Sophia Kianni goes by many different titles. She’s the youngest United Nations advisor in U.S. history. She’s the founder of the youth-led climate nonprofit Climate Cardinals. She co-founded the sustainable fashion app Phia with Phoebe Gates. And, she’s co-host of The Burnouts podcast with Gates on Alex Cooper’s Unwell Network. But just because Kianni has an impressive resume doesn’t mean she has it all figured out. “[Gates] and I want to show other young women it’s okay to start out and not know a ton, and to just be able to be the ones asking the dumb questions. There are no dumb questions!” she tells Her Campus in an exclusive interview. “Everyone starts from a point of knowing absolutely nothing. Everyone’s an expert only in their own experience, and everyone starts out as a novice in what they’re interested in, and it’s really about wanting to be hungry and wanting to learn.”
It’s part of what inspired Kianni and Gates to start their podcast in tandem with the launch of the Phia app. As new entrepreneurs, Kianni and Gates hear from experts in the industry (Kris Jenner was their first guest) to get advice on everything from how to navigate early jobs to how to launch a business. “We’re still at the very beginning of this. And for us, it’s really about being transparent about [the fact] that we are not the experts,” Kianni says. “We want to be honest with our audience about the different things that we’re learning and the incredible people that we’re learning it from. Kris Jenner and [Spanx founder and entrepreneur] Sarah Blakely are complete badasses. They have done it. They’ve written the book themselves. That’s the playbook that we’re going to be following, and we want our audience to be able to learn from it, too.”
Below, Sophia Kianni talks exclusively with Her Campus all about her journey and approach to creating the Phia app, The Burnouts, and the mottos she lives by that helps her get through it all as a young female Gen Z Entrepreneur.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Were you always passionate about fashion? What inspired you to create a fashion app?
I thought that fashion was really intertwined with creativity and expression, and I started to become a lot more mindful of conscious consumerism and fast fashion as my climate activism evolved. It definitely became a big focus point for me in college, when I learned how much pollution is because of the fast fashion industry and how unsustainable it is. It transitioned my interest in fashion from something that was more passive and focused on aesthetics to something that was more oriented in the actual production and distribution of fashion.
How long was the process from idea to launch of Phia?
Phoebe and I met in college as roommates. We started to work on different ideas that we had with concepts related to shopping secondhand fashion, primarily actually on desktop, but it wasn’t really until a year ago that we aligned on the vision for Phia as you see it today. And that’s really this mobile application and shopping tool where as you’re shopping, you’re able to instantly find the items from across the internet that match both the secondhand and new options to really help you to find the best price in one click.
Can you walk me through the emotions you felt on Phia launch day?
It was honestly so exciting, and just such an incredible moment when we launched. It was so cool to see all the women that we had spent time talking to over the last few months, getting their feedback on the app, and seeing them be able to see the final product that really took into account all of their feedback. The version of Phia that we launched was really because of all the incredible work that our team put in, and also all the hundreds of women that we talked to from around New York City. And even the aesthetics of the app itself, all of it changed so drastically, and it was super exciting to see girls who were on the early versions of the Phia app download it again and be so pleasantly surprised that we were able to incorporate their feedback. It was honestly a whirlwind, but super awesome to see our hard work be able to crystallize, and for it to be able to gain traction.
What are some new features or ideas you’re thinking of experimenting and implementing into the app in the future?
Right now you can really think of Phia as a shopping tool that helps you to find the best price in one click. And it’s really oriented [toward] answering this key question of, should I buy this? Something that we’re going to be rolling out is price drop alerts, so if an item is perhaps not available for the price point that you want it, being able to be notified when it is available. That’s definitely a feature that we’re going to be prioritizing building, and we’re very excited to share when that is ready. For us, it’s really about consistently continuing to iterate based on what our customers are excited about.
Does Phia incorporate sustainability in fashion, and are there ways you’d like to integrate environmentally-friendly approaches to fashion into the app in the future?
Phia does a really great job of, while you’re shopping for items, being able to — if it exists — find and suggest the secondhand version of that item. That can be up to a 75% cost savings and up to an 80% carbon reduction compared to buying an item new. It’s really a win-win. If I’m looking at a $200 Reformation dress, Phia can pop up and say, “You can buy that for $80 on Poshmark.” And it’s almost the exact same quality. Some of the products are brand new with tags. You can save up to 75%, and especially for Gen Zers, younger consumers are very cost-conscious. That’s the biggest motivator of consumer spend, and of course people care about sustainability as well. The fashion industry is responsible for around 8-10% of global carbon emissions, and there’s enough clothes already in production right now to dress the next six generations of humans. So the more that we can make it a time-efficient, cost-effective way, the more we’ll be able to really incentivize this more sustainable way of shopping.
Who is someone that you looked up to in terms of your career goals and aspirations?
Someone that I look up to in my personal life is absolutely my aunt. I think my aunt was a huge influence in my life because she’s this kickass single woman who has built her entire career for herself in the radiology industry helping cancer patients, and she bought her own home. She was the first person in our family to buy an investment property and just start renting it, and she was the first person in my family to teach me about things like investing my money. She really affirmed in me the power of self-belief and the importance of self-sufficiency. She’s always been of the mind that it’s so important to set yourself up for financial freedom and for having a stable life on your own.
Is there a career-related dream that you have? If so, what is it?
The No. 1 goal right now is for Phia to be able to help and serve as many women as possible. And so honestly, my dream is just that we’re able to acquire tens of thousands of young women and to be able to have them shop smarter, more sustainably, and more efficiently. That dream is starting to become true, which is super, super exciting!
What mistakes have you made as an entrepreneur?
Not soliciting feedback soon enough. The reality for me is the quote, “Perfection is the enemy of progress.” I live by that now. Perfection has been the enemy of my progress in many ways in regard to so many things, definitely including Phia — being embarrassed of the early versions of the product that we built and not wanting to put it in front of people to get feedback. That set us back and made us lose a lot of time because we could have realized a lot earlier on that there were core product assumptions we were making that were not aligned with people’s experiences. Just be as honest and vulnerable as possible as early on to be able to learn quickly. Learning quickly and failing fast is way more important than spending all of your time trying to get something right.
That’s true even if you’re not starting a company. It can be true even if you’re starting content creation. I do a lot more content creation now, which I didn’t used to do before, because I used to always be very afraid of what people would think of me. I would think, I don’t know if this LinkedIn post is lengthy enough, if it’s elaborate enough, or if it’s interesting enough. And so I’m just not going to post at all. And now I’m very much of the mindset that you just need to be consistent. And consistency is far more important than striving for perfection.
What piece of advice do you have for Gen Z entrepreneurs and college students looking to start their own business?
The team that you build is ultimately the company that you build. That’s something that I found to be true both at Phia and also for when I built my nonprofit, Climate Cardinals. Being able to work with people every day who really believe in the vision and believe in the thing that you’re building, that’s ultimately going to be what drives progress.
What was it like interviewing Kris Jenner on your podcast?
Interviewing Kris Jenner was an incredible experience. We learned so much from speaking to her. I think that she had really practical and pragmatic advice, even for small things, like how important it is to have a clean car — being able to have a clear space leads to a clear mind. She was talking about having a routine, like waking up early, holding yourself to a schedule. The things that you’re doing now in your twenties that might seem negligible or table stakes, but the early lessons you learn right now really build the foundation of good habits for your career. It was really cool learning from her and hearing her evolution, and to understand how it can be applied to other people’s lives.
During your podcast episode with Kris Jenner, she mentioned in the beginning one of her mottos that she came up with over time: “FIO” (Figure It Out). Do you have a motto of your own that you live by?
I learned this randomly a long time ago, back when I was in middle school and I was starting to do sports. When I was doing track and running sprints, I heard the motto, “The pain is for a second, but the victory is forever.”
When you’re running and you are exhausted, you need to remember that this is a temporary state of hyper-stress and anguish, and that at the end of it is the finish line, and you have the potential for victory. Any time that I’m in a state in my life, which there have been so many states — either I’m in school and there’s a huge exam coming up or I’m applying for something and I’m working so hard on it — it always helps me to remind myself, I am literally not going to remember this. This is all extremely temporary. This state of anxiety and duress is temporary, and at the end of it, the only thing that I’m going to remember is the positive outcome. I used to always repeat it to myself when I was running and reaching the finish line. I was like, I know I feel horrible right now. Tomorrow, I’m not going to remember how I feel at all. I’m just going to remember that I did my best.