Overview

• The refusal came on July 8 at the Power of Women’s Sports Summit presented by e.l.f. Beauty.
• Phoebe Gates and Stanford roommate Sophia Kianni have raised $850,000 for their fashion-tech startup Phia from Soma Capital, a Stanford grant and angel backers.
• Female-founded teams received just 2.3% of global venture capital last year, a disparity French Gates says makes resilience essential.
• Bill Gates has pledged that each child will inherit less than 1% of his fortune to encourage independent achievement.
• French Gates’s stance reflects her broader tough-love approach to empowering women founders by emphasizing real-world challenges.