Phia’s team is locked in — literally. The startup is laser-focused on building an AI shopping agent, but also, after a snowstorm barreled through New York City, Phia founders Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni can’t leave their respective apartments. So it’s a rarity that when I chat with the former Stanford roommates and best friends, they are not together, nor are they in the Phia office.
“We were like, ‘It’s okay, stay home.’ It’s dangerous. Nobody needs to go to the office,” Kianni told TechCrunch, laughing. But while she and Gates hunkered down at home, many of their employees still made the trek to the office. “Our team is sending Slack photos right now… The entire porch is snow.”
Such is the life of a fast-growing startup. Phia is ten months old, yet it just closed a $35 million funding round led by Notable Capital with participation from Khosla Ventures and returning investor Kleiner Perkins.
It’s a quick turnaround. When I last spoke with Phia in October on the TechCrunch Disrupt stage, they were just one month removed from an $8 million round that included checks from celebrity investors like Kris Jenner, Sara Blakely, and Sheryl Sandberg. (Yes, Phoebe Gates is the daughter of Bill and Melinda; no, her parents are not bankrolling her startup.)
“We are just at such a prime time of opportunity,” Gates said to explain the new fundraise. “Commerce itself for the consumer hasn’t really been adapted in the last 30 years, and the opportunity to make a truly personalized, end-to-end shopping experience is today.”
With hundreds of thousands of monthly active users, Phia has achieved 11x revenue growth since launch and onboarded 6,200 retail partners.
As it stands, Phia is a mobile app and a web browser extension that seeks to help shoppers save money by showing them resale or second-hand alternatives to the products they’re looking for. If you’re about to buy a brand new Anthropologie dress for $200, for example, Phia could show you that the same dress is available on Poshmark for $80.
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There’s a sustainability angle to buying second-hand – Kianni is a climate activist and former advisor to the United Nations – but as a tech company, the founders understand that their way to build a customer base is to simply help them save money. Beyond resale options, Phia might also recommend similar items from less expensive brands, which is where its partnerships come in.
“A lot of [brand partners] were very much taking a bet on us and joining the platform when we had less proof points,” said Kianni. When brands make sales on Phia, the app gets a cut, similar to an affiliate marketing model. “With new offerings that we have, we actually have data to be able to show things like, we can give them a 15% increase in average order value, or 30% stronger new customer acquisition, or 50% lower return rates.”
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