Pollen Lawsuit Alleges Beleaguered Events Co. Stopped Paying Employees Amid Collapse

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Pollen faces a proposed class action that alleges the bankrupt destination events company abruptly stopped paying employees last June while claiming it was nearing completion on a transaction that would eventually pay the workers what they were owed.

The plaintiff in the 12-page complaint alleges she was fired by Pollen, a venture capital-backed startup who markets itself as an invite-only, influencer-centric marketplace for experiences, festivals and events, after repeatedly protesting about the “late and missing paychecks.”

Although U.K.-headquartered Pollen raised more than $200 million in venture capital, most recently raising $150 million in funding in April 2022, the company, who has been accused in forums such as Reddit of being a pyramid scheme or scam, apparently used that money to pay for the “housing” and “entertainment” expenses of co-founders Callum and Liam Negus-Fancey, the lawsuit says. 

The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter reported this week that although Pollen at one time “seemed to have pulled off the improbable feat of building a business in the notoriously low margin industry of events,” in addition to surviving the pandemic and building “a solid software engineering organization,” the company in May laid off roughly 200 people, a third of its staff. By the following month, Pollen’s leadership team “disappeared,” employees told the Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter, and were absent from in-person events, all while investors were quietly resigning from the company’s board of directors. 

On August 9, shortly after the week-long Drumcode Festival in Malta was canceled due to Pollen management’s apparent failure to address an “accumulation of unresolved problems,” the company, facing mounting pressure from creditors, went bankrupt and entered administration in New York. Pollen’s board of directors reportedly felt the best option was to restructure the business after failing to close a deal with a potential buyer for parent company StreetTeam Software, LLC. 

On August 10, Pollen fired the plaintiff and “many of her New York colleagues,” the suit says. 

The plaintiff, who started working for Pollen as a research manager in March 2022, claims that the company’s chief people officer advised on July 15 that employees’ June 30 paychecks would be made out to them that day. Although Pollen employees were eventually paid their June 30 paychecks, they were not paid their July 15 paychecks, as Pollen claimed it would make another belated payment on July 22, and from that point on payment schedules would go back to normal, the lawsuit says. 

On July 21, however, Pollen “reneged on the promise,” advising that employees’ July 15 paychecks would come the week of July 25, the filing states. 

On July 29, yet another pay delay was announced by Pollen, who this time said that the company was in negotiations with a new partner and that the deal had been “due to conclude” earlier in the week of July 25, according to the case. 

Ultimately, Pollen never paid the plaintiff or any other workers in New York for the pay periods ending July 15 and July 31, 2022, the lawsuit alleges. The plaintiff also claims Pollen failed to pay insurance premiums for employees, and as a result her health insurance lapsed on July 1 without her knowledge. 

A June 2022 report from Sifted.eu depicts Pollen as having dragged its heels in handling a flood of refund requests from frustrated customers, including for tickets to events canceled due to the pandemic. 

The case looks to represent all employees who worked for Pollen in New York after June 15, 2022. 

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