AequitasPhoebe Gates wants her $185 million AI startup to succeed with 'no ties to my privilege or my last name': 'I have a chip on my shoulder' | Fortune
“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.”
khannieYeah 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.
SludgeRich kids don’t even need to throw the dart. Elon didn’t start any of his successful businesses. He just bought them.
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.
In addition to the multiple throws, and in addition to the direct nepotistic help, there is also just the osmosis effect. How many people would give their right arm to get basic mentoring from Bill Gates? Just knowing someone who’s succeeded at something gives you a massive cultural window into that thing and how to nail it. This kid is delusional. If she wants to do something totally on her own she should be a movie director or race car driver or flower arranger. What’s that? Starting up a tech company? Ohh… how original.
Phoebe Gates cofounded Phia, an AI shopping assistant, with her Stanford University roommate Sophia Kianni. 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 second-hand sellers to help customers find a better price.
That’s actually a neat premise. Fashion isn’t my cup of tea, but otherwise that sounds useful (albeit not very unique; shopping assistants are a dime a dozen).
digitalFattehSo it’s a price checker extension. That scrapes other websites for better deals.
I feel like this is just a plug piece to spotlight her product tbh.
What’s crazier is people thinking it’s a good enough idea to get $185,000,000 in funding for someone who just graduated college…
Like, it already exists, there’s a bunch of those already.
She slapped “AI” on the front of it but because her name is Gates people won’t stop throwing money at it. If she doesn’t understand her name is why she’s getting funding, that just means she’s both ignorant and naive and this is an even worse investment and product than it seems on the surface.
FancyPantsFIREI’m sure the Gates named helped, but AI anything has venture capitalists punching the Fry meme. It feels very similar to the dot com era bubble in a macro sense, except without a large number jobs being created.
If a random 23 year old can just take any type of plugin that’s been around 20+ years, slap AI in front of it…
And raises $185,000,000…
Why exactly do you think they’re not all doing it?
Thats a rhetorical question by the way, the rest of them aren’t doing it because their last name isn’t Gates
SternThey just slap the word AI on it so investors pp’s become the big pp.
My little brother works for a supply company, and of the companies they supply has a new ‘AI’ tool where folks type in the thing they want and it pulls from other companies to find the lowest price, then color codes it and shit. The supply companies have to put their prices in a database for the ‘AI’. All I could think hearing about it is that some C level got absolutely fucking bamboozled.
There are a million of these out there. Most of them suck. Many are, at best, ethically gray. Even the better ones spy on you in a hundred different ways.
I’d love something that actually didn’t suck, but “185 million dollar AI startup” doesn’t sound promising to me.
The big problem with the concept is that there’s money to be made by gaming the system and nobody is good at that cat and mouse game. AI could theoretically help, but let’s be real: it’s just going to scrape the same 100 identical Amazon referral listicles you’d get in a Google search, with an extra sprinkling of ads.
Shareholders will expect their 185 million to turn into “more.” Someone will have to pay for this “more.” The business model will therefore boil down to either selling user data or companies paying to be given preferential treatment by the system. Probably both.
Furthermore, such services do not create any added value for the economy because, like advertising, they merely ensure that money is spent at B instead of at A. They are not productive and can be used much more efficiently by the bigger players.
Guaranteed it’s going down the route of:
“Want your store at the top. We can make that happen” nudge, nudge
But it feels so damned blatant for the grift that it is. The “It’s not about my name” is very blinkered view to take.
KraeuterRoyWe already know how things like that can be monetized - just look at the Honey scandal. You rip off both users and business customers… But this time with AI.
What a novel idea, Phoebe. Such Innovation, much wow!
SusagaThat’s not right economically. If you were going to spend $200 at store B and now spend $150 at store A, that’s an efficiency of $50. You’re saying that looking for deals isn’t a market benefit, and it absolutely is. Now, their cut of it is of no benefit, and fuck AI. But the service is productive.
But then the seller is missing out on those $50, which they can’t spend anywhere else. From an macroeconomic perspective, the effect is zero. Like advertising, it only serves to allocate resources, not to create value. What’s more, it’s mainly large companies that benefit from something like this. Firstly, because of scale effects, and secondly, because they can sustain price dumping for longer than smaller companies.
Oh, I 100% agree. I test installed the app, and it seems to be some of both (behavior tracking with a Safari extension, and store sponsorship).
That being said, I hate store monocultures even more, like how Amazon/Walmart can bully their suppliers through sheer critical mass and shoppers don’t even look anywhere else. That’s economic inefficiency. Price aggregators are a good thing.
Carighan MaconarAh yes, I remember a browser extension about finding coupon codes for the sites you’re on that absolutely didn’t end up being disgusting shit. 🤣
Well if AI doesn’t have to be artificial intelligence, I guess it doesn’t matter
CatoblepasStanford
The forever accurate red flag!
ah yes stanford, along with other well known UNIVERSITIES, that produces elitists graduates, she says she doesnt want to be "Associated with having a famous parents that paid for everything, including her AI company.
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.
LenaThink of how stupid the average AI CEO is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
Please no. My crushing despair at the state of the world meds for ignore at least one thing
If you ever listen to Behind the Bastards, then you’ll notice a pattern of emotional stunting in the growth of billionaires. The kids that have the money straight away, not the ones that really do make it themselves wherever they are.
Exemplar: Elon.
Though the imagery that sticks out in my mind is one of Zuckerberg playing mall ninja in his original office space, as the boss, walking around with a samurai sword and fake swiping at employees with it.
None of them make it themselves…
But they act like spoiled kids because that’s how everyone treats them, because at that level of wealth the only people you’re around will say whatever gets you to give them money.
It doesn’t take long before they forget how to be a normal human
People who talk to you like an AI bot. Maybe that’s why the AI talks that way. It’s all they know.
Never thought of that, but yeah…
Especially for Elon, it’s not just people in person, he bought twitter just to have his own echo chamber
When grok constantly glazes him, that’s what he thinks a normal person acts like. If it acts like a human would, Elmo can’t recognize it.
Is this the same entitled bitch who got a $1,000,000 ranch as a present?
Maybe pay some fucking taxes, Phoebe.
ThePowerOfGeekTo quote Pearl Jam:
Born on third,
Thinks she got a triple.
no ties to my privilege
it’s an AI startup
$185 million
Something does not compute, in a Microslop sort of way.
FilthyHandsI asked copilot and it assured me this is all above board.
An “AI shopping company”. Yes, that´s just what the world needs.
I can’t even decide what would be worse: AI-based shopping of general stuff, or shopping for AIs.
I think there is a huge market for an AI agent that will shop for the best deals for you. They could check for coupons, discount codes, etc…
Please tell me this is a satirical nod towards Honey & Co.
There are already browser extensions that do this.
They are notorious for intercepting connections, adding their own referral links, tracking users and other badness.
theverge.com/…/paypal-honey-megalag-coupon-scam-a…
Surely the AI version will be better.
TrackinDaKrakenRaised in a bubble she can’t see.
I have no doubt she’s at least as horrible as we all imagine.
“I have a chip on my shoulder” nice.
It’s called a smug look. XD
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.
etherphon
∟⊔⊤∦∣≶Yes, but she will have really earned it unlock the other trust fund super villains.
circuitfarmerPay your taxes or shut up.