A new buzzy fashion startup has arrived. Meet Phia, the shopping app founded by Bill Gates’ daughter Phoebe and her Stanford roommate and co-founder, Sophia Kianni. Phia searches the web to help users compare the price of fashion items. It is a mobile app and browser extension that the company describes as Google Flights for fashion.
Phoebe Gates told TechCrunch that as they think about the future of fashion, it is all going to be about making access easier to things people haven’t had access to before. The app is one of many fashion startups to arise in this era of artificial intelligence, seeking to bring more ease to the online e-commerce world. Investors and consumers are loving this category so far. Phia, which just launched in April, already has around 500,000 users.
In early September, the company announced an $8 million seed round. Phoebe Gates, 23, said the funding took only three-and-a-half weeks to raise. The round was led by Kleiner Perkins, with other investors including Kris Jenner and Hailey Bieber. Phia has now rolled out a new and improved search on the app that looks across more than 300 million fashion items, according to Kianni. The goal is to make the e-commerce shopping experience seamless, creating a place where customers can see everything they have previously bought or searched for and find new items of interest.
Gates and Kianni met two years ago and started working on the app about a year after they met. The first product they built was a desktop Chrome extension that helped users find second-hand alternatives while online shopping. Kianni recalled that it was pretty buggy. User feedback revealed that most of their peers were shopping on their phones, not on desktops. Young people were more interested in instant price checks rather than second-hand comparisons. They decided to adjust their focus. Gates added that they should have known this from their own behavior, noting that obsessive shopping and scrolling is often done on a phone, making it the key device.
Kianni said the first check Phia received came from one of Stanford’s social entrepreneurship programs. Once traction started to increase, they decided that further execution of their vision required venture capital. They researched top-tier funds to pitch and especially wanted prominent women as investors. Before they could start fundraising, Soma Capital reached out to Kianni on LinkedIn after hearing about the product. The firm ended up providing one of the first institutional checks. From there, they were introduced to many incredible people, combining cold outreach with connections from others.
Their funding round is an amalgamation of some of the buzziest people in business and tech, a collision of two powerful networks. Kianni herself is a renowned activist, having founded the nonprofit Climate Cardinals, which translates information about climate change into different languages. She was one of the youngest people to ever become an advisor to the United Nations and has appeared on numerous lists, including the BBC’s 100 Women.
Aside from Jenner and Bieber, other investors in the round include billionaire Michael Rubin, Spanx founder Sara Blakely, and Sheryl Sandberg. Soma introduced them to the team at Kleiner Perkins, the firm that ultimately led the seed round. Michael Rubin said in a statement that having gotten his start in e-commerce, he has always believed in the power of technology to transform how people shop online. What excites him about Phia is how Phoebe and Sophia are bringing real innovation to the space by making shopping smarter and using technology to unlock a better experience for everyone.
Much of Phia’s marketing is quintessentially Gen Z, focused on organic, public-facing founder-led content. Gates and Kianni are open about the experiments they run with Phia. They ask people to direct message them feedback and have used social media to hire talent and source designers. They also use ChatGPT to help with marketing in the pursuit of making viral campaigns.
They receive additional attention for their product from their podcast called The Burnouts, which was also launched in April. It has almost half a million followers on Instagram. Kianni said the podcast helps funnel interest into Phia, as it focuses on sharing career advice with young people, especially women. It has already amassed 10 million views across various social media platforms. The podcast has allowed them to open source how they are building their company, talking through all the stumbles and hurdles, which in turn helps other people looking to start companies in this space.
Kianni said they have taken a very digital-first approach to pretty much everything, which she believes is part of the reason they have seen such rapid traction. Gates and Kianni said the fresh capital will be used mainly to build out the team. There are only 12 people at the moment, and they are hiring via social media. Overall, the duo sees Phia as the future of personalized shopping. Gates said she even hopes one day to build a personalized agent that can sync to calendars and tell customers when to buy, what to resell, and what to keep. Kianni added that there is so much more they still need to do and want to learn and grow. They want to do that publicly so their audience can learn and grow alongside them.