From Dorm Rooms to $8 Million in Funding: Life Lessons from the Founders of Phia | Ambition 2.0

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Think of life in as kind of like a stove and you have the ability to turn on and off different burners. And for me, when I think about like my 20s and 30s, like I am turning the work burner on max and so that means like turning down a little bit the time I get to spend with family. I don't have kids, so I'm able to turn that down and say, hey, parents, I'll, I'll call you, you know, in two weeks. I'm turning down that social life burner and I'm really indexing on work and over time I'll be able to turn on those other burners and focus on those more. But I know that I'm firing on all cylinders right now in work and you have to enjoy and love that. I don't think it's possible, frankly, to be an entrepreneur and to have, you know, your social life also on a max burner during your 20s.

Welcome to Ambition 2.0, the new podcast from Girlboss where we explore what it really takes and costs to have it all in work, life, family and self. I'm your host, Amanda Goetz, a two time founder, four time CMO mom of three, and author of the new book Toxic how to have it all and actually love what you have. I'm so excited about today's guests. We have two women that are really inspiring the next generation of founders, Phoebe Gates and Sofia Kiani, the co founders of fia, an AI powered shopping assistant that's aiming to change the way we buy, sell and interact with fashion. And they're also the co hosts of the Burnouts podcast on the Unwell Network. Today we're going to really dive into building in the public eye, being underestimated, how friendship can fuel business and how they're using technology to rethink shopping altogether. Phoebe, Sofia, welcome to ambition 2.0.

We're so excited. Thanks for having us.

Yeah. Okay, so first of all, congratulations. Just closed your $8 million seed round backed by Haley Bieber, Kris Jenner, Sheryl Sandberg, and many more. You've got over 500,000 users. Is the what I saw in a tweet 5,000 direct brand partnerships with via and you're. You've already driven millions in sales. How are you guys feeling right now?

I think we're really excited, but I feel like we're only at the beginning of what we want to build. I mean, to be honest and to walk back, like, we are so lucky to have gone to Stanford, been born this time, where we're seeing technology advance so much and to have the opportunity in front of us. Right. And so we feel honored to have been able to build with people that we think are the best people possible to create this. And we think there's a real gap in the market to build something for. Frankly, millions of women shop every single day, and yet this consumer has kind of been duped. We think of this, you know, we think of shopping as very frivolous, which sure it is, but women are incredibly smart shoppers. And frankly, the solution that we brought to market is very simple. We just package inside your via shopping assistant everything you do in your normal flow, whether that's researching the reviews on a product, checking for alternatives, figuring out the retained value, and now adding in what size you should wear. We're really just trying to assist women in their shopping flow and to save them, frankly, time and money. But there's a lot more that we want to do. So I think we're excited but also, like, anxious to do more.

Yeah, you're ready. So take us back to the origin story of fiat. Like, how. How did it start? You guys were both in college together. Who. Who approached who? Where did the idea come from?

Yeah, totally. So Phoebe and I were actually randomly paired roommates at Stanford, and we both basically bonded over. We had very similar interests in kind of activism. And so Phoebe was doing reproductive rights, and I was really focused on climate. And we both honestly were very much on our own tracks, but we decided to take a generative AI and entrepreneurship class together, which is when we started to think about, like, where are areas where AI can be applied to really fundamentally change an industry? And that's when we started talking about E commerce, fashion, and especially for me, I mean, I always would look for retail items and then I would find the corresponding secondhand alternative. And it was such a cumbersome, annoying process to go on depop the real real and individually try to find the item that I was looking for secondhand. And so we started thinking about, well, is such an annoying, tedious process. There must be a way with AI to automate it and to make it instantaneous. Where if you find an item that you want, can you find a cheaper secondhand option? So the very first thing we built was basically this chrome extension, where, as you were shopping, it did exactly like what I was doing manually, which was it found it cheaper secondhand. And our Stanford professor actually loved it, and so she gave us our first $250,000 grant and said, you guys should go all in, move to New York City, like, try and see if you can make this into a real company. So we're. We took a gap year and kept tinkering, basically, and then ended up creating, like, a much better version of that. And then we are basically now, I guess, a year and a half from then, ended up closing our seed round. Built an Incredible team of 12 people all in person in New York City. And I think, like, you talked about the launch, honestly, I think for us, it's so important to recognize, like, we have a team. It's 12 people. They all worked so hard. It's been a year since we've been in beta, and more than anything, honestly, I'm so proud of them and, like, proud of us, us as a team. Because there was months of work and iteration. Things were not working. And we continued to just keep pushing because we really believed it was possible to create a product that was as good as it is today, and there's still so much room to make it much, much better. But I. I think for us, seeing that, like, we were able to actually create and launch a product that has now helped, like, hundreds of thousands of women save money and shop smarter has been really, really exciting. And so we're so grateful for everyone who made it happen.

And just to walk back before we even started the company. Sophia's humble, but I'll give you, like, my version of the origin story. So we were both really good friends with this other girl. And you know the vibe when you have, like, kind of a friend of a friend, you know everything about her life because she's one of the best friends of your other female friend. But when you see her, you're not supposed to say, hey, I know everything about your life, but I love you. Okay, so we're supposed to room with her, and then all of a sudden, housing messes it up so she's no longer living with us. We don't know each other that well. I'm so, so nervous to live with Sophia. When we moved in together. I mean, we're living together for over six months before we had any inkling that we would start a business together. I mean, the class wasn't until the spring that we took together and we decided to build at the time what was really just a class project that we saw had traction. But I mean, honestly, it feels like such serendipity that we ended up moving in together. But I can still remember being so nervous to live with Sophia because I remember thinking she was awesome. I remember knowing that we'd both been through like, similar breakup, that both of our parents have been divorced, but not wanting to be like, hey, we have some similar, we have some similarities in our lives. And I honestly think living with someone in a small dorm room, you learn very, very quickly how to communicate. You learn very quickly about your weaknesses, their strengths, their weaknesses. And I think that laid what has been really important for us is a really strong foundation for a partnership over time. And of course now having our incredible team, that's what supercharges us. I mean, we're, we're here today, our team is working away on the product and we're going to go back to the office after this, but we wouldn't be able to do things like this to get the company out there without them.

Yeah. So do you think every co founder should like live together for about like in a tiny room for six months?

I think it's important to be friends with the people that you're working with who are your initial core nucleus, because especially if you look at the track record of many companies fail because of co founder dynamics or just like bad team dynamics. And having an underlying friendship, in my opinion is super important because then you can very easily disagree and commit, like have really healthy arguments about the future of things without taking it personally because, you know, there's like an underlying friendship there. And so I definitely think that's been something really helpful for us. And also with some of the early team members that we recruited, they were people we were personally friends with, that we brought into the company. And having that underlying friendship I definitely think has made like our, our core foundation for our team very strong.

When you were getting ready to hire your first couple of team members, did you think about awesome person? I'll find a role or I have an org chart. I know the functions, I need fill them.

Awesome person.

I think both. A little bit of both. I mean, it's like you have a need and then you think of awesome person.

Yeah.

I would say the two go hand in hand. Just because you, you don't want to bloat the team. I think for sure when you're a startup. So important. Yeah. To keep Things as lean as possible. I mean, our. One of our advisors said to us, you should only hire when things start to break. Like when you genuinely cannot do things yourself anymore. You should bring someone in to like, stopgap for that. And when things start to break, we usually think who are the people we love the most, who we think are the most intelligent that we would love to bring over into the company. A great example of this is Margo, who helps us on everything from Thea marketing to the podcast. She's like our right hand woman for literally everything. And she was one of my best friends. And so when I called her and I said, hey, there's this opportunity, she quit her job the next day and was so excited and has been one of like our rocks through the last, like year, year and a half. And that I would say is a perfect example of someone where we had a need and then immediately thought, who is the perfect person to fill this?

It builds a foundation of true care, not only about the humans, but also the company. Like somebody joining that cares about you. They by extension care if this is successful. So that's, it's amazing. Was that the first hire you made?

That was one of the first ones, yeah.

What was the first task that you were. You're like, I can't do this anymore. I'm so ready to hand this off.

Building the product. I mean, honestly, like the initial version, you know, me and Sophia worked on together, we were doing the mock ups for the designs together, we were doing the presentation of it together. I think really early on we realized that for us, we needed a strong technical, you know, person to be on the team and that that was a really, really core hire for us as a tech company.

Now how are you guys divvying up, like, who's. Who's focused on what right now?

Yeah, totally. I mean, I think it's so funny because everyone always asks us this question and like, the real answer is you have to just do what needs to get done for the business. And that changes every single week. It's like all hands on deck. Even the people who are currently like our CPO or cto, head of ML, like they're doing data engineering or writing reports half the time that don't fit under their jd. So we always say that to contextualize. Like, our days look different every single day depending on where the business needs us. With that said, I would say that we've started to gravitate towards what we really enjoy and also are good at. Like, Phoebe does a ton of like our partnerships with all of the affiliates and then also all the operations work. And then I've worked really closely with our marketing team and then also our like, product design team. And then in that way, we both have like our own direct reports, but then are also able to coalesce, like every single week because all these things are so foundational to the business that it's not even just us meeting, it's like, us. And then the respective team leads come together to make decisions, like, as a team.

Yeah, I love that. What's the most common user story right now? The use case of afia. What are you seeing the most?

Yeah, so our target consumer is a woman who loves to shop. She's shopping daily. And this is a consumer that before she purchases, she's doing her due diligence. So I'd say the most common story that we hear is a woman that was already before purchasing, checking all of those things that FIA provides to her within the shopping assistant, and we just.

Made it easy for her.

So oftentimes we'll hear that someone found something $200 off using FIA, that they got confidence in their purchase because we showed them that no better alternative existed. And, hey, this has great reviews and this is a perfect size and fit for you. And so those are kind of the two real thorough lines that we hear from our users.

Okay, so you pitched a lot of amazing humans. Can you give us a story that maybe you haven't shared about something that may have happened or a silly thing that happened, or just like, take us behind the scenes of what that fundraise was like for you guys?

I mean, so many things happened during the fundraise.

Did you have a dream list of people that you were like, here's who we're going after? And, you know, what was that process like of, we've got the pitch deck. We, we're just going to get in front of people.

Well, I would say that for us, the journey of fundraising was really interesting because when we first started, we of course just did not really understand how the process worked. And so we had to essentially understand, like, when you are raising a seed round, what are the materials you need? We need to create like a financial model, a pitch deck, all of this information. And then when we started pitching, it's very much about momentum. Like, the moment you have one person interested, then you can domino leverage that against everyone else. And then people start to quickly all be interested at the same time. And so I definitely think it was interesting because we had people in the beginning who I would say were passively interested. And then the moment we had a term sheet from a lead investor and then we were rounding out conversations, people who actually honestly had no idea what was going on, all of a sudden were very interested and wanted to get on the phone and like, wanted to understand if there was an opportunity for them to invest.

That's how the game works. And I think my biggest piece of advice to people is don't start talking to investors until you're prepped and ready. I can't tell you how many embarrassing calls we did where we had no idea what we were doing. We had no deck, our pitch wasn't refined. Having a core mentor that you can do your pitch with over and over and over again until you realize, hey, don't talk over each other on these slides. Who's best to present this slide? Who can lean in here? What's a hard question someone might ask? We had an entire FAQ document of hard questions people might ask. And honestly, they didn't ask a lot of them because we went in so deep. And that's when we got really, really good at fundraising. And I think another thing people don't talk about is you have of course, the lead investor who can price and say, okay, via is worth this amount of money I'm going to put in, you know, this amount. And then you add in other people who are follow ons to that. I think a mistake a lot of people make and us early on even is talking to people who don't have the power to lead the round. And then it's like, okay, you have all this traction from people, but you don't have anyone to anchor or set the price of the company. And so for us, you know, we really focused on we need a blue chip, incredible investor who has backed, you know, generational companies before. That was really important for us. And then we went out and got our angels.

I want to go back to a lot of you guys are friends, you've brought in friends. What are some grounds rules that you've put in or just protections you've made so that you can continue to maintain friendships as startups are hard. They get gritty, they get difficult, there's tough days. Like, do you guys have any ground rules for that?

I would say that the biggest thing we've learned is that the only way that a startup really can function effectively in scale is you need to give people trust and ownership and you need to be able to remove yourself from very key processes and to fully give people trust. Because I always Think about that quote that like, people don't burn out because of, like, lack, because of how hard they're working. It's because of lack of momentum. And I think it's really hard for people to feel momentum if they don't think they are directly contributing with their own ideas and their own thoughts, if that makes sense. Because if you feel like you're just doing the work of someone else and like someone is telling you what to do and you're executing on that, people are not going to feel motivated. And that's been really critical for us is to actually bring people into the company who we trust enough to where we can say, here's our general parameters of here's the vision. These are the things that we really want to execute. The devil is in the details. The details are up to you because we need to be able to have that level of trust. No one is going to be in the office with us until 11pm if they feel like they're just being micromanaged. They are only going to do that if they feel obsessive and so excited about the thing that they're working on that they really feel like they own it. And so that's been something really, really important for us is to understand when we need to also make sure other people feel like they have their own stake and their own opportunity to influence the product direction or even like key processes and systems in the company. And that has definitely facilitated, like, a really healthy and really excited culture of also working hard. I mean, most people at our company do work around six days a week. People are in the office on Sundays and not because we're over there saying, you need to be here on Sunday, but because they want to be. People actually genuinely enjoy their work at. And that is something really important to us, that we feel like the people who we are working with actually enjoy what they're doing and feel motivated and feel like they're making progress.

Yeah, the two things beyond that, ownership is so key. I mean, I just echo everything Sophia said. I'd say the other thing is that you as the founder need to set the bar for performance. So we are in the office late. We are showing that we're excited, that we're working hard, that continually needs to be, you know, pushed, that we are setting the bar for. For performance. And then number two is, I think, clear is kind of so being very clear about the feedback you give to people, being very honest of, okay, yes, what you did here moves the company forward so much. This is what we're Seeing in the dashboard, these are the metrics, or no, hey, this isn't working. We should adapt this. We should think about this. I think giving really honest feedback is also really kind. So I think those are the two things. Having amazing ownership, trusting people, setting the bar for performance, and then also giving really clear feedback when it's needed. I think in big companies, things get so lost in bureaucracy where someone will say, hey, you did a great job, even if it's not working at all. And so being able to be honest with people is also really, really key. And that's a foundation to me and Sophia's relationship. I mean, we are very honest with each other, and that moves us forward. I mean, we don't have time to, you know, try and soften things or sugarcoat things. We are being really honest and just always thinking, okay, we are propelled towards the same goal.

What did you guys do to celebrate the close of the round?

The ticket? Good question. What did we do? I think we went to dinner with, like, a couple of key members of our team. Oh, yeah. We had champagne in the office. We did all of those things. But there's always so many things to celebrate that we do try to just have fun stuff at the office that we can all look forward to. So we'll do, like, a group dinner or a group lunch. We'll order a cake.

We. We.

We have a tradition of cakes now.

Yeah. So it's. It sounds like it's a foundation or a culture of everybody's working really hard, but they're also really having fun doing all of this, 100%.

I mean, if people aren't having fun and enjoying their work.

Yeah.

I think that is when we feel like there's probably an issue and that we want to make sure that we're checking in, because that's on us. Like, our goal also, as leaders is to set the temperament and the culture of the company. And so if people are unhappy, like, that is on us. And it's a really a goal of how do we figure out together how to make everyone as, like, happy and motivated as possible.

Yeah.

You're both in your early 20s and are just so inspiring. Like, I sit here, I'm turning 40 next week, and I'm just, like, so fucking excited for you guys, for what is ahead. Have there been any moments where you feel underestimated in this journey, and how did you deal with that?

If so, absolutely, all the time. Investor meetings, when you're trying to hire people who are much older than you, with, you know, an incredibly senior Technical background. I think that ageism is a huge, huge thing, but the biggest thing is just having core confidence in yourself and also having a co founder that you can lean on to say, hey, that person completely underestimated us. Let's, you know, use that as, you know, more fuel to our fire to actually prove them wrong.

I love that. Let's fast forward five years. What does success look like for FIA and you guys?

We are the vertical AI shopping assistant. Right now, we really provide value. Kind of bottom of 10 of your flow. Like, you know, you want to purchase an item. We are the last trusted click before checkout tells you, hey, you should purchase this or no, there's a better alternative that exists for you as a shopper. V2 is really moving towards discovery. How can we take what we've learned about you as a shopper to help you when you don't even know what skirt you want to buy or what dress you want to buy and you're bored and you want to scroll through fia? I really think that for us, success looks like millions of women getting value from Fiat at every single step of their shopping journey. And coming to FIA first for discovery.

That'S what I. I'm using FIA for. Because I, I trust you guys so much more to tell me what's cool. So then I just go to Fia to be like, what are they putting together? Okay, that. I'll do that. I'll go search for that.

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The reality is like me and Phoebe spend 99% of our time in the office from 9 to 9pm at least working and building the product with our team. And so we also are conscious that we are consumer brand. The only way that this is going to work is if we get hundreds of thousands of people onto this product for an incredibly low cost. The way we've done that is by being billboards for the company making content. With that said, my advice to anyone else in who is building a consumer product is you 100% need to make time for content. It is super ineffective or at least it has been for us to be jumping between reviewing Figma files and then doing a little TikTok and then going back in. It just does not work. Switching is not, it's very ineffective. And even now like we have not filmed content to be honest and is probably bad but to be honest for the last three weeks because we've been in a very heads down period and so before that we set up time where we had dedicated blocks of okay, on Monday we're going to be very much focused. We're going to set aside a couple of hours. We're going to film content for social media, we're going to film a podcast episode. We banked a ton of podcast episodes. So that's why we haven't filmed in three weeks. Because this has been a really critical time for the company. There's just been a lot of work that we've had to do and so we know marketing is important. I think about it 247 every single day. But strategy is also super important too. And so is not context switching to the degree that it makes you very ineffective. And so we have periods of hyper focused content creation and then we just block schedule things out so that we have lots of periods of momentum that are meaningful and then lots of blocks of time where we can just heads down focus with our team. And so but I'm glad that it, that it has been hitting your for you page everywhere.

It's amazing you named your podcast the Burnouts. Do you feel like burnout is an inevitable thing when you are pushing so, so hard or how are you trying to avoid it?

I'm really glad you asked this question how to avoid getting burned out and so Our real thesis was that in your 20s, there is so much you need to balance. You need to be making friends, you need to be pursuing your career. Of course, relationships, get involved, family, self care. There's a million things that you are juggling that it sometimes feels exhausting and impossible to think about. How do I do all of this without burning out? And so our goal was to reach out to people who have been incredibly successful in their career at doing it all. For example, Kris Jenner is a great example of doing it all to understand what did you do to set yourself up for success in the way that you have been able to achieve incredible things without burning out? Because that's our goal, and that's our goal for all of our viewers. There are ways to become really successful, but it takes systems, it takes support, and it's important to be honest about those things so that people can set their life up in a way that actually makes them able to achieve that level of success. And so that. That was really our goal with the Burnouts is how do we not burn out in the process of trying to juggle all of this? And what are the lessons that we can take from for our audience so they also don't burn out as they. They are trying to create their own empires in their 20s and beyond?

It's a cheeky, fun title too.

The Burnouts. Is there anything that you have learned from one of your guests that you instantly implemented into your life?

Absolutely. Sarah Blakely. That episode for me, was so pivotal because one thing that she taught us is really listening and trusting your gut. When you have a feeling about someone, when you want to bring them onto your team, even if they don't have the perfect resume, if you know that this person is right for your team, you need to trust your gut. Because at the end of the day, this is your company and you have a mindset and you know it's going to be right for it. For example, one story she told us is she, at the time in her 20s, was selling fax machines, and she was driving to go sell one, and she pulled over her car and she said, this is not my movie. I am not in the movie. Cut. You know, call the director, cut the script. Like, this is not my movie. I am meant to be a founder and I am meant to build something. I'm not meant to be selling fax machines. She didn't start Spanx till years later when she discovered the problem that she wanted to solve. But that intuition of this is the life that I want to build for myself, here's who I want to have in my movie, here's the world I want to create, here's the storyline I want to set. Really listening and trusting your gut. I immediately followed that piece of advice to start to listen to myself and say after each interview or after each decision, does this innately feel right with me? Does this sit with me? And I think that that's really important to remember for key decisions. Now, for smaller decisions of what colors should we make this? Or how should we think about our next feature in the next couple of weeks? Or what tests we want to run, you're going to need to learn how to disagree and commit. But when it comes to core foundational company pillars, like who do we bring onto our team? Or how do we set our culture, you need to spend time sitting with yourself and thinking about what feels right and frankly, trusting your gut.

I. I love that episode. And Sarah Blakely is so incredible. The other. We haven't released his episode yet, so I won't say who he is, but he gave us one of the best pieces of advice I've gotten in a long time. I actually think about it every single day now, which was. He said, so many people live their life every single day in fight or flight, where you are basically constantly having bad happen to you and you are taking all of this out from the world. And he was saying there's no way to productively operate when you are in fight or flight. You need to be making a plan and then attacking that plan instead of having things attack you. And that has been really. I don't know, it was a huge shift for me because I realized any time when the people around me are stressed and we are in a stressful situation and I'm in a position where I'm supposed to make a decision, it does not result in the best outcome. As me saying, we need to regroup, take a beat on this when we are not in fight or flight, and then make a decision with a clear head. It always has a better outcome. And that's been a huge thing, because anytime in the middle of the day where I feel like things are getting stressful or anything, I'm always like, I am in fight or flight right now. I need to remove myself from this. I need to work on something else where I have a plan of action, and then I need to come back to this when I have a very specific plan of action, and I feel like I am in the driver's seat and I feel like I am in control if I don't feel like that it's not going to result in the best outcome for me. So I keep thinking about that every day. I'm like, am I in fight or flight? If so, I am not going to make a good decision and I need to come back to this later when I am in the driver's seat and have a clear head. So I'm excited for his episode.

Renee Brown calls that the, the, the, the fear line. Are you operating above the line or below the line? And as soon as you drop below the line, you're in victim mindset, scarcity mindset. You and you have to get back above the line. So I love that. That's great, great advice. What advice would you give a 20 year old who wants to build a big business but also live their 20s fully?

Well, the reality is that work life balance does not exist. You need to be in a position where you actually enjoy your work and that is what will make your 20s really happy and fulfilling is we work much more than the rest of our friends. I would say that we feel equally as happy as them because we actually enjoy the work that we're doing. And then of course, it's also really important to make sure that you're not only 247 talking about and working on something. You also need to make sure you're making room for like the relationships in your life that matter and that like fill you with purpose. And so for Phoebe and I, like, Saturdays are usually pretty sacred. We want to spend time with like our friends, our partners, our family, and then to be able to come back on Sunday with a really refreshed mind. But the biggest thing that will define whether or not you feel like you're happy is whether or not you enjoy your work. Because work is such a big part of your life and that it's about blending the two. It's like work life blending instead of balance so that you actually feel fulfilled.

I love that I think of life in as kind of like a stove and you have the ability to turn on and off different burners. And for me, when I think about like my 20s and 30s, like I'm turning the work burner on max. And so that means like turning down a little bit the time I get to spend with family. I don't have kids, so I'm able to turn that down, say, hey parents, I'll call you, you know, in two weeks. I'm turning down that social life burner and I'm really indexing on work. And over time I'll be able to Turn on those other burners and focus on those more. But I know that I'm firing on all cylinders right now in work, and you have to enjoy and love that. I don't think it's possible, frankly, to be an entrepreneur and to have, you know, your social life also on a max burner during your 20s.

That's literally what my entire book is about. We won't put that in, but that is literally what I wrote all about.

Great.

We're gonna read it. Oh, my gosh.

Okay.

Put it in.

Put it in.

We'll read.

Cut to a clip of me reading.

Okay. In your convo with Gary Vee, you talked obviously a lot about personal brand, the currency of personal brand. For someone who is not building a business. Do you think it's as important or what was your philosophy about personal brand pre fia? And has it changed? Because obviously it's a tool that you're using to grow the brand. But did you have the same philosophy before?

I have learned so much about personal brand from building fiat, so I don't think that I had the same philosophy necessarily before. But one thing that I've really indexed on and learned frankly from other mentors like Gary Vee is, listen, in the next five years, technology is going to be democratized. Everyone will be able to instantly build an app, build a company, build a solution for something. It's going to become possible. What are the only two things that are defensible? Having a personal brand where you have an audience that really cares about you, that listens to you, that innately trusts your taste and your unique insight or perspective on the world. And then having some sort of data or unique position where you can provide unique value to users. And so I really, really think that personal brand is so important. And I think it is one of the only defensible things that we're going to see in the future.

Amen. Okay, I think let's. Let's move to a little rapid fire.

Let's do it.

Okay. Who is the Messier roommate in college?

Definitely me.

What is your cure for Sunday scaries? But sounds like it might be Saturday scaries for you guys, because if you're going into the office on Sundays, do you do anything to mentally prep before you go?

I don't think we get the scaries. It's okay. I'm so excited and I feel rejuvenated.

Okay, what was your first fashion splurge that you ever made with your own money?

Stop. A Juicy Couture pair of sweatpants. When I was in, like, Middle school, I saved up for it. I bought it. It had the full juicy couture across the butt. My mom was like, those will not leave the house. Those are horrific. I was like, what do you mean? They're neon purple. She's like, those are awful. Yeah, those were burned and now they're.

Like, kind of coming. They are.

Oh, Sunday, Saturday. Scaries. I do get. Sometimes if we have a week full of, like, long meetings, I'm like, ugh, I don't want to do that. I don't want to talk to people this week.

Week.

Mine is honestly, a long, hot bath goes a long way, especially with a bath bomb.

Yeah, I'm a bather as well. Okay. If you could only style you in one designer forever, who would you pick?

I mean, this is so basic, but I mean, Mew Mew is so popular right now. If it was free Mew Mew forever. Okay.

Okay. What about you?

I like more contemporary brands. I honestly really have been loving Veronica Beard.

Oh, everything. We love Veronica Beard.

So nice. I just. I like just like a comfortable, easy workwear.

Yeah. What's been harder? Prepping a startup pitch or a podcast episode?

Startup Pitch 100. Are you kidding? I mean, for a podcast, it's so fun. We get to talk to people that I'm fascinated by that I want to learn from. I mean, we'll plug in a deep research on ChatGPT on them, but then it's easy, like, you're having a conversation with them. I have genuine questions I want to ask. And the reality is, for us, like, like, we're not bringing on people that we're not not excited about.

Right.

We have the honor of being able to go watch interviews, being able to go, you know, check out the people that we're bringing on. So we're always excited and it flows naturally if it's someone you're excited about, where you get to ask genuine questions, have a real conversation. I feel like I'm learning on every podcast episode versus, like, you know, a pitch deck prep or when you're going into an investor meeting. You know, practice is perfection, and you need to have that. So I definitely say that that's more nerve wracking, but honestly, less nerve wracking. It just takes more time and refinement.

Is there a limiting belief that you guys kind of discovered about yourself that you had to be like, oh, I gotta work, I gotta push through this limiting belief as you were going through the fundraising process?

I'd say Sophia's too kind to say this about me, but I think one thing I struggle with is letting go of control. For me, I want to be in everything. I want to be the person pulling the data. I want to be the person, you know, auditing our tax return report. And I think that that's something that I've had to let go of over time as the business grows. And Sophia will say to me, let go of that task. Let go Phoebe. And that for me has really been something that I've been growing on and learning how to properly delegate, how to properly bring people onto the team that you can pass off items to where you fully trust them to have ownership of that because you can't stay in the weeds forever.

No. How about you?

I mean, I wouldn't say really limiting beliefs, but I'm very much a believer of like, you need to be put your energy where it is received. If someone is not treating you with respect and is not treating your conversation with respect, there is no reason you need to be working, banging on their door, trying to get them to give you respect. That's been a huge learning for me as definitely someone who's an overachiever, a people pleaser. You get on the phone with someone, you can immediately tell whether or not someone is taking your conversation seriously. I definitely think in the beginning I would take things really personally when I felt like someone was not reciprocating the energy, the preparedness that we put into the conversation. Now I don't, I don't care at all if I sense that I am not going to waste my time trying to convince someone of our value. If that inherent respect is not there. That is going to be a five minute call and that's going to be a. You gotta like take it on the chest and keep it moving and not think about it.

Also great dating advice.

True.

Just saying.

I don't convince a man of your.

No, lean back, don't lean in.

Yeah.

Okay. What is your. What is your go to burnout cure? If you start to feel yourself needing to. Is it girls trip? Is it solo time? Is it doing a creative outlet? Like, what do you do to kind of re energize.

Put in AirPods and dance to some music.

Okay.

Nothing.

If you've had a long day and you're feeling low, that makes me instantly feel better. And honestly, dancing embarrassingly, like brings you back down to earth. Also a good night's sleep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What's your go to song?

I love Morgan Wall and it's a guilty pleasure.

Love.

I. I think spending time with people that I love like seeing my family going home for the weekend, like, spending time with my boyfriend. My sister definitely makes me feel a lot more energized if I've had a really, really long day.

Yeah. Who's a dream podcast guest?

Amal Clooney.

I'm all Clooney.

One word to describe your. Your co founder style.

The more sales or the other one?

Yeah. Okay, well, here, let me say this again. One word to describe your individual fashion style.

Comfortable workwear.

Okay. One word to describe your leadership style.

Honest.

Direct.

Okay. If you could trade closets with anyone in the world for a week, who would it be?

Also a mall Clooney.

Princess Diana.

What's your current fashion obsession?

Trench coats. I'm obsessed with really nice, like beige, gray trench coats.

I think skinny jeans are so in again and I'm so glad. I love skinny jeans.

I love them.

I hate them.

I think they look so good.

I can't. A day after wearing jeans, I'm like, just get me home to take care.

Of every millennial watching this just died a little.

Okay, guys, I'm telling you, nothing makes you feel better than when you put on a good pair of skinny jeans. They fit perfectly and you feel amazing.

Okay, what do you think is better?

My.

My middle school Juicy Couture sweatpants or her skinny jeans?

I would rock this Juicy Couture better.

Okay, so for everyone listening in the girl boss arena, what advice would you give somebody who's watching and who's feeling inspired that they want to go out and go build something? How, what would you say? Like, how to get started or just overall advice?

I'd find three areas you're really excited about and then find people in that area and take interviews with them and just listen to them, ask them very basic questions. Read the book the mom test. It's like only 50 pages. I swear it's completely worth it. And you'll see through those interviews, like, what problems people are facing. Me and Sophia toiled with so many different ideas before we got to FIA. I mean, we played around the AI design space where we talked to 50 plus different designers and got to learn from them about what their different pain points were. Then you will come to a place where you'll say, okay, these are all the problems in the industry. And here's where my unique skill set can solve one of these problems.

Great advice.

Honestly, my advice would be to stop overthinking and over planning. That's something that I've noticed is a really common trait in overachievers is that the Best way to learn how to do things is you literally just need to rip the band aid and do it. And that's something that can be really difficult because you think you need to spend all this time with a plan and strategy and whatever. You're not going to learn anything close to what you're going to learn by just actually putting that into practice and forcing yourself to actually take steps towards your goal. That's definitely been a huge learning for us and quite honestly, is something that we screen for now when we want to bring people onto the team is bias towards action is everything. And forcing yourself and pushing yourself to develop that muscle where if you have an idea, immediately just go and execute it instead of trying to come up with a plan, strategy, whatever that will come. That will come. Once you face your first roadblock. That will come. You first need to face your first roadblock. So just get started. Have bias towards action.

Amazing. What are you guys most excited about right now?

Going back to the office.

That's great. Okay. All right. Phoebe, Sophia, thank you so much for being here on Ambition 2.0. I know everybody here watching just got a lot out of this, so thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so, so much for having us on. I'd be honored. If anyone goes downloads fia, hit us up in the customer service chat. We respond to every single request for feedback. Anything. We want, all of it. And we're just honored to be here.

Yes. Awesome. All right, so download fia. I have it on my phone. I'm getting inspired every day and finding. Finding some really good deals. And that's it for today's episode of Ambition 2.0. Don't forget to comment, like, subscribe all the things. We'll see you next week.