How Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni used Gen Z methods to raise $8M for Phia

There is a new Buzzy Fashion Startup in the city. Meet Fia, Phobby, daughter of Bill Gates and her Stanford Roommate-Slash co-founder, Sofia Kianni, a shopping app.

PHIA search the web to help compare the price of fashion items to users. It is a mobile application and browser extension that basically “Google Flight for Fashion”, as the company itself bills itself.

“As we are thinking about what the future of fashion is about five years ago, it is about to make access to things that are not accessing everything,” Gates told TechCrunch, “Gates told Techchen.

The app is One of the many fashion startups Wanting to bring more comfort to the world of online e-commerce, artificial intelligence is grown in this age of artificial intelligence.

Investors and customers are still in love with this section. Even Fia, which was just launched in April, said it already has about 500,000 users.

In early September, it also announced Round an 8 million seeds It, Phobby Gates, 23, told us that it took three and a half weeks to raise. The round was led by Clainer Parkins, Chris Jenner and other investors including Hailey Bieber.

Kianni said Fia has now conducted a new and advanced search in the app that shows over 300 million fashion items. The goal is to make the experience of e-commerce shopping seamless — a place where customers can see everything that they have bought or searched before and find new items that would be interested.

Gates and Kiani met two years ago and they started working on the app about a year after they met. They first made the product a desktop chrome extension that helped users find second -hand options during online shopping. “It was quite buggy,” Kiani recalled.

The user’s response also revealed that most of their colleagues were shopping on their phones, not on their desktops. Also, Kianni said that young people were more interested in instant price checks without comparing the second hand. “We’ve really decided to adjust our focus,” he said.

Gates added, “We should have known it true from our own behavior.” “The girl who is emotionally shopping and scrolling all the time does it on her phone; the laptop is even greater when she works, but what the phone is”. ”

So, Gates and Kianni begin to create a new application.

Kiania said that the first check received by Fia was actually from Stanford’s social entrepreneurial program. Once the traction begins to increase, Gates and Kianni have decided that the capital of the initiative is needed to make their attitude more effective.

They studied top -level funds for pitching for their rounds and wanted women especially as investors. However, before they started the fundraising, Soma Capital heard the product and it was cold to Kiani on LinkedIn. The firm supplies one of the first institutional checks.

“From there they introduced us a ton of incredible guy,” said Kianni. “We’ve finished both cool promo and then got the other people to contact us as well.”

Their round is a combination of some of the rumors of business and technology and the collision of two powerful networks.

Kiani himself was a renowned worker, he was Established in non -profit -climate cardinalWhich translates information on climate change in different languages. He was one of the youngest people who became UN advisors and appeared on numerous list including 4 BBC women.

Except for Jenner and Bieber, others in the round include Bilionaire Michael Rubin, Sara Blakey and Sherill Sandberg, founders of Spanix. Soma Claine introduced them to Parkins’ team, which eventually led the seed.

“I got my beginning in e-commerce, so I always believe in the power of technology to transform how people shop online,” Rubin told TechCrunch in a statement. “What makes me excited about Fia is that phobby and Sophia are smarting shopping and using technology to unlock better experience for everyone, bringing real innovations in space.”

Much of Fear Marketing is the fifth General ZO: organic, focus on the public -led founding material. For example, he and Gates they are open about tests driven with PHIA; They have asked people to give direct messages to their response and have used social media to hire talent and source designers. And they Use chatzipt to help With marketing in search of viral propaganda.

They also received some help from their podcasts called The Bernouts, which was launched in April. There is it About half a million Followers on Instagram. Kianni said that the podcast helps interest in the PHIA, as it focuses on sharing the advice of young people, especially women’s career. He said it had already collected 10 million views on various social media platforms.

Podcast allows them to “open source” how he and Gates are building their company, speaking through all the stumbling and obstacles, which results in the other people wanting to start the company, he added.

“We took a very digital-first view for something,” Kianni said. “I think that it was because we saw this national fast traction.”

Gates and Kianni said that the fresh capital would be basically used to create the team (there are only 12 people at this point), and they are naturally recruiting through social media. Overall, this pair see Fia as the future of personalized shopping.

Gates said he even hopes one day to create a personalized agent that can help sync to the calendars and tell customers when and what, what, what to re -sale and what to keep, and what to keep.

Kianni added, “There are many more that we still need to do, we want to learn and grow,” Kianni added. “We want to be able to do it publicly, so that our audience can learn and grow on us as well.”