Phoebe Gates, co-founder and CEO of Phia, joined a virtual Venture in the Capital speaker series conversation ahead of Georgetown’s 2026 Venture in the Capital Summit. Students Emma Shaich (MSB’26) and Mandy Vogel (MSB’26) moderated. Phia is an AI-powered shopping assistant that Gates and her co-founder started as Stanford students.

Gates explains that Phia began as a tool that helps shoppers decide whether to buy an item by surfacing reviews, resale value, alternatives and sizing, and that the team will tell shoppers not to buy an item when the data says so. She says Phia users buy less but return far less. She encourages students, especially women, to start building early, run many experiments, and use AI tools to build a first version even without knowing how to code. Venture in the Capital is Georgetown Entrepreneurship’s student-led conference on venture and innovation.

Watch the full video on YouTube.