Bill Gates’ youngest daughter Phoebe is shaping up to be a mogul in her own right.
The 22-year-old Stanford grad launched a new podcast on Tuesday, on which she teased the launch of her forthcoming “sustainable” shopping website, Phia.
The podcast, titled The Burnouts, is hosted by Phoebe and her business partner, Sophia Kianni.
During the debut episode, the budding businesswoman admitted she was anxious about being labeled as a “nepo baby,” saying she had “such a desire to prove myself.”
“I was like, I have so much privilege. I’m a nepo baby,” Phoebe declared, before saying she “had so much insecurity around that.”
Phoebe recalled that her father and her mother, Melinda French Gates, were “really cautious” when she came to them with the idea for her sustainable fashion website.
“’Are you sure you wanna do this?’ ” Phoebe recalled Bill, 69, saying.
Bill and Melinda, 60, who split in 2021 after 27 years of marriage, are also parents to daughter Jennifer, 28, and Rory, 25,
The exes insisted Phoebe finish school at Stanford University before she launch into the lucrative world of fashion tech. She graduated last spring with a degree in Human Biology.
The style-minded mini-mogul first spoke about joining the fashion industry in 2022.
At the time, she admitted her mother’s friendship with Stella McCartney made her realize that the offspring of the rich and famous can forge their own paths.
“Her and my mom are actually good friends,” Phoebe told WWD at the time about McCartney — who is the daughter of The Beatles legend Paul McCartney but has become an acclaimed fashion designer in her own right.
“Even when I was little she would send me stuff and little notes and I’d be so excited. I’ve been asking my mom forever and ever if I could meet with her.”
“I felt very connected to her, I feel like because she’s been able to use the platform she had, because of who her dad is, and then she took that and instead of being like, ‘Oh, people define me by this,’ she took it and she was like, ‘OK, I have this immense privilege, now I’m going to use it to leverage something,’” Phoebe said of Stella.
Phoebe added: “So I think we are really deeply connected because that’s a lot of what I think about: ‘OK, I’m my parents’ daughter, that gives me immense privilege, but it’s not what I’m defined by. I want to have my own identity, I want to be my own person, I want to branch away from that, but how do I do that in a way where I can yield some sort of change?’”
