A brand-new, popular fashion startup has arrived in the area. Introducing Phia, the shopping app created by Phoebe Gates, the daughter of Bill Gates, and Sophia Kianni, her roommate at Stanford who also co-founded the company.
Phia conducts online searches to assist consumers in comparing the costs of clothing items. As the business puts it, it is a browser extension and mobile app that is basically “Google flights for fashion.”
“As we think about what the future of fashion is going to be like five years ago now, it’s all going to be about making access a lot easier to things that people haven’t had access to before,” Gates told TechCrunch.
In this age of artificial intelligence, the app is one of many fashion businesses that aim to make online e-commerce easier.
So far, this segment is very popular with investors and customers. Even Phia, which only debuted in April, claimed to have almost 500,000 users already.
According to the 23yearold Gates, it also launched a $8 million seed round in early September that only took three and a half weeks to raise.Kleiner Perkins led the round, with Kris Jenner and Hailey Bieber among the other investors.
According to Kianni, Phia has now launched an enhanced search function on the app that searches through over 300 million fashion items. The objective is to create a seamless e-commerce shopping experience where customers can view everything they have previously purchased or looked for and discover new products that may be of interest.
Kianni and Gates began working on the app about a year after they first met, two years ago. Their first creation was a desktop Chrome plugin that assisted consumers in locating used options when they were shopping online. As Kianni remembered, “It was pretty buggy.”
In order to pitch for their round, they looked into the best funds and specifically sought out well-known women investors. However, after learning about the idea, Soma Capital cold-contacted Kianni on LinkedIn before they could begin the arduous process of funding. In the end, the company supplied one of the first institutional checks.
“They ended up introducing us to a lot of amazing people after that,” Kianni remarked. “In the end, we were able to connect with additional people in addition to cold outreaching.”
Their round brings together some of the most prominent figures in IT and industry, as well as two influential networks.
As a well-known campaigner, Kianni started the organization Climate Cardinals, which provides multilingual translations of climate change information. She has been on many lists, such as the BBC’s 100 Women, and was among the youngest individuals to ever serve as a UN advisor.
Their podcast, The Burnouts, which was also released in April, also helps them draw attention to their product. On Instagram, it has nearly half a million followers. According to Kianni, the podcast, which focuses on giving young people—especially women—career advice, helps generate interest in Phia. According to her, it has already received 10 million views on several social media sites.
By discussing all of the hiccups and challenges, the podcast has enabled her and Gates to “open source” their business development process, which, she added, benefits other individuals wishing to launch businesses in this field.
“We have approached almost everything with a really digital-first mindset,” Kianni stated. “I believe it has contributed to the rapid traction we have witnessed.”
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, naturally. 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 help sync to calendars and tell customers when to buy and what, what to resell, and what to keep.
“There’s so much more that we still need to do, so much more we want to learn and grow,” Kianni added. “We want to be able to do that publicly, so that our audience can learn and grow alongside us.”
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