Bill Gates reveals one of his biggest worries after cutting daughter's inheritance to less than 1% of his $107,000,000,000 wealth
Topics: Bill Gates, Money, Parenting
Joe Yates
Featured Image Credit: Getty Images/Roy Rochlin
Topics: Bill Gates, Money, Parenting
Former world's richest man Bill Gates is on a mission to give away 99 percent of his billions of dollars, and has shared one of his biggest fears in life which he worries could come about due to this.
The 69-year-old Microsoft co-founder shares three children with ex-wife Melinda French, who is also a billionaire thanks in part to the divorce settlement she received after splitting with her former husband of 27 years back in 2021.
She is now worth $30.3 billion, according to Forbes, while Gates is estimated to be worth around $107 billion.
Advert
But unlike 'nepo babies' in the movies, Gates' youngest daughter Phoebe is far from spoilt, with the businessman revealing that his children won’t inherit his massive empire or money when he dies.
He previously told the Figuring Out With Raj Shamani podcast: "In my case, my kids got a great upbringing and education but less than one percent of the total wealth because I decided it wouldn’t be a favor to them.
"It’s not a dynasty, I’m not asking them to run Microsoft. I want to give them a chance to have their own earnings and success."
22-year-old Stanford University graduate Phoebe has recently launched an e-commerce startup app called Phia, which she likens to Google Flights 'but for fashion'.
Having launched on April 24, punters are able to use the site to compare prices of various clothing items and accessories across thousands of sites, also offering the choice to browse used items.
Discussing his daughter's venture, Gates told The New York Times: "Wow, a lot of people have tried, and there's some big guys in there."
Before conceding that he thought one of his biggest worries was going to play out - that his entrepreneurial daughter was going to come to him asking for money to help fund the business.
"I thought, 'Oh boy, she's going to come and ask,'" Gates told the publication.
"And then I would have kept her on a short leash and be doing business reviews, which I would have found tricky, and I probably would have been overly nice but wondered if it was the right thing to do?
"Luckily, it never happened."
Instead, Phoebe and her business partner, whom she roomed with at college, received the funding to bring her dreams to fruition thanks to a $250,000 grant from Stanford University's social entrepreneurship program, as well as $100,000 from Soma Capital.
The pair received the final $500,000 from angel investors.
Phoebe confessed that it was following a discussion with her mom that she opted to do the venture without the financial assistance of her parents.