The then chancellor’s loan scheme, set up as Covid hit, was supposed to keep dynamic startups going, but ended up giving taxpayer cash to long-established or lame-duck businesses
In the small hours of a warm August night in 2022, staff at London-based festival tickets business Pollen received a lengthy email confirming their worst fears. Just three months after a $150m fundraising round that valued the company at $800m, Pollen had gone bankrupt.
It was a dramatic implosion. Some of the biggest names in venture capital had poured cash into the company, believing it could become a giant of the money-spinning live events industry. Their dream evaporated when the events Pollen sold tickets for had to be cancelled during the Covid-19 pandemic. Within weeks, another side to the story began to emerge.
