VentureDay 2025

Keynote address

12:10 - 13:00

Ciaran Burke
COO and Co-Founder at Swoop 

Ciaran Burke is the COO & Co-Founder of small business financing platform, Swoop. 

He began his career at KPMG as a management consultant where he found a passion in growing businesses and building a community around them which brought him to build Hiive.co.uk, which he built into a creative community of over 150,000 members and 4,000 businesses. He has also acted as an advisor for Accenture. He is a passionate speaker on digital communities and has been a guest speaker at Digital Shoreditch, Guardian Masterclasses, Social Media Week, BBC Radio, BBC Radio Academy, Bristol Digital Week and Birmingham Digital Week. He is also a guest blogger for Huffington Post.  

In 2018, following many months of planning, securing funding, and platform development he co-founded Swoop with Andrea Reynolds. Swoop is a platform which helps businesses secure finance across debt, equity, and grants, and helps them make savings on everyday business costs. Swoop has helped over 250,000 SMEs globally secure over £1.5bn in financing across its businesses in the UK, Ireland, Canada, US Australia and South Africa. Swoop has secured £20m in funding to develop our offering to small businesses across investors such as Sandbox, Velocity, AB Ventures and Enterprise Ireland. Swoop won Deloitte's fastest growing technology business in 2023 and last year Ciaran was nominated for EY's Entrepreneur of the Year.  

Outside of work, Ciaran loves all things sport, particularly his love/hate relationship for Aston Villa.  

Keynote address

16:20 - 17:10

Dr Johnny Wake
Managing Partner at Courteenhall Farms

Johnny Wake is the Managing Partner of Courteenhall Farms, a diverse rural estate business in Northamptonshire which he has grown substantially since taking over in 2013.

He transitioned from his original career as a medical doctor and has overseen the journey to regenerative agriculture, promoting soil health and biodiversity and has led Courteenhall into a large Higher Tier scheme with Natural England. As part of his drive to make farming more environmentally and financially sustainable, he co-founded the Tove Valley Cluster Farm group and founded and chairs the Central England region of Environmental Farmers Group. He recently finished the maximum term on the Country Land & Business Association Policy Committee, became a Trustee of Linking Environment & Farming (LEAF) and also sits on the Wildlife Farms and Estates England Committee.

He has diversified his business into multiple aspects of agriculture and also commercial property, events, and renewable energy, with a particular emphasis on heat pumps.

He has set up and chairs an educational charity at Courteenhall for local schools called New Leaf Learning and has made Courteenhall the first farming business in the UK to become a member of the Good Business Charter. He was until recently a Governor of St Andrew’s Healthcare, and is currently a Patron of HomeStart Daventry & South Northants and a Deputy Lieutenant of Northamptonshire.

Johnny is also an angel investor and supports many of the companies he has backed.

He was recently awarded The British Farming Awards Sustainability Award, the Royal Agricultural Society’s Bledisloe Gold Medal for excellence in land management, and Cranfield University’s Entrepreneur Alumni Award.