Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, both 23, are turning heads with Phia, their AI fashion app that’s drawing interest from investors and trendsetters.
Phia, an AI-powered shopping assistant, went live in April and said it has since amassed over 600,000 users. The free app and browser extension compare prices on fashion items across around 40,000 linked sites to help users find deals. It’s the pair’s first business, and it’s making waves with investors.
Gates and Kianni raised $8 million in seed funding in September. The round was led by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins and included investors like Kris Jenner, Hailey Bieber, and Michael Rubin.
Gates is the youngest daughter of billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates and philanthropist Melinda French Gates. While she likely picked up a thing or two about running a business from her parents, Phia’s early success appears to be all hers and Kianni’s doing. They didn’t turn to Gates’ parent to back the startup.
Instead, they pitched investors with an app they developed and tested. While behemoths like Amazon and OpenAI are building AI-powered shopping assistants, Gates and Kianni presented themselves as the shopping-obsessed Gen Zers who were the perfect fit to launch an app like Phia.
“We are the two girls in college who are obsessed with shopping,” Gates said. “We are the people who are using this product.”
Gates and Kianni met as roommates at Stanford University, where they came up with the idea for Phia. Gates floated the idea of dropping out of college to found Phia — as her father did with Microsoft — but her parents said no. Instead, Gates finished her degree remotely in 2024 before working on the app full time.
Since then, Gates and Kianni said they’ve learned a few leadership lessons that are helping them forge their own paths as cofounders. Here’s what they’ve learned so far as young entrepreneurs.
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It’s OK to fire yourself
When they started Phia, Gates said they thought they’d always have to do everything themselves. As she started building a team, which now includes 13 employees, she learned that it is OK to admit if you’re not the right person for a job.
For example, Gates, who studied human biology, and Kianni, who studied science and technology, handled the startup’s accounting and taxes in its early days.
“At a certain point, you have to let go of certain things and have trust in your team,” Gates said.
Gates said one of the best pieces of business advice she’s received is that everything goes back to the team that you build.
As cofounders, Gates and Kianni have learned to divide and conquer based on each other’s strengths and passions. While both Gates and Kianni studied science, Kianni has gravitated more toward marketing, and Gates is all over the finance side of the business.
AI can supercharge your workflow
As the founders of an AI-powered app, Gates said Phia is also trying to use artificial intelligence as a tool to “supercharge” their workflow. These days, most companies are trying to get employees to use AI in some way.
Gates said she and her team at Phia use AI to help write emails, vibe code, and perfect speeches for the cofounders. She likes that AI can “poke holes” in human logic to make their work better, Gates said.
In a June episode of Gates and Kianni’s podcast “The Burnouts,” Kianni said they used ChatGPT to break down the common features in viral videos and use them to recreate that in their own content.
AI is “how we’re going to succeed as a startup,” she told Business Insider.
Let the little fires burn
It may sound counterintuitive to let problems in your company persist, but you can’t always sweat the small stuff, Kianni said.
In an era full of distractions, Kianni really connects with the advice to stay focused on the bigger picture, especially when it comes to leading others.
“The best skill you can really learn is to be able to effectively prioritize,” Kianni said. “Just because there is a small fire doesn’t mean that that is the most important thing for you to focus your time and energy on.”
Establishing her work priorities is a big part of her daily routine — along with downing a Celsius energy drink in the mornings. Kianni describes herself as a night owl, while Gates starts her early mornings off by reading customer feedback.
“I’m much more effective when I focus on doing one thing that’s a big problem and solving it within one day, versus trying to tackle micro-fires at once,” Kianni said.
