Most 22-year-olds don’t have to worry about their dad being Bill Gates when they bring someone home—but Phoebe Gates does. And according to her, it’s a little bit hilarious… unless you’re the guy.
In an appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast last month, Phoebe sat down with host Alex Cooper—alongside climate activist and business partner Sophia Kianni—to talk about launching their own podcast, “The Burnouts.”
But the internet had other priorities: her stories about introducing dates to her famously introverted dad at his $63 million lakefront high-tech mansion in Medina, Washington.
“Terrifying, for the guy. For me? Hilarious.
That’s how Phoebe summed it up. “My dad’s, like, pretty socially awkward—he’s said he has Asperger’s,” she explained on the podcast. “To me, it’s so funny, but for guys, I think they get, like, really wigged out.”
Phoebe didn’t just tell—it was full storytime. One of the standout memories? A high school dance.
“My mom had signed my dad up to drive me and the boy to the dance together,” she said. “First off, my dad insisted on us listening to NPR the entire 30-minute drive. He stopped for fast food, then he calls the guy—he’s like, ‘Be responsible tonight, Max Demonhower.’ His name was Maxwell Danenhower. Literally wanted to die.”
For Phoebe, these awkward encounters have turned into a kind of test. “Depending on how he reacts, that’s how you know if he’s gonna be a good guy or not,” she told Cooper. If someone can survive a socially anxious Bill Gates mispronouncing their name inside a high-security estate—maybe they’re worth keeping around.
Phoebe also joked that she’s the life of the party in a family of self-proclaimed nerds. “It used to be a joke our family would be so boring if I wasn’t born,” she said. “At the dad-daughter dances my mom would have us go to, I would force my dad to go talk to all the other dads and daughters there. I was like, ‘No. If we’re here, we’re going to socialize. We’ve got to work this room, Bill.'”
And don’t even try to challenge them to a game night. “You do not want to play a board game with the two of us,” she warned. “That’s actually worse than introducing a guy to my dad.”
Bringing home a date is nerve-wracking enough. Bringing them into a tech billionaire’s $63 million mansion where they’ll be grilled by a man who co-founded Microsoft and prefers NPR over small talk? Brutal.
But Phoebe’s take? If they can’t handle that, they probably weren’t “the guy” anyway.