A Staffordshire-founded financial services firm has taken a prominent role at one of the UK’s largest business festivals.
IronMarket hosted the Finance & Growth Tent at Ideasfest 2026, a two-day event held at Champneys Tring in Hertfordshire, attended by more than 6,000 founders and business leaders.
Dubbed ‘the Glastonbury for businesses’, the festival featured a series of high-profile entrepreneurs, including Daniel Daggers, founder of DDRE Global and star of Netflix’s Buying London, and Juliet Barratt, who co-founded Grenade before its £200 million sale to Mondelez International.
Josh White, co-founder of sustainable water brand Cano Water, also appeared, alongside AJ and Curtis Pritchard, who featured as part of IronMarket’s Fint Invest division.
Wes Wilkes, who founded IronMarket in 2013, said: “Entrepreneurs and business owners are who we serve every day.
“To be in a field with 6,000 of them on our own stage, showing what makes IronMarket different was something special.
“Our firm was founded and is based in Staffordshire, and Ideasfest gave us the biggest room we have ever had to show what a Staffordshire business can do.”
Fint Invest, an investment app founded by Wilkes and backed by AJ and Curtis Pritchard, also used the event to promote financial education to younger investors.
Wes added: “The same conversation kept coming up – founders who were brilliant at building their business but had given very little thought to building the life they want during it and beyond it.
“People within years of an exit with no real plan for what comes next, financially or personally. That gap was the thread running through almost every conversation we had across the two days.”
IronMarket is already in discussions about returning as the Finance & Growth Tent partner at Ideasfest in 2027.
The firm is also distributing its State of Entrepreneur Wealth report to more than 100,000 entrepreneurs through the Ideas Community network.
Wes added: “Ideasfest has an energy unlike anything else. Yes, there are challenges and hurdles, but the overwhelming feeling was one of celebration businesses doing remarkable things, people backing themselves, communities being built in real time.
“The biggest reminder from the two days was that surrounding yourself with the right people is one of the most powerful things a founder can do. We came away genuinely inspired, and more determined than ever to make sure the people building great businesses are building the right financial foundations alongside it.”
