How Podcasting Is Fueling Sophia Kianni And Phoebe Gates' Fashion Startup Phia

Forbes

11-07-2025

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Courtesy of Phia
'When I launched Spanx there was no social media… I had to stand on department store floors for seven to eight hours a day spreading the word.' Sara Blakley told Sophia Kianni and Phoebe Gates on her episode of their podcast, The Burnouts . 'Now, you can have a social media post go viral and everybody kinda knows what you're up to.'
That's why content is a cornerstone strategy to how Kianni and Gates are building their startup, Phia. Today, Phia is a mobile app that uses AI to help online shoppers identify where a product is sold, and which is the most affordable option—offering tools like cross-website price checks, resale value graphs and creating personal collections. They've partnered with resale giants like eBay, The RealReal, and Poshmark to make secondhand shopping easier. Retailers like Reformation and Prada are also partners. And Phia makes a commission on each purchase made when it's found through the platform.
'It's completely free for customers. So it's really a win-win if we end up driving a customer to one of our partners,' Kianni told Forbes .
Kianni initially made the Under 30 list in 2023 for Climate Cardinals, a youth-led organization that translates climate resources into more than 100 languages. Growing up an Iranian American, she realized that her family living in the Middle East was experiencing temperatures rising at more than twice the global average. Yet almost no one in the community understood the greenhouse gas effect, she said: 'I felt like there was a big issue in climate education, particularly in translating climate resources into languages other than English.'
courtesy of Kianni
She first went viral on social media during the pandemic while building the organization, and tens of thousands of young viewers signed up to help translate resources.
'I learned all of these little things that I now 100% have applied to Phia, just in terms of what it took to take something from zero to one,' she said.
Kianni then met Gates, the daughter of Forbes billionaires Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates (a connection which has undoubtedly helped their ability to connect with the best minds and investors in tech) as roommates at Stanford University.
'I was doing a lot of fast fashion activism and advocacy, and Phoebe had done an internship at British Vogue, so she cared a lot about fashion and had seen the impact,' said Kianni, adding that like much of Gen Z, they loved secondhand shopping but felt it was an unnecessarily cumbersome process.
An entrepreneurship professor liked their initial idea, a browser extension that made secondhand retail easier, and invested the first $250,000 as a grant. They've since raised $850,000 total from A-list entrepreneurs including Blakley and Kris Jenner.
Like many companies, they're relying heavily on content to grow. Phia social media accounts have more than 100,000 followers across platforms and they write a newsletter on Substack, an increasingly popular place for brands to build community (fashion companies Tory Burch and The RealReal are on the platform, too).
But they took it to the content big leagues this March when they signed with podcaster Alex Cooper's Unwell Network. Their cohosted show The Burnouts covers the ins and outs of building their startup, and guests have included Jenner, Paris Hilton, Forbes Top Creator Vivian Tu and more.
They never set out to be podcasters. Instead, the idea spawned from a meeting with their advisor, Joanne Bradford, who was the president of Honey, the online coupon extension that sold to PayPal for $4 billion in 2020.
'She told us that one of their best converting ad channels was Call Her Daddy, ' Kianni said. They were then connected with Cooper via a mutual friend, and once Phia was ready to launch, Kianni and Gates pitched her a show about the behind the scenes of what female entrepreneurship looks like and sharing their learnings in real time.
'We don't have millions of dollars to spend on Call Her Daddy ads, but we do have ourselves,' said Kianni. 'It was a win-win where we were able to have this incredible distribution vehicle that is able to provide essentially all of this organic coverage to Phia.'
Talk soon,
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Stebbings
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Now Stebbings is on a mission: To keep European founders from fleeing to Silicon Valley to build their billion-dollar startups. What's his game plan? Find out here. Lister Lowdown
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Gilligan
We're bringing you the scoop on a new Under 30 community member. Up this week: 2025 Under 30 Healthcare lister Patrick Gilligan, the founder of Somethings, a peer-to-peer mental health platform designed for the digital generation. Somethings connects teenagers with certified young adult mentors via their mobile app.
The following has been slightly edited for length and clarity.
When did you decide that youth mental health is an issue that deserves your attention? I struggled with an eating disorder as a teenager and my own journey to recovery made me very passionate about that space. When I saw the statistics—40% of kids are struggling with mental health, 20% have had suicidal ideation in the last year, 10% having attempted—I thought 'there is no other problem that is more worth solving.' That was three years ago, and I've sort of jumped in headfirst ever since.
How do Somethings mentors offer support that is different from the typical mental health service? Certified peer specialists offer a different relationship dynamic than a clinician. The teen is with someone who's been in their shoes and isn't there to treat or diagnose them. They work on motivational interviewing and mindfulness meditation.
What has been an important revelation you have had since your debut on Forbes 30 Under 30 Healthcare list last year? There is so much need and demand for effective services for kids. The big change in our world has been the federal Medicaid cuts, because we serve a lot of low-income kids on Medicaid. But even in the face of these cuts, the problems persist–and the kids still need services.
What is your total funding to date? How do you pitch to investors? We have raised a little over $6 million to date. My pitch to investors is: 'The current model will not work for the next generation.'
Most teen-focused mental health products are really just traditional clinical products with the label 'teen' slapped on it. The underlying premise investors have to agree with me on is that kids who grew up with a smartphone from the age of 8, and TikTok from the age of 12, are not going to respond to old formats.
What is your favorite self-care regimen? It's the combination of yoga, journaling and meditation. If I do all three of these things in the morning, it is almost guaranteed that I have an amazing day.
What is the origin story of the company name?
We met one teenager who said she wanted to be on the cover of Vogue . Someone on our team asked her, how she would feel if it was Teen Vogue instead. She said, 'I do not want to be on the cover of Teen Vogue at all. It is so much worse than Vogue.'
We found it interesting that she had this huge aversion to the teen version, so we started talking about how teenagers have a natural craving for independence. They want to be adults, but aren't included in the age bracket of '20-somethings,' or '30-somethings.' So we thought, why don't we help include them in the adult world by calling it 'Somethings.'
What is one belief you have about mental health support services that few people agree with? My hot take is that the mental health crisis is the most important thing that could have happened to our society and humanity—so long as we get through it. In my own experience, my life has only radically changed for the positive after the hardest moments. I think difficult times force self-reflection, both individually and collectively. There is a generational opportunity to upgrade people's default mindset and their way of looking at themselves and the world.
Do you have any parting words for aspiring founders in the healthcare or mental health space? For healthcare founders specifically, you need to ensure that you are solving a problem for the customer , not just the patient. You can't just pitch a better patient experience if there is no real benefit to the customer who is often a health insurance plan, a health system, or a doctor. Your value prop needs to align with both the patient and the customer.