Capital Economy, Business and Finance
In the King’s Speech, Keir Starmer’s government promised a new industrial strategy with funding for innovation. One obstacle? A hostile visa and venture capital environment for foreign-born start-up founders, according to new research from Blue Lake VC.
While 14.5 per cent of the UK population is foreign-born, 39 of the country’s 100 fastest growing start-ups have at least one immigrant co-founder. Twenty-one were born in an EU country, with Transferwise, Gusto, Signal AI, and Made.com all founded by EU immigrants.
But the proportion of foreign-born founders has fallen by 10 percentage points between 2019 and 2023. Blue Lake’s David Gilgur warns that the rise of tech ecosystems in France, Germany and Portugal poses risks to a UK tech sector which could follow “a host of other once successful and now nearly forgotten British industries.”
Fewer than 1,000 visas were issued to start-up founders in 2023.
