Blue Lake VC: Purpose, origin, and strategy for backing immigrant founders in the UK

Immigrant founders are behind more than half of the UK's fastest-growing companies, yet they face persistent barriers to accessing early-stage capital and building the local networks needed to succeed. Blue Lake VC was built to close that gap.

Founded by Ukrainian entrepreneurs David Gilgur and Lyubov Guk, the firm writes the first institutional cheque for early-stage immigrant founders building global B2B technology companies . But Blue Lake didn't start as a fund — it grew out of community initiatives designed to give immigrant founders the social capital and support they lacked.

The problem: why immigrant founders struggle to raise capital in the UK

Blue Lake's own survey of more than 300 founders from 72 countries and 66 UK investors revealed the scale of the challenge. Almost half (approximately 50%) of international founders identified networking as one of their biggest challenges while fundraising in the UK. Nearly one in five (18.5%) cited conservative attitudes in the ecosystem, while others mentioned bias against immigrants and cultural differences .

A separate survey by Blue Lake of over 1,200 immigrant founders found that more than 90% say they cannot access the network they need to succeed . The UK's visa environment also plays a role: the proportion of foreign-born founders in UK start-ups fell by 10 percentage points between 2019 and 2023, even though 39 of the country's 100 fastest-growing start-ups have at least one immigrant co-founder .

The founders: David Gilgur and Lyubov Guk

Both Gilgur and Guk are Ukrainian immigrants who experienced these challenges firsthand. Gilgur started his career at Bloomberg before founding a company that supported Ukrainian SMEs entering the UK market. Guk began in corporate finance in Ukraine, moved to London on a Global Talent visa, and felt the difficulty of building a network from scratch .

Before launching Blue Lake VC, the pair worked together at VimesVC, a consultancy Gilgur founded in Kyiv that focused on international trade and investment between the UK and Ukraine . In summer 2019, Guk — one of the first people to join the Vimes team — became a partner .

The community-first origin: International Founders Open Office Hours

The idea for Blue Lake's community-building work came from Guk. Frustrated by the lack of support for immigrant founders, she piloted the "International Founders Open Office Hours" (IOH) programme in 2022. Inspired by Playfair Capital's Female Founders Office Hours, the initiative paired immigrant founders with top UK VCs, angels, accelerators, and family offices for informal 1-to-1 conversations — not pitch meetings .

The goal was simple: help immigrants build the local social capital they often lack. Gilgur was initially sceptical, but the results proved the concept. In the first three-month pilot, the programme connected 186 startups with 12 VC firms . Startups came from 43 countries, with 40% from Ukraine followed by India, Turkey, Germany, and Italy .

Oasis: a London base for international founders

Building on the success of IOH, Blue Lake opened Oasis London in December 2024 — a physical hub and community at 60 Strand described as "a home away from home" for international founders . Oasis is not an accelerator or a fund; it is an independent, founder-led community that provides hands-on help with local challenges such as banking, visas, and incorporation .

As of August 2025, Oasis had 423+ community members . The vision is for Oasis to become a global powerhouse for international talent, starting in London .

The fund: Blue Lake VC's strategy and focus

Blue Lake VC invests and supports pre-seed and seed stage exceptional immigrant founders in the UK, with a focus on B2B and software startups . The firm describes itself as "the first institutional cheque into extraordinary, early-stage international founders in the UK taking on global problems in the B2B space" .

Its mission is to help international founders achieve their full potential in the UK and globally . The fund focuses on founders from all immigrant backgrounds, though it has historically worked closely with Ukrainian founders due to its own roots .

The British Business Bank cornerstone commitment

In June 2026, Blue Lake VC secured a cornerstone commitment from the British Business Bank, the UK's largest institutional investor in venture capital, as part of the Bank's new £400m Investor Pathways Capital programme . The programme is designed to support diverse and emerging fund managers and make it easier for new entrants — particularly those from underrepresented groups — to break into venture capital .

The Bank committed up to £90 million across 10 new microfunds (each raising £10-20m), with Blue Lake VC being one of the selected funds . 151 firms applied for the 10 spots .

This commitment provides Blue Lake VC with institutional validation and a significant capital base specifically earmarked for underrepresented immigrant founders. It directly addresses the structural funding gap identified in the British Business Bank's own research, which showed that only 8% of venture funding goes to teams with at least one ethnic minority founder .

What this means for immigrant founders

Blue Lake VC's strategy represents a deliberate attempt to rewire the infrastructure of founder access to capital for immigrants. By combining community-building initiatives (IOH and Oasis) with a dedicated fund, the firm offers both the social capital and the financial capital that immigrant founders typically lack when arriving in the UK.

As Guk noted, building Blue Lake was about recognising that "talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not" . With the British Business Bank's backing, Blue Lake now has the institutional firepower to prove that thesis at scale.

*Fact-checking note: The claim that "over 90%" of immigrant founders face a single specific problem is not directly supported by the source that reports the 50% networking figure. A separate Blue Lake survey of over 1,200 immigrant founders found that more than 90% "say they can't access the network they need to succeed" , but the specific wording and methodology of that survey are not fully detailed in the available sources. The 50% figure for networking as a challenge comes from a different survey of 300+ founders and 66 investors .