UK-based Blue Lake VC has secured a cornerstone commitment from the British Business Bank, the UK’s largest institutional investor in venture capital.
Ukrainians David Gilgur and Lyubov Guk, founding partners of Blue Lake VC, are backing exceptional immigrant founders in the UK. Immigrants are behind more than half of the UK's fastest-growing companies.
But according to proprietary survey data from Blue Lake of over 1,200 immigrant founders, more than 90 per cent say they can't access the networks or capital they need at the earliest stages. Gilgur and Guk know this exact problem firsthand as immigrant entrepreneurs and see a gap and an opportunity that Blue Lake VC is addressing.
Over the past six years, David Gilgur and Lyubov Guk have been laying the foundations of Blue Lake VC. What started as angel investing and the Blue Lake Syndicate, with hands-on support for founders, has grown into Oasis, the largest international founder community and hub in London. The fund brings it all together.
Blue Lake VC was born out of its founders' first-hand experience of the outstanding opportunities the UK tech scene offers and the importance of support and networks at the early stage. It writes the first institutional cheque for early-stage international founders building global products.
Both partners are originally from Ukraine. Gilgur ’s unlikely VC career began when he came to the UK as a child to study at a Jewish Orthodox school, which led to a career in Economics and Data at Bloomberg. In 2014, as the revolution and the first Russian invasion of Ukraine began, he founded a consultancy to build bridges between Eastern European businesses and the UK market.
Guk’s hometown in Donbas, Ukraine, where she studied and started her career in corporate finance, has been under occupation since that same year. She was Gilgur ’s first hire in Ukraine before becoming the head of the Ukrainian office and moving to London five years ago on a Global Talent visa. Blue Lake VC was the next thing they built together.
Building community first
Gilgur and Guk started by building the community, forming a foundation for the future fund. In 2022, they launched International Office Hours - a programme that has since connected over 600 international founders with more than 70 UK investors, putting Blue Lake in the room with talent long before the rest of the market notices it.
Later, they opened Oasis: a physical hub in London that has become a ‘home away from home’ for over 600 immigrant founders and investors, hosting curated events, workshops, international delegations, and AMAs with leading VCs in the market. When David and Lyubov first arrived in London, they were looking for a place they couldn’t find, so they built it.
Over the past four years, they proved their thesis by investing in startups they met through International Office Hours and Oasis via a Blue Lake Angel syndicate, which made 11 investments in early-stage companies founded by immigrants.
Now, they are building on this foundation to launch Fund I and execute on their strategy with speed and scale.
According to Lyubov Guk, co-founder and General Partner, Blue Lake VC:
“I have lived experience of coming to the UK with no network and access to capital, building here, and facing the same challenges and gaps as the founders we invest in.
We launched Blue Lake VC fund to address these challenges and build the proof that immigrant founders, backed at the right moment, can scale and generate outsized returns.”
David Gilgur, co-founder and General Partner, Blue Lake VC, shared:
“Lyubov and I have worked together for over 10 years, building a consultancy, launching and investing through the Blue Lake angel syndicate, and building an international start-up community.
These experiences have shaped Blue Lake VC’s values, sourcing approach, and investment strategy. Commitment from the British Business Bank is a testament to our thesis and the hard work that has gone into getting to where we are today.’
Anchored by the British Business Bank, private investors, and family offices, the fund is scheduled to close in September 2026.
The investment comes under the British Business Bank’s new £400 million Investor Pathways Capital programme. Blue Lake VC is one of just ten funds selected for the programme’s inaugural cohort out of more than a hundred that applied.
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