Melinda French Gates Is Worth $34.5B — but Refused to Invest in Her Daughter's Startup: 'I Wouldn't Put Money Into It'

Melinda French Gates has billions, but when her daughter launched a startup, the billionaire philanthropist chose not to invest. Forbes estimates Gates' fortune at $34.5B. Yet she said she deliberately chose not to invest or use her connections to help her daughter secure funding.

'She got capitalised not because of my contacts, not because of me. I wouldn't put money into it,' Gates said at the Power of Women's Sports Summit in London in June 2025. Her reasoning was that if the business was viable, it should be able to attract outside investors without relying on her connections.

No Billionaire Backing

Melinda Gates wanted her daughter to navigate fundraising on her own, including facing the possibility of rejection. According to her, if this is a 'real business,' then other investors should be willing to back it. Gates also wanted her daughter to learn how to handle rejection without having her mother's fortune make fundraising easier. 'That's what I told her,' Gates added. 'She's growing from this.'

The approach is similar to Bill Gates' publicly stated philosophy on inheritance. He has said his three children will receive 'less than 1%' of his wealth. He has said he believes leaving them a huge fortune would not necessarily be a favor to them and that he wants them to find their own earnings and success. 'It's not a dynasty,' Gates said. 'I'm not asking them to run Microsoft. I want to give them a chance to have their own earnings and success.'

Her Daughter Is Building Phia

Although Melinda Gates did not name her daughter, the comments appear to refer to Phoebe Gates, who co-founded fashion-tech startup Phia with her Stanford roommate, Sophia Kianni. Phia is an AI-powered shopping platform that helps users compare products, prices, and deals across retailers.

The company raised $35M in funding in January 2026, bringing its reported valuation to around $185M. Phoebe has also said she wants Phia to succeed with 'no ties to my privilege or my last name'.

Still, Phia has faced scrutiny. Bloomberg reported that internal communications, historical source code, and testing indicated that some features could attribute sales to Phia without a shopper intentionally interacting with the service. Phia said the features causing the misattributions were removed on 7 July, that it was reviewing transactions, and that it had begun issuing reversals to affected brand partners.

Rejection Can Build Resilience

For Melinda Gates, setbacks can help build the resilience she sees as a common thread among the women featured on her YouTube series, Moments That Make Us. 'I saw that going through something difficult changed all of them,' she said. 'And in finding that resilience, they found themselves.' Gates has also spoken about the added challenges women face when trying to fund startups.

'It is very, very hard to get your business funded if you're a woman,' she said, stressing the need to have 'the courage to play the game and to stick with it.' Founders Forum Group's analysis found that female-only founding teams received 2.3% ($6.7B) of the $289B invested globally in venture capital in 2024, compared with 83.6% for all-male teams and 14.1% for mixed-gender teams.

Tennis legend Billie Jean King, who appeared alongside Gates at the 2025 summit, agreed that setbacks can offer valuable lessons. To your point, like your daughter has figured out how to get this first business started—that's amazing,' King said. 'I don't think it'll ever fail—she'll get feedback from every situation.'

King has also said she avoids using the word 'failure', encouraging others to view setbacks as feedback instead. 'When people start thinking about failure, it's a very negative feeling,' she said. Instead, she suggests asking, 'What's the feedback I'm getting from this?'