Billionaire Melinda Gates Explains Why She Won't Fund Daughter's Startup

Despite being one of the wealthiest women in the world and having a net worth of net worth of $31 billion, Melinda French Gates has chosen not to financially support her daughter's startup venture.

Speaking recently at the Power of Women's Sports Summit alongside tennis icon Billie Jean King, 60-year-old Melinda French Gates, former wife of Bill Gates, revealed that although her daughter recently launched a new business, she will not invest in her daughter's venture.

"I have a daughter who just started a business this year. She got capitalised, not because of my contacts, not because of me. I wouldn't put money into it," according to a report by the New York Post.

Melinda Gates emphasised the difficulty women face in securing investment. "It is very, very hard to get your business funded if you're a woman. And so you do have to learn a bit how to have the courage to play the game and to stick with it," Gates added.

Although Melinda Gates didn't mention her daughter by name, it's likely she was referring to 22-year-old Phoebe Gates, her youngest child with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Phoebe recently co-founded Phia with her former Stanford classmate Sophia Kianni. Phia is a digital fashion platform that aggregates clothing prices across over 40,000 websites.

Melinda Gates further said that she believes in letting her daughter learn the challenges of entrepreneurship. 

She said that if this is a "real business," then others need to be willing to back it - and if not, her daughter will learn to handle rejection. That's what I told her. She's growing from this," the New York Post reported.

Phoebe also appears to be on board with the approach. In an earlier interview this year with The New York Post, she had said, "We don't want this to be something that's funded by my family - we want this to be a real company. That's really important for us ... while I have a ton of privilege coming from my family, it's about having a product that stands on its own."

The Gates family has long made it clear that they want their children to build their own paths. Bill Gates has previously said that each of their three children, 30-year-old Jennifer, 25-year-old Rory, and Phoebe, will inherit less than 1% of his fortune.

Earlier in April this year, Bill Gates had expressed gratitude that his youngest daughter, Phoebe Gates, secured funding for her startup independently, without relying on him. In a New York Times interview, Gates revealed he anticipated she'd ask for financial help when launching her company. While he made it clear that he would have been more than happy to help his daughter out financially, he also acknowledged that his support would have likely come with certain conditions and strings attached. 

"I would have kept her on a short leash and been doing business reviews, which I would have found tricky. And I probably would have been overly nice, but I wondered if it was the right thing to do. Luckily, it never happened," he had said.

After graduating from Stanford in 2024, Phoebe Gates raised more than $500,000 from venture capitalists and angel investors, showcasing her entrepreneurial skills. Unlike her father, who famously left Harvard to start Microsoft, she said leaving college was not considered an option.