Phoebe Gates (left) with Sophia Kianni on the roof of the building that houses the offices of Phia, their web browser/app that aims to be the Booking.com of fashion, in New York. Gates, the youngest and most stylish of Bill and Melinda Gates’s children, steps into the spotlight as a founder of a new online shopping tool. — Photos: ALEXANDRA GENOVA/The New York Times
NEW YORK: On the top floor of a building near Union Square, there’s a small, white-walled office filled with frazzled 20-somethings munching on Cinnamon Crunch and jelly beans. A whiteboard with a countdown calendar is marked off in red.
On a shelf nearby, a plaster Roman bust has a pink balloon stuck to his mouth, like a bubble-gum bubble about to pop. Outside the door: a little sign that reads “Phia”, the name of a new e-commerce tool dreamed up by two Stanford grads in their dorm room.
