The Human Element Behind Phia’s Push to Transform the Way We Shop

[Director] One alpha, take two. Mark.

The goal is to become predictive enough that we can, A,

tell you what you should buy,

but B, actually tell you when you should not buy something.

Ultimately, in the next five to 10 years,

we will be in such a more efficient

and sustainable system that should also lower the number

of items that are produced.

That should be really what the future of shopping is.

[upbeat music]

Hi, I am Katie Drummond.

I'm Wired's Global editorial director

and I am thrilled to be here with Sophia Kianni

of the app Phia

to talk all about her entrepreneurial journey.

Sophia, welcome. Thank you for doing this.

Thank you for having me. I'm so excited.

Now tell us about Phia,

how does the app actually work?

What's the idea?

Phia is an app and a mobile extension that essentially

as you're shopping, help you

to understand are there better alternatives?

What should I know?

What's the key information about the

item to help me feel confident before I purchase?

So when you think about your preferences,

my preferences when we're shopping, they're so diverse

and it's really hard to be able to encapsulate

that into one specific program.

And so with advances in machine learning

and AI, it becomes possible to really understand a person,

their preferences and to be able

to simplify the decision making process.

Now I feel like every startup founder has

that like aha moment.

Walk me through the moment

where you realized there was a problem worth solving

with shopping and price discovery.

I grew up and I loved shopping,

but I realized how unsustainable the fashion industry was.

I mean, there are enough clothes in existence right now

to address the next six generations of humans.

The biggest problem is that people are purchasing lots

of things that they don't need

and that they're basically returning it at

astronomically high rates.

And with my college roommate, Phoebe, we decided to apply

for this applied AI

and entrepreneurship class at Stanford

to basically see if we could build like a real prototype.

And so our thesis really has become

that if you can give everyone a personal shopping assistant,

you can help them make better purchasing decisions so

that they can buy things that they actually use

and will wear for a long time.

That's much more sustainable if you're doing

that at a lower frequency, more quality price point.

And so really it's about making more kind

of mindful choices that are actually aligned

with their preferences.

So interesting. What about learning through travel?

I'm curious about sort of

how travel has maybe shaped your journey as an entrepreneur.

What kind of impact that has had on you?

Well, I would say when it comes to travel,

ultimately travel has kind

of become a necessary part of my work.

I would say like probably the trip that we took

to San Francisco right before we closed our Series A

and meeting some of our investors in person,

all these people saw what I had believed was true for years.

That there was a huge multi-billion dollar opportunity in

this space and that we were the right people to do it.

I'm grateful that we were able

to have those conversations in person.

I will say, I mean there's just something

about face-to-face.

Yeah. Meeting with someone

in person.

There's also something about San Francisco,

whenever I'm there I feel like I can do anything

and I feel like I leave and my head is like full of ideas.

And there's so many young builders there.

It's just such a special energy, really motivating

as a young person to be surrounded

by other like-minded peers.

Is there a travel bucket list somewhere that you have?

Very interestingly, a ton

of our angel investors live in Miami.

Oh. So yeah,

we actually did kind of an offsite for strategy

and planning after we closed our Series A,

I actually will probably go there

a couple more times this year.

These are not bad places to visit.

What has been the hardest part of building Phia

that maybe you didn't anticipate in your Stanford dorm room?

I was very much raised with this mindset

of if you want something done right,

you have to do it yourself.

And ultimately I realized that's really not scalable at all.

There's only so much time I have in the day.

And also it was a really good experience

of understanding there are people way smarter than me

who are way,

way better at doing very specific things than I am.

True.

And so team building really has been the biggest lesson

that I've learned is that finding exceptional people really

fostering their personal development.

That's how a company is able to grow and scale.

What is sort of in the next six months,

the next year for you?

Where do you wanna be in three years when you're thinking

about growing this app and this company?

Initially I just wanted to help more women be able

to shop smarter essentially.

And so now we've had over a million people download the app

and actually use our product

and now we have hundreds of thousands of people

who every single month are using it

and actually feel like they're getting a good deal.

And the thing that was really interesting is now we're also

starting to work with brands.

We work with over 5,000 brands

and we're working on these pain points of actually

how do I find the right customer who's gonna buy my product,

use it, be happy and not return it?

And then understanding like there's an opportunity

to create a win-win within those confines

and continuing to innovate on solutions

like through that lens.

That's a future I'm extremely, extremely excited about.

Sophia, congratulations on all of the success.

I'm so excited to check in in a year.

Thank you so much for having me.

[upbeat music]