoebe Gates founded online price comparison shopping platform Phia with her former roommate, Sophia Kianni
- Bill Gates revealed in a new interview that Phoebe didn’t ask him to help fund her business venture
- “I would have kept her on a short leash and be doing business reviews,” Bill admitted
Bill Gates is relieved his daughter founded her business without his financial input.
The Microsoft co-founder, 69, confessed he had concerns when his youngest daughter, Phoebe, informed him that she would be starting a business with her former Stanford University roommate, Sophia Kianni.
Phoebe, 22, and Kianni, 23, teamed up to make Phia, an app that offers shoppers an easy way to compare the prices of new and used items across thousands of e-commerce sites.
“I thought, ‘Oh boy, she’s going to come and ask [for money],’ ” Bill told The New York Times in an interview published April 24. He added his initial thoughts on her wanting to join the competitive e-commerce space, saying, “Wow, a lot of people have tried, and there’s some big guys in there.”
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Bill shares daughters Jennifer, 28, Phoebe, and son Rory, 25, with ex-wife Melinda French Gates.
He is currently the 13th richest person on earth and has a net worth of around $102.2 billion, according to Forbes’ 2025 World’s Billionaire List.
As previously reported, Bill said his children have had a “great upbringing and education,” but will inherit “less than 1 percent” of his total wealth.
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While on the Figuring Out with Raj Shamani Podcast earlier this month, he said, “I decided it wouldn’t be a favor to them.” However, his staggering wealth could mean that, despite the low percentage, his children will each still inherit multimillions.
Bill revealed to The New York Times that he would’ve also likely helped to fund Phoebe’s business, Phia, if she had asked him.
“And then I would have kept her on a short leash and be doing business reviews, which I would have found tricky, and I probably would have been overly nice but wondered if it was the right thing to do? Luckily, it never happened,” he told the outlet.
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Having been told that she needed to raise the capital on her own by her mom, Phoebe and Kianni started with $100,000 from Soma Capital and a Stanford grant of $250,000 from a social entrepreneurship program.
They received a lot of rejections before securing another $500,000 from angel investors, per The New York Times.
“She saw it as a real opportunity for me to, like, learn and fail,” Phoebe said of her mom, Melinda, according to the outlet.
The 22-year-old entrepreneur has also received advice from mentors, including Kris Jenner, Sara Blakely of Spanx, and Joanne Bradford, the former president of Honey.
Revealing that the advice he gives Phoebe is limited to personnel issues, Bill said, “When it comes to shopping, I’m not exactly the target audience.”
