Stanford peers say Gates' daughter lacked formal coding training as her startup faces controversy
Classmates at Stanford reported that Phoebe Gates did not take computer-science courses, raising questions about her technical background while her company Phia is under investigation for alleged cookie-stuffing practices.
Phoebe Gates, the daughter of Bill and Melinda Gates, co-founded the digital shopping assistant Phia while studying human biology at Stanford. According to a former classmate, her degree did not require any computer-science coursework, and she did not enroll in advanced coding classes. The source added that she could have taken elective courses related to computing, but those would have been oriented toward biological research, if she took them at all.
Gates did complete an applied artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship class, which she says inspired the idea for Phia. The startup, launched with former roommate Sophia Kianni, has recently been accused of "cookie-stuffing," a practice that could generate commissions on sales that were not actually referred.
"Whatever we can do to keep these cookies dropping will be amazing," a Slack message attributed to Kianni was reported.
Bloomberg reported that Phia’s "Auto Drop" feature may have allowed the company to collect commissions on purchases it did not facilitate. Phia has said the feature was a software bug, has disabled it, and is reviewing affected sales. After the feature was turned off in July, the company's average daily revenue fell from about $80,000 to between $10,000 and $28,000.
Stanford and the Gates family did not respond to requests for comment.