Melinda French Gates refuses to fund her Gen Z daughter’s startup despite $31B worth
Melinda French Gates may be worth nearly $31 billion, but she’s not opening her checkbook for her daughter’s new startup.
In a move that aligns with the Gates family’s well-known philosophy on wealth and self-reliance, the billionaire philanthropist has made it clear: her daughter must raise capital on her own, News.Az reports, citing Fortune.
“I have a daughter who just started a business this year,” French Gates revealed during the Power of Women’s Sports Summit presented by e.l.f. Beauty. “She got capitalized, not because of my contacts, not because of me. I wouldn’t put money into it.”
Her reasoning, she said, is simple: if it’s a real business, then it should be able to attract real investors. More importantly, she wants her daughter to experience the resilience-building reality of rejection. “That’s what I told her. She’s growing from this,” French Gates explained.
This philosophy isn’t new for the Gates family. Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has long stated that his children will inherit “less than 1%” of his fortune to ensure they forge their own paths. And French Gates’ latest stance reinforces that legacy of tough love and independence.
While she didn’t name the daughter in question, it’s likely she was referring to her youngest, Phoebe Gates. The 22-year-old recently launched a fashion-tech startup, Phia, alongside her Stanford roommate, Sophia Kianni. The company, which compares clothing prices across over 40,000 sites to help users find the best deals, gained attention earlier this year—especially after Phoebe admitted that her parents had refused to let her drop out of Stanford to pursue it full-time.
For French Gates, however, the decision to hold back isn’t just about enforcing independence. It’s also about preparing her daughter—and other young women—for the harsh realities of entrepreneurship. "It is very, very hard to get your business funded if you’re a woman,” she said. “And so you do have to learn a bit how to have the courage to play the game and to stick with it.”
She added that one thing successful women have in common, including those featured on her YouTube series Moments That Make Us, is that hardship forced them to build resilience. “In finding that resilience, they found themselves,” she said.
Tennis legend Billie Jean King, who shared the stage with French Gates, echoed the sentiment. She praised Phoebe’s entrepreneurial drive and emphasized the value of feedback over failure. “I don’t think it’ll ever fail,” King said. “She’ll get feedback from every situation.”
In fact, King takes it one step further—banning the word “failure” altogether from her vocabulary. “When people start thinking about failure, it’s a very negative feeling,” she told Fortune. “Turn it inside out by asking yourself, what’s the feedback I’m getting from this?”
With just 2.3% of global venture capital going to female-founded teams last year, French Gates and King are united in their message: grit, not gifts, is what helps women thrive in the startup world.
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