A Family Known for Giving, Yet a Lesson in Withholding
It’s a paradox almost too elegant to script: born into one of the most philanthropic families on earth, Phoebe Gates found herself not with an open checkbook, but with a closed door. Her parents, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, worth tens of billions and globally known for their efforts to fund health care, education, and clean energy, refused to invest even a relatively modest $850,000 in their youngest daughter’s business. The message was not rooted in coldness, but in something far more nuanced—conviction.
Melinda French Gates, in a recent interview, put it plainly: “It is very, very hard to get your business funded if you’re a woman, and so you do have to learn how to play the game and stick with it.” Even with the power to change that reality for her own daughter, she chose not to. It wasn’t an act of neglect—it was a gesture of long-term belief. In a world where inherited wealth often substitutes for resilience, the Gates children are being taught to meet the world on its own terms.
Phoebe Gates, at just 22, is learning how to navigate rejection not from theoretical textbooks or business school case studies, but in real time, from the people whose names she carries. And that, as her mother seems to suggest, may be the greatest inheritance of all: the grit that comes from being told no, even when yes was well within reach.
Fashioning a Business from Grit, Not Inheritance
Phoebe didn’t walk away. She went to work. Alongside her Stanford roommate, climate activist Sophia Kianni, she co-founded Phia, a socially conscious fashion startup focused on sustainability and future-facing design. With the kind of poise and initiative that doesn’t come from privilege alone, Phoebe secured $100,000 from Soma Capital, a venture fund known for backing early-stage innovation. A Stanford social entrepreneurship grant added $250,000. Then came another $500,000 from angel investors—rounding out the $850,000 her parents declined to contribute.
In a landscape where only 2.3 percent of global venture capital last year went to all-female founding teams, Phoebe and Kianni’s early success is a small but potent act of defiance. It underscores just how uneven the playing field still is—and how significant it is when young women, even privileged ones, choose to build rather than lean. That effort earned the attention of Stella McCartney, a fashion icon and sustainability advocate, who now advises the brand.
“We’re trying to build something that we think will change the future of fashion,” Kianni explained. The statement could sound aspirational in the wrong hands. But for two women who’ve had to prove their worth in rooms where surnames don’t open every door, it lands with clarity. Phia is not about riding coattails. It’s about designing something that can stand on its own.
A Different Kind of Legacy
While Phoebe’s parents opted out of her cap table, they haven’t been entirely absent from her entrepreneurial orbit. What she may have lost in family capital, she seems to have gained in character—and, perhaps just as importantly, in counsel. Both Gateses have long championed the power of female-led enterprises and the importance of failing forward. And that ethos is now echoing through Phoebe’s decisions, team-building, and investor partnerships.
In place of her mother’s money, Phoebe has gained the backing of women who’ve carved their own paths through industries not known for their hospitality. Kris Jenner, the formidable matriarch behind the Kardashian empire, Spanx founder Sara Blakely, and media strategist Joanne Bradford are among those offering capital, mentorship, or both. It’s a powerful shift: influence being passed not down from family wealth, but laterally, from self-made women who know firsthand what it means to be underestimated.
For a generation of daughters watching this story unfold, Phoebe Gates may represent something far more compelling than another heiress-turned-entrepreneur. She stands as proof that legacy isn’t just about what you inherit—it’s about what you do when you’re told you’ll have to earn it yourself.