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.

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.

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

I'm surprised the failure to deposit pension deductions isn't treated as a more serious failure. Knowing nothing about UK law... is that not some sort of crime?

This is not a collapse. It's hubris, poor financial management, and a complete breach of trust.