[HN Gopher] Pollen's Collapse: "$200M Raised" but Staff Unpaid
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       Pollen's Collapse: "$200M Raised" but Staff Unpaid
        
       Author : marc_omorain
       Score  : 29 points
       Date   : 2022-09-19 18:46 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.pragmaticengineer.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.pragmaticengineer.com)
        
       | just_boost_it wrote:
       | What a scummy place to work. They ripped off customers and stole
       | people's pension contributions. The fact that they were prepared
       | to do this suggests that an ugly end was always likely.
        
       | fzliu wrote:
       | This is not a collapse. It's hubris, poor financial management,
       | and a complete breach of trust.
        
         | solarmist wrote:
         | I don't understand you're objection to the word collapse? It's
         | also consistent with your description...
        
       | guywithahat wrote:
       | I'm not saying what they did was ok but I understand their
       | thought process.
       | 
       | In their minds they had done everything right, and every year
       | they raised more money. They figured they had the fundraising
       | round in the bag so they could move forward with their spending
       | plan and they money would be there. Obviously it didn't happen,
       | and (now in denial) they figured they would delay payments until
       | next month, and the board members who weren't in denial saw the
       | writing on the wall, disagreed with the companies decisions, and
       | left.
       | 
       | I think there were certainly issues with wrong priorities but
       | this seems more like a classic case of denial than a CEO who's
       | trying to scam his employees. He just couldn't accept his
       | billion(?) dollar company was actually worth nothing, and frankly
       | I'm not sure if I could accept this reality well either
        
       | quantified wrote:
       | Am I the only one who would expect an "events and festival tech
       | startup" that "... organized unique 'event experiences' featuring
       | superstars such as Justin Bieber" to be capable of being scammy
       | to people? Make its people feel good while they get lied to,
       | slightly more than normal for a company? I think "Fyre festival".
       | 
       | A glassdoor rating means nothing, it's always spammed by
       | marketing and companies can remove whatever they like.
        
         | Apocryphon wrote:
         | The events space seems to attract a lot of shady business
         | practices. It's not even outright scams like the Fyre Festival,
         | but boring legitimate businesses like Ticketmaster ripping off
         | customers with service fees.
        
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       (page generated 2022-09-19 23:02 UTC)