Phia’s founders on how AI is changing online shopping

When Phia‘s founders Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni decided to physique an AI startup, they targeted an country they understood well: online shopping.

The founders, who met astatine Stanford erstwhile they were randomly paired up arsenic roommates, understood e-commerce due to the fact that they had spent hours upon hours trying to find the close items to grow their wardrobe. And AI, they realized, had the imaginable to assistance radical discover, store and bargain successful caller ways. They besides realized that capableness was a marketplace opportunity.

“There felt similar determination was this elephantine achromatic abstraction for, like, what should we really buy, and wherefore doesn’t everyone person a idiosyncratic shopper successful their pocket?” said Gates connected signifier astatine TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 connected Tuesday.

The startup emerged from a people task wherever it proved its archetypal demand. But the work didn’t motorboat to the nationalist until Phia recovered the close product-market fit, Kianni says.

The tool, disposable arsenic a browser hold and app, lets shoppers comparison prices, including for second-hand items, adding a sustainability origin to the buying experience.

Phia says it integrates with much than 150 second-hand platforms, and has implicit 350 cardinal items successful its in-house hunt database. Kianni pointed retired that buying second-hand represents an 80% simplification successful c footprint, compared with buying new. Plus, it’s cheaper.

Sophia Kianni, Co-Founder of Phia. Image Credits: Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunchImage Credits:Getty Images for TechCrunch / Getty Images

Kianni said the work besides helps users recognize the worth of what they’re buying. “If you’re looking astatine a $500 handbag connected Phia, you tin rapidly understand, tin you resell that point for $300 oregon $400? Or, connected the contrary, if it’s a fast-fashion portion and you’re buying it for $100 bucks, is it lone reselling for $10? Does it instantly depreciate and suffer 90% of its value?”

The startup is besides processing an AI buying advisor that volition assistance users recognize worth factors similar a bully deal, oregon what an item’s retained worth whitethorn be, arsenic good arsenic manner basics similar whether the point volition acceptable based connected the user’s erstwhile orders and returns. The founders said the sizing insights diagnostic is presently successful beta with a tiny radical of users.

The founders person utilized a assortment of tactics to pull an audience, including an ambassador program, making their ain contented astir the product’s development, and adjacent starting a podcast.

“The quality to get hundreds of thousands of downloads astatine a precise debased outgo done the podcast and the assorted antithetic organisation vehicles has been truly important,” said Kianni.

Plus, Gates said, sharing the realities of gathering a startup with their assemblage helped Phia’s imaginable users link with the founders and their story.

“I deliberation determination was a spot of an ego decease that we had to spell through,” Gates said. “At first, it’s like, ‘I privation to look bully successful each of our content.’ But if you privation radical to prosecute with it, and you privation to marque contented astatine the measurement that we request to, you request to beryllium capable to conscionable propulsion backmost the curtain.”

Gates, whose dada is yes, that Gates, acknowledges that she’s travel to the startup acquisition from a presumption of privilege, but says they don’t needfully spell to him for advice.

“So, portion my dada — I deliberation he’s a genius — he’s not the 1 buying connected Phia, right? Like, he’s not hunting for the champion woody crossed antithetic sites. He’s not comparing his privation database items for his outpouring interruption trip,” she said.