Pippa Lamb (Sweet Capital) - Why Consumer Habits Developed During COVID Are Here To Stay, 99% Execution & 1% Vision, and Defining A Founder's Unfair Advantage

Thank you Alex Pattis for the introduction to today's guest Pippa Lamb who is a partner at Sweet Capital. Sweet Capital in an early stage investment fund built by the founders of King.com (Candy Crush), following their sale to Activision Blizzard in 2015. Pippa focuses on early stage consumer technology investments ranging from software and next generation social communities to fintech. This is was fun and fascinating conversation as we talked about gamification in social, why she splits her time in LA and London, how she evaluates opportunities and her focuses.

I highly recommend following her on Twitter @pippalamb. You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc.

Some of the questions that I ask Pippa -

1. What attracted you initially to become a consumer investor and transition from the world of later stage private equity down to venture capital?
2. Tell me about Sweet Capital.
3. How it came together
4. Investment focus
5. Why located in Los Angeles, London. What are some of the differences in ecosystems since you travel back and forth?
6. Where do you invest geographically?
7. What qualities or traits in founders do you look for?
8. For folks looking to start companies, what are some questions they should be asking themselves to analyze and see if they do have an unfair advantage and if they should be the ones founding the businesses?
9. Does unfair advantage simply mean experience?
10. How do you think about early traction?
11. Walk me through your due diligence process. You are pre-series A / Seed fund. What type of metrics are you looking for in a consumer tech company?
12. Are you focused primarily on ad rev, marketplace, or SaaS type businesses?
13. Want to discuss COVID, as that’s top of mind for everyone
14. Have you changed your investment strategy?
15. Is it harder to find conviction when meeting with founders virtually?
16. Has COVID changed how you thought about remote teams in companies?
17. What are you seeing in the future of mobile technology or trends that you are paying attention to?
18. Los Angeles has become one of the hubs of consumer technology, in your view, why has that been the case?
19. I’ve heard some folks say on this show it’s a contrarian time to be investing in consumer. Why do some folks think that and do you believe it?
20. What is one thing that you would change when it came to venture capital?
21. What is one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
22. What is your most recent investment and what makes you excited about it?
23. What’s one piece of advice for B2C founders?

If you’re enjoying the show, if you could leave a review on the apple podcast app as that helps other folks find it, that would be really helpful. If you are a founder and working on something innovative, have a question you’d like to hear VCs or founders answer on the show you can DM me and follow me on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc. For all episodes, please visit theconsumervc.com. Thanks again for listening.