Phoebe Gates ‘did not expect to be a founder.’ Now she’s building the shopping assistant Phia with Sophia Kianni
Their new shopping assistant is inspired by Google Flights.
Good morning! Trump administration gutting biggest study on women's health, Adrienne Adams is hoping to be New York City's first female mayor, and two stylish Gen Z founders come for fashion resale.
- Resale race. Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni yesterday plastered the internet with the launch of their new startup Phia. There were Phoebe and her dad Bill Gates in the New York Times, newsletter appearances, and fashion coverage. It was the kind of launch we can likely expect from two high-profile Gen Z founders who are building, candidly, in public.
Gates and Kianni met as roommates at Stanford and wanted to work together. They landed on the idea of a shopping assistant; Phia is a price-comparison tool inspired by Google Flights that tells online shoppers whether an item they're considering buying is a good deal. It sources information from across resellers—Depop, Poshmark, The RealReal, Vestiaire Collective, eBay, and more—to share other listings and the median price of the item. The goal is to be a full-fledged shopping assistant—not only showing you cheaper secondhand listings, but answering the question, "should I buy this?" based on how it might hold its resale value and even what else you have in your closet.
"Our target consumer is a young woman who's hustling. She shops like a genius, but she doesn't want to waste her time doing it," Gates says.
Phia's name is a portmanteau of Gates' and Kianni's own names. While building the now 8-person startup, the pair are also cohosting a podcast called The Burnouts on Alex Cooper's Unwell network. Their first guest was Phia investor Kris Jenner; they're planning to show the honest reality of building a startup as 22- and 23-year-olds—before an IPO or even sure success. "So many founder podcasts, it's basically a victory lap," Gates says. "For us, it's like—we're not experts." They have raised capital from a "blue-chip investor" but have not announced the details yet; Gates' family didn't fund the startup.
Gates has been an advocate for reproductive rights, alongside her mother Melinda French Gates, and thought she might go into women's health. "I did not expect to be a founder," she says. Kianni founded a climate activism organization called Climate Cardinals and planned to pursue environmental law.
But they're just as passionate about shopping secondhand as they are about those two interests. Kianni's all-time favorite secondhand find is a pair of Dior heels with a blue bottom she found in the wrong size on The RealReal, and then used Phia to find in the right size; Gates' is a $150 pair of Khaite jeans. "This could be our career, building together," Gates said she realized. "This could be what we do every single day."
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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