Journalist Olivia Lee was in Fabric nightclub in London when she heard a story that intrigued her: a tech founder told her a tale of woe about a luxury networking event he had attended. He claimed there were supposed to be yacht trips and gala dinners, but nothing had gone as planned. “He claimed that there were these really chaotic scenes of taxi drivers supposedly working for the organiser going on strike because they hadn’t been paid. People were chucked out of hotel rooms because the organiser appeared to have not paid the hotel bill.”
The woman he said was behind the event was Julie Meyer, an entrepreneur who had been the queen of the 2000s dotcom scene in London and was later awarded an MBE. Glamorous, rich, and well-connected, Meyer was a darling of the dotcom boom. But people who worked with the entrepreneur complain about unpaid wages, debts to suppliers, and missing money.
Lee, along with Juliette Garside from the Guardian’s investigations team, began looking into Meyer. Lee tells Helen Pidd what she learned about the tech entrepreneur and the accusations made against her. The investigation unravels a complicated story involving broken promises and financial chaos.
Explore more on these topics: Business, Today in Focus.
