Phoebe Gates' Shopping App Allegedly Cookie Stuffed Its Way to Cash
Bill Gates' daughter Phoebe Gates and her startup Phia told Bloomberg last month that their shopping extension's fake sales claims were a 24 hour old 'bug.' Now a new Bloomberg investigation, citing internal Slack messages, says Phia leadership including Gates knew about the cookie stuffing scheme for at least seven months and actively pushed engineers to keep it running. The feature, cheekily named 'enable coupon auto drop,' inflated commissions by claiming credit for sales Phia never actually influenced. When it was finally shut off, revenue reportedly cratered from $80,000 to as little as $10,000.
Nothing says 'girlboss innovation' like quietly stealing other people's affiliate commissions for seven months.