Phoebe Gates and the contentious debate over fair pay for influencers

Frugal founders are often praised for trying to stay within budget. But when the founder happens to be the daughter of one of the world’s richest people, the expectations seem to be different.

In a viral post on Thursday that has sparked a debate over fair pay for creators and the power dynamics of negotiations, a lifestyle influencer posted on X what appeared to be a screenshot of a conversation with Phoebe Gates, cofounder of AI shopping agent startup Phia, and the youngest daughter of billionaires Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates.

“When a billionaire’s daughter says you’re ‘out of budget’ … Girl, pls,” the post read.

The conversation allegedly showed Gates declining the content creator’s user-generated-content rate of $4,000, saying it was “just super out of budget for us right now,” given that Phia is an early-stage startup. Instead, Gates allegedly offered $400.

Fast Company reached out to Phia for comment.

But while the original post was meant to call out Gates, users flocked to defend the young founder instead.

“The fact she’s not wasting investor capital and actually hustling for UGC [user-generated content] herself is actually a good thing. Not sure what your post is trying to prove,” Nikita Bier, head of product at X, said via X.

“You don’t get wealthy by going over budget just because you have it to spend,” another commenter added.

In fact, many users echoed the sentiment, questioning whether Gates’s business decisions should be judged through the size of her father’s wallet.

The 23-year-old and her cofounder and former Stanford University roommate, Sophia Kianni, recently raised $35 million in Series A funding for the AI company, now valued at around $180 million. Despite her billionaire lineage, Gates’s parents have not invested in the company.

“She respectfully declined,” one X user wrote. “Just because her dad’s rich doesn’t mean she shouldn’t run a business properly.”

But another influencer who was also allegedly contacted by Gates argued that the issue is not about the 23-year-old, but rather about a “broader pattern: wealthy founders leveraging power and proximity to wealth to secure free or discounted labor,” she argued on Threads.

The Threads user wrote that she had been contacted by Gates over a year ago, and was offered a low rate for UGC since Phia was “still a scrappy startup,” read the message she shared. “Framing this as isolated misses the systemic reality creators face every day,” she added. “I just want people in positions of privilege to value creators.”