Last month, Bloomberg revealed that a startup founded by Bill Gates’ 23-year-old daughter, Phoebe Gates, had dabbled in some seriously questionable business practices.
According to the reporting, Gates’ online affiliate marketing startup Phia used a shady technique called “cookie stuffing,” to collect commissions from online sales it had nothing to do with — a sneaky trick that’s landed previous affiliate marketers in federal prison.
Then, last week, Bloomberg followed up with receipts that intensified the scandal. Damning internal Slack messages suggest that both Gates and her cofounder Sophia Kianni knew about the scheme since at least December of last year.
While the story has been well hashed out by now, Bloomberg‘s sourcing is noteworthy for what it implies: the leaked Slack messages strongly suggest that someone inside Phia is hell-bent on taking Gates — and quite probably the entire company — down.
