RECAP
It has been a while and I think it might be useful to do a brief recap of Blue Lake and its vision. Blue Lake is a London-Kyiv based Investment Company/Accelerator, that actively scouts for early-stage, startup opportunities in 'overlooked markets' with the initial country of focus being Ukraine. This country has a track record of producing winners (eg. GitLab, Grammarly, PeopleAI) yet remains relatively unknown to a general investor. We focus on outstanding, undiscovered, early-stage startup investment opportunities.
Financing while important is often not enough. Startups from the developing regions need that bridge into external markets, eco-systems, go-to-market. This is where acceleration or support part of Blue Lake comes in. With help from many people on this mail list, we build a unique support structure that is focused on helping Blue Lake startups enter the UK and other international markets.
We would like to invite potential investors and partners interested in to find out more about Blue Lake, our vision or Ukrainian startups by replying to this email.
HOUSEKEEPING NEWS
For new fund managers, just like for a startup, it is very easy to get warped in an eco-chamber of own preconceptions. Blue Lake is no exception and we decided to follow the advice that we often give startups that we work with. Find someone who is experienced, you can trust and willing to give you honest feedback. We did just that and it is with genuine pleasure I would like to introduce you to Blue Lake's advisory board.
Jan Wyrwinski - Managing partner at Alfabeat VC Fund.
Gvantsa Chkuaseli - Independent advisor with a successful investment and fundraising experience.
We are sure that both Gvantsa and Jan will help to further improve Blue Lake across the board, and it is an important milestone in our development.
STARTUPS & INVESTORS
This is something that we have resisted for a while. Quite often we receive expressions of interests from VC's and other investors who would like for us to refer potentially interesting startups to them directly. On the other hand, we do come across many startups that are not quite a match for us but could be a great fit for other investors. The opportunity to link the two sides is pretty obvious. At Blue Lake however we very always somewhat reluctant to be a matchmaker as we felt it would be a distraction to our core focus.
Now however, we have a critical mass of startups and investors that we simply can not continue to ignore and from now, we will be much more proactively engaged in bringing our partner investor organisations and startups together. With this in mind, if you are a Ukrainian startup looking for funding or an international investor seeking to access a quality deal flow, drop us a line.
INFORMAL
Blue Lake Club Slack channel is now well over 100 members and growing! If you would like to join, do let me know.
