Off Balance #41

👋🏾 Hi friends!

Well we’re about a week away from elections in the UK where we may well see a significant shake up in the composition of our parliament. I have found myself becoming fairly vocally critical of what’s going on in the governance of this country, but rather than yelling into an echo chamber, I thought I would take a look at what impact the various policies from the main parties may have on the startup and venture ecosystem - read on for the breakdown.

In other news, this Thursday, I will be joining a panel hosted by Vertice the cloud cost opimisation platform co-hosted by Pleo the spend management platform to talk about whether Consolidation is the new digital transformation.

Join me and CFOs from some spectacular organisations this Thursday June 27th at 1000 BST / 1100 CEST to dig into how finance is thinking about growth and spend in the tough funding environment we find ourselves in, as well as the impact of new tools and AI on the finance stack now and in the future.

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I’m well underway writing about all the things I’ve learned from the last couple of decades as founder, CFO and CEO, so sign up for early access to Off Balance - The Book and feel free to share with anyone else you think might enjoy it 😄.

Now let’s get down to business…

In this weeks Off Balance:

🎙️ Lyuba Guk and David Gilgur from Blue Lake Ventures on Nothing Ventured
🇬🇧 What impact would the various parties’ policies have on the startup and venture ecosystem

𝗗𝗼 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀?!

In last week’s episode of Nothing Ventured, I spoke to Lyubov Guk and David Gilgur, Founding Partners at Blue Lake Ventures, an early stage firm investing and supporting pre-seed and seed stage exceptional immigrant founders in the UK focussed on b2b and software startups.

Prior to founding Blue Lake, David was founder of the VimesVC consultancy in Kyiv whilst Lyuba was a partner at VimesVC. David also spent 6 years at Bloomberg ultimately as a Strategic Account Manager within Data Sales.

Our top takeaways:

➡️ 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗸𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗘𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺: Despite facing desperate challenges, the Ukrainian ecosystem is marked by resilience. The founders from Ukraine have shown remarkable strength and determination in the face of adversity.

➡️ 𝗜𝗺𝗺𝗶𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗕𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝗾𝘂𝗲 𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀: Immigrant founders, especially from Eastern Europe and India, exhibit a strong work ethic, a willingness to take risks, and a drive to succeed. Their diverse backgrounds and experiences contribute to their success in the startup world.

➡️ 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀: Blue Lake is working towards creating a super community for international founders in the UK. By fostering collaboration and support among founders from different cultural backgrounds, they aim to create a thriving ecosystem for startup growth and success - check out their International Office Hours 3.0 here.

We also discussed:

🚀 How they went from working with SMEs, to launching an accelerator to investing first in Ukrainian immigrants then to all immigrant founders in the UK
✋🏼 Too many people being pushed into ‘founder’ roles
🦄 62% of unicorn ventures across the UK and the US were founded by migrants.
🕸️ Building a super community for international founders in the UK
💰 Why VCs need to shut up and stick to investing

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Now let’s get into it.