Well you don't get to have that. Possible access to your father is enough for you to get priveleges.
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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She will ALWAYS have help lol
Who is this bozo?
Phoebe Gates wants her $185 million AI startup to succeed with 'no ties to my privilege or my last name'
But you have no problem with the $35 million they gave you? That's part of your privilege. You say you want to succeed without it while stuffing your pockets with it.
So, I was thinking about the Russian aristocracy today…
Well I guess as long as she has a 'chip' on her shoulder
FUCK yeah F+G. Rarely seen in the wild.
Lightning in a bottle, that cast.
Well, most of that cast.
The only thing she wants is for us to be talking about it, and well here you all are ...
"Child of prominent pedophile has an AI startup" is such a vibe right now.
They're just insane, the whole lot of them.
Still... Fuck AI.
Okay, well I definitely wondered what the hell the star of Gremlins and Drop Dead Fred was getting up to.
The shopping assistant plugs into browsers like Chrome and Safari to compare prices and surface deals across tens of thousands of retail and resale sites in real time. It essentially serves as your own personal deal finder: Say you’re looking at a $200 dress from Anthropologie, Phia can find and compare prices at secondhand sellers to help customers find a better price.
Gates and Kianni first brainstormed startup ideas in their Stanford dorm room, cycling through concepts before landing on a consumer tool that included Gates’ interest in women’s empowerment (likely modeled after her own mother) and Kianni’s sustainability focus.
I don’t think a coupon tool that wastes excessive resources is either empowering or sustainable.
I'd be surprised if there's actual AI behind it. That functionality already exists and works just fine.
it's a small indian man named Al.
I’d be surprised if a human were behind it. This is exactly the kind of thing that can be vibe coded pretty fast and is mostly just reselling fancy Google searches through an LLM. I did a quick skim of the website and it’s just a bunch of items scraped from big brands with lots of similar looking images of other products. There’s too many sites for me to really believe they’ve made integrations with all of them.
The insane valuation is because of her name not because the tech is good. The only way to make money on this is the customer data. The margin on that is going to be fucking minuscule especially once LLM costs start going up so they can make money. This adds nothing of value on top so it will go away almost immediately.
She just wants to be treated like any other totally unqualified person whose mom gave her commencement speed and got handed 100 million dollars to start up a made up company.
That then told everyone about her company, that she doesn't want any privilege in promoting, to her many followers.
Did she go to the island? That's my question.
Phoebe Cates has an AI startup??
two of em. and they’re spectacular.
"Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something.
Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.
Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work.
Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it."
A coworker of mine left to start his own startup. He claimed that the IPO of an old employer gave him a little bit of cushion to work with, and he was going to take his shot. I wished him well. It was a crazy dumb app idea. But you never know.
I do remember thinking “gee and he just had a baby too, what a time to take a risk.” I later learned that he had married old money. The second he had a kid with her, he couldn’t lose.
What an awesome comparison.
Yeah that is real nail on the head stuff. The poverty trap is real. I really believe everyone should be poor once in their life for at least a year with no end in sight because many / most who haven't experienced it don't have the empathetic capacity to imagine it.
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Well, she chose AI, so she's already failed !
Good job. It won't succeed thanks to your privilege, because it won't succeed at all !
"I got the VC money, not my problem anymore!"
She's going to be another super villain in ten years isn't she
Yes, but she will have really earned it unlike the other trust fund super villains.
I hope in 10 years we find out shes secretly a cyborg and meant that litterally, the prototype chip is on (in) her shoulder.
no ties to my privilege
it's an AI startup
$185 million
Something does not compute, in a Microslop sort of way.
“I have a chip on my shoulder,” she said, describing her drive to prove she can win over private equity in Silicon Valley based on merit, not inheritance or legacy ...[T]he young founder hasn’t taken money from her parents for Phia. Instead, she’s insisted on raising outside capital even as some investors remain fixated on her personal life instead of her business venture.
I appreciate the sentiment, but it would be delusional to think her ability to "win over private equity" was divorced at all from her father's legacy and last name. And actually, I'm not sure I appreciate the sentiment. In 2026, merit is way down the list, like scrawled sideways in the margins, of things that matter to private equity.
It's certainly delusional. I've been active in the innovation space for ~25 years, and for most normal people it's taking a massive risk. Here, she's not ending-up on the street if the venture flops, so the risk is low.
So merit my ass, it's easy to take a risk if it's not real risk, i.e. I agree and don't appreciate the sentiment.
like shot in the head and scrawled sideways in the margins
FTFY.
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Reading this, I was reminded of how Nicolas Cage is part of the Coppola family but changed his name, I was told, so that he could “make it on his own.”
I looked that up and it turns out to be a complete lie. He actually changed his name to conceal the fact that he was not making it on his own.
From Wikipedia:
At age 15, he tried to convince his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, to give him a screen test, telling him "I'll show you acting." His outburst was met with "silence in the car."[20] By this stage of his career, Coppola had already directed Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman and Robert De Niro. Although early in his career Cage appeared in some of his uncle's films, he changed his name to Nicolas Cage to avoid the appearance of nepotism as Coppola's nephew. His choice of name was inspired by the Marvel Comicssuperhero Luke Cage and composer John Cage.[21][22]
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This is fucking worse than monarchy.
To be fair to whoever she is, it must have been impossible for them to not to have grown up completely bonkers out of touch. Not without some serious awesome parenting.
Which is why she did not.
Wonder how much of her funding came from people who rape kids with her dad...
If she thinks she's doing anything that her name doesn't benefit, she's fucking stupider than most AI ceos and that's saying a lot.
Maybe even stupid enough to not know the reason her dad's company took off is her grandparents worked for Xerox and just gave him a bunch of IP including the first computer mouse and a shit ton of money.
The Gates family is a nepo family, they're just all too stupid to understand and legitimately think they have the same opportunities as anyone else.
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Is this the same entitled bitch who got a $1,000,000 ranch as a present?
Maybe pay some fucking taxes, Phoebe.
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Pay your taxes or shut up.
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