Turning Privilege Into Purpose with Phoebe Gates

This week we are joined by Phoebe Gates. Phoebe is now the co-founder of Fia, a shopping app that's changing how we discover and buy clothes. Phoebe and I connected after I made a video, a TikTok, talking about her refreshingly honest response to Alex Cooper's question on her episode of Call Her Daddy about being a nepo baby.

We talk more about that in this episode as well as how she and her best friend Sophia built this company from their Stanford dorm room, the biggest mistakes they've made since launching Fia and why talking to customers early could have saved them months of wasted work. Phoebe shares how she navigates building a business while dealing with constant criticism and how she actually uses some of that criticism to inform her decisions, which I thought was incredibly interesting. We also talk about how she balances making time for friends and relationships.

while building this business and why she asks chat GPT for smart questions before important meetings. Phoebe also talks about this really cool water pitcher metaphor about energy management that she heard from Whitney Wolfherd, the CEO of Bumble, that has changed how I think about focus and wasting my mental energy every day, so I'm excited for you to hear that too. What I love so much about Phoebe's perspective is her brutal honesty about both her advantages and her mistakes. She's not pretending that she built this from nothing.

but she's also not letting that stop her from creating something that's genuinely useful in Fia. Without further ado, please welcome Phoebe Gates to Geissan.

Josh Felgoise (01:58.542)

Hi. Hello. Welcome to GuySit. Thank you. I'm so honored to be here. This is crazy. We are in your office. We're in the Fia office right now. And we connected after I made a TikTok talking about your answer to Alex Cooper on Call Her Daddy about nepotism. And you answered the question so authentically and honestly. And I loved it. And I think a lot of people related to that as well.

Thank you. That means a lot. think the issue that a lot of people have is just like not addressing it. Like I am an epo baby saying that owning it. Like I have a lot of privilege because of where my family is. I think it's funny because everyone. little closer. I think it's really funny because people don't like address that and people try to avoid it.

And so I was feeling good about that answer, but it's funny because all the comments like, she's so PR trained. The joke in my family is that like I'm the least PR trained person and my family wishes I'd be PR trained. Do you have PR training? No, I don't. I honestly should get I've done PR training for not PR training. But when we first filmed the podcast, it was really bad. mean, we did. I'm I'm sweating too. It's so hot. This office is I know I should get you a fan, but the first three times we recorded the first episode was so bad. So I did go to one like acting coach and asked him, how do you do a podcast?

And he said, you just need to be like more confident, which I feel like you're really good at. could honestly like, you should do a side hustle of training people on how to podcast and stuff because you'd be incredible at it. But that's the only real session I've done is that. Really? Yeah. No, I mean, you answered that question so honestly and authentically. And I think people really appreciated that. And if you read through that comment section, it is so incredible how much people were just like, thank you for being honest because nobody is honest about this stuff. So I thought your answer was amazing. And then we connected.

And I'm really curious how you've managed to create strong relationships and friendships with the right people and the people that aren't in it for the wrong reasons, because I'm sure that's been hard for you throughout growing up and throughout college. So I'm curious to how you've navigated that. Yeah, I think it's one thing to be like, it's hard or it's difficult.

Josh Felgoise (04:01.546)

I am in such a position where I am so lucky to have my family to be able to go to Stanford and know my tuition was going to be paid for. Sophia talks about on the podcast, she paid for her own tuition through doing speaking gigs. And that was never a concern that I had. And so I think for me, it's kind of like a privilege to be in that situation. But honestly, for finding real people, my mother grew up in Texas. So my mother's like a hard ass. She knows who's real. She knows who's fake. And I got really lucky because I grew up in Seattle, Seattle is like Birkenstocks.

with socks on, going hiking. And I went to a really small school that actually my dad had gone to previously and it's like 150 kids per grade in the high school. And so because it was so small, I feel like I just got really lucky that I was able to have a really tight-knit friend group of some guys and girls that ended up being about seven kids. And those kids are still my best friends. My best guy friend is a magician who goes to Yale.

he's not using me for nothing. Like that's my best guy friend. He's amazing. And so I think having that core group of people honestly really looked out for me all of high school and then even going into college, like finding real people. And now I got Sophia on my side so I don't worry about nothing. How did you guys meet? How did you meet Sophia? So it's so funny because so Sophia was actually like a friend of a friend. You know when you have like one of those

You have a best friend, but then they have a friend, you know everything about that friend's lives, their breakups, their drama. You don't know her that well, so whenever you see her, you're like, hey girl, but you know all the tea. So that was me and Sophia, and we were gonna live together with this other girl that she was best friends with. So we have a mutual connection we're gonna live with. And then the other girl at the last minute drops out and lives with her boyfriend, and so I'm like, fuck, I'm gonna live with this climate activist, I'm freaking out, I'm throwing away my Sheen t-shirts, I'm like.

It's gonna be the worst year ever. Like Sophia's sober, like, oh my God, this is gonna be so boring. And we ended up like really bonding because Sophia's just super self confident. I tell the story about her fake tanning naked in the mirror and that waking me up when she's looking at herself, but naked and goes, wow, this fake tan is developing wonderfully. And that's when I was like, oh my God, I love this girl. I just- And that was like early in your friendship. Exactly, just the insatiable confidence that she has. feel like we-

Josh Felgoise (06:09.154)

really judge women in society who have that and to see that just on her consistently is my absolute favorite thing. I love that and I think like a friendship like that is truly like a lasting friendship and the fact that she didn't see you for anything beside who you are is just really Because she's confident in herself. Right. And I think that's the thing is like she knows what she's doing and it doesn't matter what I'm doing or who I am because she's her own person. She has that.

And I think that for me is something, know, originally, you know, in college, like having insecurity and finding your who you are as a person is so, so important. Yeah. Because now I'm able to walk into business things and be like, yeah, I have no clue what the fuck I'm talking about and not be insecure without. feel like that reflects on me as a person, but I know I know nothing about that. So now I need to go learn. Or more importantly, I need to learn enough so that I can hire someone who's an expert in that area. I have enough insight into that facet of the business to know someone's underperforming. But I'm able to say confidently, yeah.

this person's 10 times smarter than me and not feeling insecure about that because I know what I'm good at. And that's been really helpful. think both of us having our own like lanes within the business. How do you handle that? Like when you walk into a room and you don't know something, I think that's a thing a lot of people have to grapple with is dealing with the fact that we don't know everything and not acting like you do is so important. So how do you handle that?

I mean, honestly, it depends if you're in like a business meeting where you need to know it or you were meant to be prepped for the meeting, fake it till you make it. I'm all about fake it till you make it. But otherwise, be honest. think people are really excited about especially when I remember my first internship was at Vogue and I would ask so many questions and the manager was like, this is great. Like, keep asking questions because the first like three days, I'm not a quiet person. I was completely silent and I wasn't asking anything. And they started to get like annoyed with me. They're like, you're doing all this, but you're not asking questions. That was a big learning for me was just

Asking, asking, asking. I'm going to be honest, now before meetings, I'll use chat GBT and I'm like, what are five really smart, intelligent questions that I could ask this person? And then I'll be like, OK, now skew this towards these are the things I really want to learn or take away from this meeting. That's smart. What are good questions I could ask someone? So I'm really using it now, honestly, as an executive assistant. That's really smart. Which is your favorite chat to use? Ooh, I just got the one where you can.

Josh Felgoise (08:21.538)

It's an operator and so it can execute tasks on your behalf. That's my favorite thing to use. Do you know what it's called? Yeah, it's ChatGPT operator. And then I also have trained some of my own bots. I'm not going to lie to like write emails like me to do like blog posts and stuff. It's not quite there yet, but I'm excited about that. Sick. How did you and Sophia come up with Fia?

Honestly, were roommates, so we argued about clothes all the time. And we would find that we would spend hours sitting on our little couch looking for the perfect spring dress, the perfect pants or jeans for the first day of school. And what are we going to wear? to the tailgate this weekend, et cetera. Well, actually, there's no tailgates in Stanford. But we were arguing over all the time what we should wear. And we found that a lot of times, the things we wanted to buy just really didn't align with our morals.

And also it was just really freaking hard to find the item you wanted at a good price. And so we'd find an item, then we would do kind of this process where we'd look it up on Depop, we'd look it up on RealRoo, we'd look it up on Vestare, we'd look it up on eBay, then we'd go check the outnet, let's see if it's on sale. And just didn't really make sense to us. Okay, there's some tools that can show you if it's on sale, but there's nothing that's gonna say, this item holds value and we found it for you used on a secondhand site.

And we're like, okay, maybe this is just us. We start talking to, you know, literally hundreds of women who also were big shoppers that we knew and they were doing the same exact process. We're like, well, that's kind of a waste of time. We're talking, you know, 20 minutes when you're really searching for that item and you get to the bottom of that decision funnel. And I was like, okay, well, that doesn't make any sense. Why can't we just build a tool to automate that? And so that's really when we came up with the idea of,

What if you could just have something in the browser where boom, you click on us and instantly we're sourcing those deals for you. Now that's just the beginning of Fiat. We're a price comparison tool today, but my goal is really by holiday for us to even help with more of that upper funnel stuff. Like, okay, you don't even know what you want to buy. How can we help with inspiration? Really smart. I mean, I think that's something that so many guys are looking for because I can speak for myself. I don't know how to dress or where to start or how to, where, where you start with finding your style. And I've talked a lot about it here on guyset. Like I've had a lot of

Josh Felgoise (10:23.126)

male models and male influencers on to talk about that stuff too. like it, it re there's really no great resource for that right now. So I'm thrilled to hear that that's how you're kind of going right now. We're like the Google flights or fashion one click. tell you if you're getting a good deal. We tell you if we're getting scammed, if there's something cheaper and soon we're moving to discovery. We might need to have you make an edit in the app too. I might have to, I would love to. I think the exciting thing is also because we're in the browser and you enable us, we can follow you around on shopping sites.

The goal is really to learn like, what do you like? What colors are you interested? Are you looking for, you know, a new pair of combed garcon shoes? And then actually being able to like feed you better deals within a discovery feed is really like the long-term vision we're going for. But we should chat. I want all your ideas. We will. will absolutely And how does it actually work for somebody that's never seen it before? Like, how does this thing work? Yeah. So you go ahead and you download us from the app store and you're going to go through, you're going to toggle Fia on in your Safari extensions. And then it's going to pop up and say, hey, can we follow you around while you shop?

you're gonna go ahead and allow that and it's gonna take you to a site to show you what we do. So it'll be sitting right there, there'll be a little P that says, should I buy this? When you're on a product page and you just click on that and within two seconds, we're gonna tell you, this is how much value the item is gonna hold over time and boom, we're gonna show you if we found better deals. And if we can't find you a better deal, we're gonna show you what other people who are looking at this item have been shopping from other sites or what they're interested in.

or what might pair well with it. And then if you don't like the deals we offer, you can even click view more and go to the app to filter to see like if you want it in a different color or you want a different style, et cetera. What's been one of the biggest things you've learned so far since starting? Staying close to consumers is the biggest thing. I mean, I really when we first developed it, we frankly developed it only for desktop. And we spent months and months building this. I'm sure. Perfecting it, making the pixels perfect, making it look pretty, which now looking back, it was a complete waste of time, complete waste of time.

If we had just sat down with 20 smart women who love to shop, we would have asked them and they would have said, hey, I shop on my freaking phone. And the reality is now we've done that. And now we have a desktop version as well and we have a mobile version, but we wasted so much time perfecting a product that wasn't even on the platform that consumers wanted. And we spent so much time looking at different things. used to think that the resale value is really important to consumers. And we assumed that was because they wanted to resell it. The reality is most people aren't reselling these items. It's more of, does this item hold value?

Josh Felgoise (12:39.116)

Like I'm willing to buy a reformation dress for 150 bucks versus Azar one for 50 because I know that that reformation dress is going to hold value. Am I going to resell it? Most likely not. That's actually a smaller group of people that do that. But it's really about that purchase, like knowing that that item is going to carry value over time and that I'm making a worthwhile investment even if I don't go to flip it. And so we started with things like just showing you the resale value and giving you a rating based on the resale value, giving a percentage of value at hold and

We wasted so much time making that pretty. And then we would talk to consumers and they'd be like, yeah, I just don't want this. Like I literally could care less. Like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. OK, yeah. And we'd have to go back to the drawing board. So I think biggest learning, like if I was starting again, is I would talk to consumers way earlier and I honestly wouldn't waste time making things pretty. I just mock things up in a prototype, have it be rat ugly and show it to girls and get honest feedback. And how long have you been doing it? Honestly, about a year we've been working on Fia since we've really, really gone heads down to work on it.

So we came up with the idea, I wanna say, like two years ago in college, we like, we should build a shopping app. And then honestly, it's been the last year we've been like, okay, let's really do this thing. And you recently launched Men's too, right? Yes, we did. So you can go in the app, you take our shopping quiz, and then that's gonna populate your entire personalized feed for men as well. Yeah, I did it. I think it kinda got me to a T, it did a great job. Okay, great, we have more coming, we have price drop alerts coming next week, there's a lot more stuff on the personalization end.

that we're gonna do. So it's just a start, but we're getting there. It's great. It's great. How do you navigate people, you know, not taking or how do you navigate criticism or skepticism about your ideas because of who you are or people not taking you seriously because of who you are? I think honestly, my goal is to build a really great product. And I'm not, you know, pervy to the idea that the product is perfect today. It has bugs. We literally just launched a month ago. We have so much more work to do. And so it depends if someone is

a girl who I can tell from her Instagram loves to shop and she's criticizing it. She's like, you know, this bug or I don't like this, but then I'm listening. But if it's a man who's older, who I know doesn't like to shop, I'm throwing that out the window. And so I think for me, just really like zoning in on is this our consumer or is this not our consumer? And then taking the criticism if it is.

Josh Felgoise (14:52.31)

is the biggest thing that I've had to do. Because the reality is if the product is good enough, you should be able to get past who I am. Because at the end of the day, I don't matter. What matters is the product. But if they're criticizing and saying, hey, well, this app is only in front of me because she's Phoebe Gates, and I wish it had this feature, if it's a girl who I can talk and like to shop, now I'm tuned in. Now I'm listening. If it's an older guy saying that, I don't give a damn. Right. That's good. don't care. No, mean, it's really important to be able to block out that noise because there's so much stupidity and just people who have criticisms.

shit to say. So I'm happy to hear that you can do that and that you've developed that. Has that kind of come over time or you've just always had that ability? You know, honestly, I think it's come over time. I think it's really about, you know, finding yourself and then also just realizing like a lot of the online stuff doesn't matter as much and really like crafting, you know, who you want to be. The reality is like if you're in a

you know, a position where you're lucky enough to have some sort of a personal brand, which I've really like focused on because I think founder led marketing is so key. Yeah. People don't want to buy things. They don't want to buy labels. They want to buy into the vision of me and Sophia with acne late at night and our hair falling out and trying to learn something and freaking out and going into investor meetings and embarrassing ourselves. Like people are actually more interested in that. And the reality is if you start putting that stuff online, you're putting your ego out there a little bit too, and you're going to get criticism. You're going to get feedback.

So that's been a huge thing I've had to let go of. Like even, you know, on our podcast, like I'm now not doing my hair and makeup on certain episodes. Like I'm just like, fuck it at this point is my reality. And so I think it's also just about having that confidence. But no, if someone, you know, wrote those comments to me in high school, that would have shattered me. But now today I'm like, okay, does she shop? Does she not shop? Okay, let's write it down. If she does shop, it to the tally feedback. Okay, we need to work on that. Right. So it's it's now about the product and not about you and you can segment the criticism.

based on you versus the product and you're focused on the product. Exactly. And I think that's really smart. And I also appreciate your answer to saying that. Like it would have hurt you in high school because like that's everybody. No. And I think that there is a really good... my God. This is horrible. What's her name? She's a super famous actress. She's a runaway bride. What's her... shit. Julia Roberts had something really great where she was like, she posted something with her niece Emma Roberts. I don't know her, but I saw this article online.

Josh Felgoise (17:10.418)

And she was like reading the comments. People were so rude. They were like, she's given up. She hasn't done her makeup, blah, blah. And she's like, I am, you I'm a grown ass woman. And the fact that this affected my emotions is crazy to me because I can't imagine being a high school girl and getting comments like this. Right. And so that to me is crazy. think a lot about I'm really thankful. I mean, I was first to have an Android phone until I was 18. Like I really wasn't allowed on social media. I had a private account called Moon, Stars and Shine because I thought that was a cool name. So embarrassing. I did math team like.

I'm really thankful I didn't have a social media presence during those like foundational years. Yeah. And that now I have a backbone so I can like read that stuff, etc. Totally. And I love that quote. I think stuff can get to you, especially when you're building a company like you are online and you guys are opening yourselves up to the criticism to the consumer because that's how you learn, which I think is really smart, but also opens you up to criticism and to people talking about it.

Absolutely. And the reality is now it's about will the company succeed or fail because then the criticism is valid if we fail and we're not able to deliver an incredible product and the criticism is invalid if we actually do deliver that product and we're able to make a really incredible shopping assistant. So that's to me like what it rides on. Now, sometimes when they're like, she should get her roots dyed. I do listen. I did have one person comment that and my roots were looking really bad and they did go to get them in. And then I text my sister. was like, why didn't you tell me? And she's like, I don't know. I was holding back. I was like, well, someone in my comments.

Said and like Cheryl one two three four five six seven like is more loyal than you are because I needed to get my roots done So thank God. Yes What what what kind of what is your day? What does a day in your life look like? Oh my god as a founder Okay, so probably I'm waking up a little bit late I'm probably waking up like 9 a.m. Coming to the office and I'm typically here till I want to say about like 8 to 10 p.m But it's super hectic depending on the day. So I'll come in

I'll see people who are, our team is really small, we're about a team of seven, we're really lucky to have some incredible interns though. So I'll come in, I'll tab with anyone who's on the operations team underneath me. If we have a new app release, I'm immediately bug bashing that from the second that I'm awake. And then I'm coming in, I'm writing down my to-dos for the day and I'm time boxing them. I typically get to have some meetings. This honestly is the highlight of my day. But I try to time box like recording the Burnouts podcast to Fridays. And then we'll try and bang out like one or two on a Friday.

Josh Felgoise (19:30.03)

And then I'll typically do, depending on the day, about an hour of trying to do social content, social work for FIA. Actually, no, that's more like 45 minutes a day, I'd say. But it really depends what task that day is. So tonight is crazy. Today I have you, then I have a panel thing, then I have a candidate interview, then I have two meetings, then I go to do our user dinner.

It's just back to back to back and it really depends on the day. Now what lights me up is the stuff where we're like actually talking to users and getting to work on product stuff. Like I can't say I get as lit up by like doing our taxes or figuring out healthcare benefits, et cetera. But I like to be on top of that stuff too. And I think I have a little bit of like the organizational bone where I enjoy that stuff. So you're, you're here all day. mean, I'm here. This is yeah. And how do you make time for yourself? Like how do you balance creating this and

I mean, I'm sure you're thinking about it all the time because I can tell how successful you want it to be. And I believe in it. think it will be. But how do you also like manage Phoebe on the side? Yeah, I think honestly, Saturdays are like really core to me, like turning off my phone on Saturday and just going for a long walk by myself, like is a really, really big thing that I do. And then my sister's also in the city and she has two young girls and my sister's in residency with two young kids. So going to see her honestly is like really fun. And like getting to play with my nieces is a huge stress release for me.

Long bubble baths I absolutely love. But I'm that super annoying person with like my AirPod Max is on like just walking around the city. I am too. It's 100 % me. And then the other thing is, yeah, just taking time to like decompress at night is a big thing for me. Like on Saturdays, am like, cannot be reached for that morning. Like I just need to like sit and rot in bed and like think about things because that's when I come up with honestly my best ideas. Yeah. And then the other thing I think of is like, I really think of life is like.

You have different periods of your life and there's like burners on a stove, right? So if I think about like my different burners of things that matter to me are like work, family, romance, and then the third one is like relaxation. And you can like turn up and down different burners at different times. Like right now I know I'm in a period of my life where I'm really turning that burn like, and friends, sorry, last one actually. was like relaxation, friends. So I'm really turning that work burner on really, really high right now.

Josh Felgoise (21:40.748)

So like family is a little bit lower because I'm not spending as much time with my sister or romance is like lower. But then, you know, I'll be able to invest in these areas later in my life. you know, once I have kids, that family burner will turn up. But I feel like I'm in a really lucky position right now where like because I'm in my early 20s, I can really invest in, OK, I know my work burner is on high. Totally. But OK, great. Then I'll get some time, you know, in a couple of months where I'll be able to turn that friend burner up a little bit and invest in that. I love that. And I agree with you.

What have you learned about yourself since starting Fia? I have severe ADHD. I knew that before, but wow, like really knowing that now, I really need to sit down and prioritize things at the beginning of the day or else I can get lost in tasks that are actually priority, but feel really good. Clearing out that inbox feels amazing to me. It's like the best feeling.

But that actually doesn't necessarily move the business forward every day. And so I think that's been the biggest thing I've had to learn is that I need to sit down and I need a proper at least 10 minutes at the beginning of the day to prioritize myself for the day and prioritize what's on my plate. And then I just saw in other things as they come. But that's really important for me. And that's not something that everyone needs. Like Sophia doesn't need that. I need that 10 minutes at the top of the day. Yeah. And then what is the best or one of the best pieces of advice you've received since starting this company or ever?

You can take that however you want to take that. best piece of advice I've gotten is when you her joined us on the podcast and she talked about so she for context was the CEO of Bumble then left and now is coming back. So she has kind of this brand new perspective on everything. And she talks about this idea of you wake up every morning and you have like a water pitcher that you can pour out and you can water plants and that's your energy for the day. And so when you're thinking about, you know, what does Josh think of me? Did I say something wrong on this podcast? Did I look ugly? Was my hair messed up? You're just standing there pouring out water.

and you're watering plastic plants and thinking about are you watering a weed? Are you watering a plastic plant? Or are you dumping your water on things that are actually gonna grow? Are you learning a new skill? Are you investing in a friendship that's gonna help you or that brings something to your life? You know, when you get to your job in the day, like how, what are you wasting water on? What are you standing there just pouring over? Because I spent so much time just literally standing there dumping water on things like, well, how did I look? What did they think of me? Do they like me? And that's not worth your time because you only have so much water in the day.

Josh Felgoise (23:55.266)

That is a phenomenal answer. really, not my piece of advice. I'm still learning it. I'm still standing there watering plastic. No, I'm learning. am too. I listening to hear you are hearing you talk about that is I do that all the time. And I think it's something that everybody can work on. I'm sure Whitney can also like work on that, too. And anybody in a successful position has probably gotten better at it. I think you get better at that with time. But I think that is something and it's a really great metaphor to how we negatively talk about ourselves all the time. And

think about or overthink about what we said, what we did and who we are all the time and waste so much of our energy on that. completely, completely agree. Well, Josh, thank you so much for having me on the guys that podcast. I'm honored. Thank you. Thank you, Phoebe. This was so much fun. This is I love this. And I think what you're doing here is really cool. And I'm so excited to see how you revolutionize the menswear industry, the women's wear industry and allow people to figure out their style, how to shop for themselves.

how to find things at better prices. I think what you're doing is really cool and I'm excited to see you grow. Thank you so much, Josh. Go download Afia on the app store for free and toggle us on so we can help you find better deals as you shop. We're just getting started, so let us know all your feedback. Josh, we're have to get you an edit in the app. We're gonna have to have you be a curator. I'm excited. I'm ready, I'm pumped. I can't wait. Thanks for coming on. Perfect.

That is the episode. Thank you so much listening to guys set a guy's guide to what should be talked about I'm Josh I'm 25 years old and I'm here every single week every single Tuesday to talk about what should be talked about for guys in their 20s If you like this episode, I really hope you did Please like subscribe me of this podcast five stars and leave a review. That's one two, three four five stars not four on three. That's and once five stars Thank you so much. I really appreciate that

If you have anything you me talk about that should be talked about for guys in their twenties. Send it to my DMs or my email. It's at the guy set T H E G U I S E T on Instagram, Tik Tok on all social media platforms, YouTube. You can watch the full episode on YouTube as well. just search guys that on YouTube and my email is Josh J O S H at G U I S E T.com. You can ask me anything there. I also have a website guyset.com G U I S E T.com and you can ask the questions right there too.

Josh Felgoise (26:04.12)

Thank you so much for listening to guys set a guy's guide to what should be talked about and I will see you guys next Tuesday. See you guys.