Julie Meyer is sitting in a starkly lit attic, surrounded by piles of £50 notes. A California blond in a crisp, white shirt, her long, stockinged legs crossed at the knee, she listens intently to the young man standing before her. As he talks, she sizes him up. Eventually, she tells him: “I’m going to make you an offer.” It could be a scene from a heist movie, but Meyer is in a BBC studio, shooting a 2009 episode of the TV show Dragons’ Den. A celebrated entrepreneur with a venture capital fund, she is ready to invest in whichever contestants catch her eye. For the viewers, she has some advice: “What is success? A lot of it is self-belief. Continuing on when most rational people would stop.”

This is an online spin-off from the original Dragons’ Den series, so the stakes are a little lower. But for Lex Deak, a 23-year-old with a big idea for a social media website, what happens in this room today could be make or break. He desperately wants to work with Meyer.

During the dotcom boom that tore through London like tulip fever in the late 1990s, Meyer was a big name. Apple’s brightly coloured iMacs were flying off the shelves, people were rushing to get online, and the web was becoming truly worldwide. For a short, thrilling moment, it felt as if anybody could start a tech business – and get filthy rich doing it.

At the centre of it all was Meyer’s monthly networking club, First Tuesday, where young hustlers with little more than a concept and a funky brand name could raise millions on a handshake, as investors scrambled for a piece of the digital revolution. Along with Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman, founders of the online travel agency Lastminute.com, Meyer became the face of a movement, the star of a golden generation that was upending the male, pale and pinstriped world of British industry.

Accolades followed: the Davos forum named Meyer a “global leader of tomorrow”; the Wall Street Journal ranked her as one of the most influential businesswomen in Europe. She had a newspaper column, was recruited as a UK government adviser, and in 2012 was awarded an MBE.

For Deak, who had watched Dragons’ Den religiously, taking notes in front of the TV, Meyer seemed the ideal mentor. When she offered £20,000 for a stake in his venture, Family Fridge (like Facebook, but for families), he didn’t hesitate to say yes. “I was very keen to get her involvement, but very naive,” he says now. She gave him space in her office and introduced him to people. But the money? He never saw a penny.

“I was primed and ready to be the young, talked‑about tech entrepreneur. I’d been nominated as a rising star by the Institute of Directors. At the time, it felt like she had stolen an opportunity from me … it created a fork in my trajectory. She definitely did me a wrong-un.”

Deak says Meyer never gave him a straight no; she just kept asking him to revise the business plan. Of course, not all deals agreed on air work out – many fall through after the show, during the due diligence process. As time passed, however, Deak found himself offering support to a growing circle of people who say they were damaged by their own dealings with Meyer.

Over the years, the one-time queen of the dotcom scene has left a trail of trouble in her wake, with a series of failed ventures that entangled everyone from the former chair of Marks & Spencer to the prime minister of Malta. The Guardian has seen evidence of insolvent companies, unpaid wages, debts to suppliers and millions in lost investments. Those who admired and trusted her say they have been left with burning regrets, describing a seemingly endless cycle of seduction and betrayal.

A former associate describes Meyer as a “professional confidence trickster”. For her ex-boyfriend and business partner, the Swiss millionaire René Eichenberger, she is a “master of manipulation and false narratives … Once she gets exposed in one country, she finds new supporters who believe in her and help her move on to the next jurisdiction.”

In recent months, the Guardian has heard allegations of a darker nature against Meyer. Investors and founders say they have lost hundreds of thousands in three separate incidents, which they describe as scams.

Meyer did not respond to requests for comment. She has previously rejected any suggestion her activities are not above board. In her marketing, she describes herself as “one of Europe’s leading backers of entrepreneurs”, who has spent decades identifying transformational companies.

Despite years of controversy, she has kept the show on the road, hiring new teams and starting new ventures, all while releasing an endless stream of social media content to maintain her profile and seek out fresh contacts. “This will continue until the public sees who Julie Meyer really is,” says Eichenberger.

In a year-long investigation, the Guardian has followed the trail to London, Malta, Switzerland and Greece, gathering accounts from dozens of former staff, business associates and entrepreneurs. By speaking out, they hope their stories can serve as a warning.

***

London

If there was one place for a young and hungry entrepreneur to be in the late 90s, it was London: a Silicon Valley breeze was blowing into town, and the city was at the centre of Europe’s first internet frenzy. Tony Blair had entered Downing Street at the head of the first Labour government in 18 years, and the capital was swinging to the beat of the Cool Britannia pop‑culture revival.

“It was fabulously exciting,” recalls the author and former BBC tech journalist Rory Cellan-Jones. “I mean, the polar opposite of going to BP’s annual general meeting. There were a lot of parties. There were people becoming rich overnight in a way that we in this country were absolutely not used to.”

It was into this heady atmosphere that Julie Marie Meyer, armed with a US accent and a master’s from France’s prestigious Insead business school, first arrived in the UK.

Born in Michigan in 1966, she was raised in a small‑town suburb of Sacramento in California. Her father, a physician, insisted on a religious upbringing. According to Meyer’s own origin story, after graduating she left for Paris with $1,000 in her pocket. Meyer often recounts her parting words to her father, who saw her off at the airport. “He turned to my stepmother and he said, ‘Don’t worry, she’ll be back soon. She doesn’t have that much money.’ And I spun around and said, ‘You watch, I’m gonna live over there the rest of my life. I don’t need your money.’”

Meyer spent a decade in France, jumping from one job to another, before securing her master’s. Recounting those years in a blog, she says she became “obsessed with making money”. One day she was out driving with her boyfriend – 15 years her senior – when he pulled over and told her: “Stop talking about money. If you are good at something and focused on it, the money will find you.”

Meyer didn’t wait to be found. She crossed the Channel in 1998 and joined a venture capital firm where the boss, Thomas Teichman, reportedly rode a micro‑scooter in the office. Their hottest new investment was a travel website offering discount holiday deals. In March 2000, after just a few months of trading, Lastminute.com would make history by floating on the London stock market at a valuation of £571m.

Hoberman, Lastminute’s co-founder, had been approached to help run a networking business pairing tech-company founders with potential investors. Too busy to do it himself, he pitched the idea to Meyer. “She was very outgoing, she was very good at convening people,” he says. “I thought she was an operator, in the sense that she was a real networker.”

And so Meyer opened her address book and hit the phones. On the first Tuesday of October 1998, about 80 people gathered at the uber-hip Alphabet bar in Beak Street, Soho, London. “From that original meeting grew an organisation that was to spawn many of the dotcom investments of the following 18 months and itself grow into a multinational business,” Cellan‑Jones wrote in dot.bomb, his ringside account of an extraordinary period.

Hoberman and Lane Fox spoke at the second event, in November, while entrepreneurs with green dots on their name badges mingled with investors with red dots, looking to cut deals. Soon, the parties were so popular, they were hiring Lord’s cricket club. A chief executive was recruited, an American called Reade Fahs. He says he wanted the job because First Tuesday really stood for something; it was “commerce with a cause”. He describes Meyer as the driving force: “If you had to pick one person to give credit for First Tuesday to, it would be Julie … I hand it to her. She had vision.”

In the space of two years, Meyer and her co-founders turned First Tuesday from a cocktail party into a company and franchised it around the world. They claimed to have helped raise more than $147m (£98m) for startups, including the fashion retailer Boo.com and the beauty site Clickmango.

A self-described workaholic whose political views were firmly on the right, Meyer liked to describe First Tuesday as “my revenge on socialism”. But it was a short-lived triumph. In March 2000, stock market screens around the world flashed red. The dotcom bubble had burst. By June, Meyer’s investors were pushing for a sale, hoping to recoup their money. An Israeli company offered $50m in cash and shares. Meyer wanted to hold out and keep going, but her male co-owners thought it was a good deal, and she was out-voted.

In the years that followed, she would often talk of being dismissed and underestimated by men. In 2015, she told Harper’s Bazaar: “I think I’ve always been inherently distrustful of people telling me I can’t do things.” Proving her doubters wrong became a motivating force.

***

If First Tuesday was her revenge on socialism, Meyer’s next venture, Ariadne Capital, was about showing the world she could make it on her own. In a 2002 interview with the Guardian, headlined “Net’s queen bee still buzzes”, she set out her stall. Ariadne would host networking events and earn fees advising startups on how to find backers. It would also make some investments of its own.

As Ariadne grew, its boss spent lavishly. Meyer’s team moved to £10,000-a-month offices just off Trafalgar Square. For Meyer, there was a chauffeur-driven car, a personal trainer and two personal assistants – one at the office and a second to keep house. Successful businesswomen had to look the part, she told Harper’s Bazaar. “During the week, I wear … Ralph Lauren, Mulberry, Michael Kors … and Roland Mouret.” She saw her facialist – an expert in Indian alternative medicine – every Saturday “without fail”.

In 2009, Meyer launched her venture capital arm – Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs – the ACE fund, for short. Edward Wray, founder of the gambling group Betfair, was among the high-profile backers.

Rachel Lowe was hired in 2012, to help advise startups. When she arrived at the Ariadne offices, she says she found herself entering “a temple to Julie”: framed pictures of Meyer lined the walls. While the boss looked the part, Lowe says the organisation felt chaotic. “Everything was just an absolute mess,” she recalls. “There were just a lot of young people who didn’t know what the hell they were doing.”

Meyer, says Lowe, had a tendency to explode with rage at staff: “I knew whether Julie was in the office just through feeling something in the air … She ruled by fear.” Towards her, however, Lowe says Meyer was sweetness and light. At least, at first.

After a few months without problems, Lowe says Meyer began making excuses for not paying her invoices, eventually accusing Lowe of poor performance. Lowe brought a legal claim against her. The judge ruled in Lowe’s favour and awarded her approximately £26,000 plus interest and costs. By then, multiple staff and suppliers were also claiming to have not been paid. A PR agency sued for about £76,000, and settled out of court.

Writing anonymously on the recruitment website Glassdoor, a former employee claimed Meyer would sometimes hide from her creditors. “Once, when a supplier came to the office demanding payment, she snuck out down the fire escape.” (Meyer has previously said of the Glassdoor reviews: “There are a lot of people much more important than me who get written up on anonymous websites. Comes with the territory.”)

By the summer of 2017, Ariadne could no longer afford the rent on its offices. The staff were sent to work from home.

So where did it all go wrong? It seems the vision never quite matched the reality. At first, Meyer had talked of pulling in £60m for her ACE fund, but an investor report circulated in 2017 put the final total invested at just £7.6m. Controversially, the report states that more than half the money raised – £4.4m – was spent buying a 100% share in one of Meyer’s own ventures.

None of Ariadne’s investments produced a big return, and many resulted in a loss. A former employee, asked to put a value on a software firm Ariadne had invested in, says: “When I looked at it, it was snake oil. She understood about fundraising and schmoozing, but she did not understand the tech startup space at all.”

Under pressure from creditors, Ariadne went into administration in December 2017. Those with shares in the ACE fund found they were worthless. Meyer said at the time: “I remain deeply sorry that it was necessary for me to put the company into administration, especially given the consequences for employees and unsecured creditors.”

A separate group of investors – which included Stuart Rose, the former boss of Marks & Spencer – also say they lost out. Lawyers acting for the group would later allege that funds intended for investment in a digital marketing startup were paid into a bank account controlled by Meyer, and subsequently misappropriated to fund Ariadne Capital.

In their report, administrators for Ariadne found no assets, other than a few investments that they valued at just £2,528. Hundreds of thousands were owed to employees, a similar amount to the tax office – and a chunky £7,500 to the taxi firm Addison Lee. For Meyer, though, this was not the moment to throw in the towel.

***

Malta

While accountants untangled the mess in London, Meyer was already on to her next venture. By the summer of 2017, she had installed herself in a suite at Malta’s five-star Westin Dragonara hotel. On the top floor, her staff commandeered the business centre as a temporary office.

She acquired a Maltese company with a licence to manage investments. Soon, she was telling the press that Ariadne Capital Malta was going to raise a €1bn European fund.

To attract the cash, she needed to make some noise. So Meyer convened a summit, assembling startups and big money investors from around Europe. The prime minister of Malta spoke at the glittering summer launch, in the ballroom of the Dragonara hotel. On the terrace afterwards, Meyer held court, smiling as investors milled around, ready to open their chequebooks.

The event had been a huge success, but behind the scenes there were new allegations that Meyer wasn’t paying the bills. Mark Lightfoot, whose design agency had been hired for the event, says he was owed €60,000 for unpaid invoices. He says Meyer had initially explained it away, blaming technical issues, and he believed she would do right by him eventually. “In my mind, it was, like, here’s a chance to prove myself. She is a big, swanky American investor who’s over here in little old Malta.”

He says that when Meyer offered to settle for half the amount owed, he realised his mistake and started legal proceedings, getting a judge to freeze her bank accounts. Emails suggest she hit back hard, telling his lawyer the family assets were at risk: “If … the entire Lightweight [sic] clan don’t want to experience a multi‑generational destruction of wealth, I strongly advise a fast publication of my proposed apology … I am so totally not joking.” Lightfoot dropped the claim, figuring a favourable court ruling was no guarantee of payment.

Meyer has previously rejected the allegations of non-payment, telling the newspaper City AM in 2022: “I don’t remember Mark Lightfoot. I’ve been in business for 30 years, and don’t always remember names … We always pay people their salaries.”

By November, sources say there was a big hotel bill to be settled. The bang on the door of suite 514 came in the early hours. It was the night manager, and he had a police officer with him. Meyer’s two personal assistants awoke with a start. Reception had let them in the previous day and they had spent the evening packing.

Meyer, who was not there, had emailed her PAs a room plan, with instructions: “Take everything in the drawers under the TV. All shoes in both closets … the more important clothes – expensive ones that I need now … Bring the princess crown in the safe, which is open.”

According to the email, they were to pack a couple of cases and leave the rest. They should avoid doing anything to “raise alarm that we’re doing a runner, and I’m fleeing the country … Be super-friendly to the staff in the hallway and don’t allow them to think there’s anything up.”

So when the assistants opened the door to the night manager, they stuck to the script, convincing the police officer that all was well. According to one of the assistants, who asked not to be named, the journey home was difficult: “I felt like everyone was watching us at that moment. Even at the airport people were staring at us,” she says. “I was, like, ‘Let’s just get out of this country as soon as possible.’”

Meyer still wasn’t ready to call it a day in Malta. In February 2018, she sent a message to her staff WhatsApp group, the one called “Inner Circle”. In it, she described a “major pivotal transaction” shifting Ariadne’s assets out of the UK. “I AM NOT BLOND,” she proclaimed. The restructuring was, she said, “all legitimate … Nothing in London. Everything in Malta. Julie 1, universe 0.”

The celebrations were short-lived. In Malta, not paying wages is a criminal offence, and the state brought several cases of alleged non-payment to court. After Meyer failed to attend a hearing in April 2018, a magistrate ordered the police commissioner to locate her within 48 hours, using all resources at their disposal.

By May, Malta’s financial regulator had suspended Ariadne’s fund management licence. Less than a year after its extravagant debut, the Mediterranean adventure was at an end. Meyer had managed to smuggle a tiara out of a hotel, but her crown was well and truly slipping.

***

Switzerland

Simon Davis, a 51-year-old entrepreneur from Johannesburg, will never forget the day he had to call his investors to tell them the bad news. At his request, they had transferred more than $200,000 to a Swiss law firm retained by Meyer, and it was all gone. “She just walked off with the money,” says Davis.

His South African company, ScarabTech, makes compact machines that communities can use to turn their plastic waste into fuel. They were looking for funding to hire more staff. Someone mentioned Meyer, and Davis recognised her name immediately. Nearly 30 years before, as a young man working in London, he had attended a First Tuesday gathering at the Science Museum. He got in touch, and she invited him to her latest investor event to pitch his idea.

By now, Meyer had moved to Zurich. It was Eichenberger, a Swiss judo enthusiast who had made a fortune in aviation, who suggested the move. They had met decades before, and when Meyer reconnected with him in 2018, Eichenberger says they became a couple.

She founded another new venture, Viva Investment Partners, a Swiss-registered company modelled on Ariadne. Eichenberger took a stake, and some of the old shareholders from London were even given a share. Meyer had a six-figure salary, a company flat in the best part of town, and a company credit card for meals, clothes and hair salons, according to documents seen by the Guardian.

From her office overlooking Lake Zurich, Meyer went back to what she knew best – hosting events for startups in search of capital. The gathering attended by Davis, in January 2025, was small. But he was impressed: a handful of serious investors had come to hear the pitches. Meyer, it seems, still has valuable connections.

Afterwards, he says she approached him with a proposal: Viva was planning a new fund, to back a select group of startups, and ScarabTech had made the cut. Documents suggest she dangled the prospect of a $900,000 investment in his company.

He stayed in the apartment next to hers, and says they spent the next few weeks refining the business plan. They would work late into the night, speaking on the phone until 2am. “She certainly applied her mind. She made you feel like you were doing it together. Which we were.” ScarabTech’s existing backers and a new investor agreed to join the fundraising, putting in $200,000 – and Davis added $36,000 of his own.

In May 2025, he received a letter from Meyer: the deal was off. There would be no investment in ScarabTech due to what she said were concerns about inaccurate and incomplete numbers, and issues with the startup’s existing shareholders. She said she had been hoping to make a “good investment”, but that Davis had failed to take on any feedback, adding: “This has been a huge disappointment to me and my team.”

When Davis asked for the money he had raised from his existing backers to be returned, he received an unexpected invoice. Meyer wanted 162,000 Swiss francs (£145,000) in “success fees”, “corporate infrastructure fees” and “management fees”. Davis is clear – he says he never engaged Meyer to provide these services.

Meyer sent emails threatening legal action: “In very clear language: if you do anything to hurt my firm, I will hold you and each of your board directors … directly liable for the damage,” she warned.

Frantic, Davis approached the Swiss law firm whose account had been used for the payments. He says they told him the cash was gone. The Guardian understands that at Meyer’s request, the funds were transferred to an account in Lithuania.

“My heart sank. I still had some outside hope that maybe she made an error, but, no, there was no error,” Davis remembers. He produced a report for his investors, alleging “cross-border fraud and intimidation”. He notified the police in South Africa and the FBI in Delaware, US, where his company is registered, but no investigations were opened. He also notified police in the UK and they closed the case on 13 January 2026, after determining that there were insufficient lines of inquiry to follow.

The Guardian has examined two similar cases, both in 2023, involving a price comparison site from the Middle East and a craft gin company from Barcelona. Investors and founders say the money for the startups – more than $200,000 in total – was transferred to Meyer, but then it vanished, with the startups claiming they received nothing.

Eichenberger says he no longer speaks to Meyer. At first, they worked well together. He says he even helped settle her legal disputes with suppliers and former employees, one by one. Lawyers in Malta confirm the criminal cases have been closed.

It wasn’t long, however, before problems surfaced. He says the events were losing money, and an acquisition by Viva of a UK software company turned sour. Drive Software Solutions was wound up in 2023 and the liquidator’s report, filed last year, raises serious questions about missing pensions money. It seems that contributions were deducted from staff  wages, but never paid into a scheme.

When Meyer’s split with Eichenberger came, it was explosive. The pair have been embroiled in numerous legal battles over assets and shareholdings since they parted. He remains a shareholder in Viva, having not found a buyer for his stake.

For her part, Meyer has rejected Eichenberger’s criticisms, telling a newspaper in 2022 that he “has an agenda to damage the firm, and is hostile to us, which is why he is gone”.

Many of those who have come forward to tell their stories are a resilient bunch. Davis has moved on to other ventures. Lowe lives in the south of France and runs a vinyl record company. Deak has launched one tech business after another. His latest is a shopping app backed by Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts.

But not everyone has bounced back.

***

Greece

Along the sea road, among the warehouses, the building site stands empty. Construction ground to a halt months ago, after the foundations were laid.

Malcolm Williams, 57, had wanted to put something back into the community where he was raised, on the South Atlantic island of Saint Helena. He founded The Green Fish Company, and set about raising money to build a tuna processing plant. Searching for backers, he was introduced to Meyer and invited to present the plan at her 2024 summer networking event in Greece. When not in Switzerland, sources say Meyer spends much of the year in Athens, or on the island of Kea, where she owns a villa named Carpe Diem.

Williams forked out thousands of euros to attend. When he arrived, he was disappointed. Instead of talking to a room full of venture capitalists, he found himself pitching to other founders. The promised entertainment – a yacht and gala dinner – turned out to be no more than a ride in a couple of small motor boats and some sandwiches.

A letter of engagement shared by Williams, who spent thousands more attending another event and a meeting in Dubai, suggests Meyer had dangled the prospect of a €500,000 “minimum” investment by Viva – subject to due diligence. The investment never materialised. Two years later, he is still struggling to recover, and the tuna plant remains unbuilt.

“We’re back to square one,” he says. “We should have had our business up and running by now, you know, and we’ve just wasted time … It kicks the trust out of you.”

Those who are drawn into Meyer’s orbit all share one thing: a powerful desire to succeed. They say Meyer has learned to exploit that desire.

This investigation has uncovered 17 legal claims against Meyer and her companies from employees, contractors and suppliers who say they were owed money, and a 2024 extract from the debt register in Switzerland lists dozens of creditors, including a florist, photographers and a hotel in the St Moritz ski resort. Lightfoot, who has been tracking Meyer’s activities for years, believes the total number of people claiming to have not been paid by her could run into the hundreds.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which had issued licences to Ariadne in the UK, launched an inquiry into Meyer and her UK companies. Codenamed operation Hibbing, it looked at whether rules around managing investments may have been breached. The probe ran for five years and took evidence from numerous associates of Meyer, before being shut down in 2023. A spokesperson for the FCA says: “We sympathise with those who lost money in the collapse of the firm. We investigated this case fully. There was insufficient evidence at the time to bring criminal charges, but we are always willing to consider any new evidence.”

In 2022, Meyer was found in contempt of court. She had hired the blue-chip law firm Farrer & Co in a bid to close down negative publicity, and then neglected to pay the fees. They sued for about £200,000, and a warrant was issued for her arrest after she failed to attend hearings. After that, the University of Warwick annulled her honorary doctorate. Last summer, her MBE was withdrawn. On her LinkedIn page, however, she still styles herself Dr Julie Meyer MBE.

Davis says that, on some level, Meyer still yearns to be a successful businesswoman. “I think she wants a win. So she works for that, but if it doesn’t work, she’s got the insurance policy of knowing she can just take the money anyway.”

Lightfoot believes she is dishonest. “She is a confidence trickster; there’s nothing more to it than that. Her chosen field is the world of venture capital and entrepreneurship. And she’s figured out a formula, her playbook, and it works for her.”

The business world is full of those who stand accused of crossing the line from hustle to heist. What makes Meyer different is that she once stood for something – “commerce with a cause”, as Fahs put it; changing the world by backing the best new ideas. It is a reputation that she still trades on, a story she still seems to tell herself. And so she continues on, long after most rational people would have stopped.

So far this year, Meyer has advertised a “Mediterranean Summit: Longevity, Tech Bio, MedTech, Wellness” at her base on the Greek island of Kea, and several investment events in Zurich. In January, she charged £4,000 a head for a two-day gathering, promising to connect startups with “investors, industrialists, financiers and fund managers”. For another £4,000, delegates could access the “pre‑summit” with a specially curated programme featuring snow polo and a Swiss village tour.

The allegations in this article have all been put to Meyer, but she did not respond to them. The Guardian eventually caught up with her near her flat in Zurich, on a sunny afternoon in late January, as she was preparing to host a drinks party for her latest networking event. With a leopard-print coat and sparkling black trousers, blond hair spilling over her shoulders, she was, as ever, dressed to impress.

Instead of a designer handbag, however, she was holding the handle of an orange plastic shopping trolley. The bottles inside clinked as it rolled over the cobble stones. She seemed a cut-price version of the First Tuesday queen bee, unable to engage with the reality of her fall from grace.

Asked about the many allegations made against her, about the loss of her MBE, she paused for a moment, before insisting, in her unmistakable California accent, that we had the wrong person: “I’m not who you think I am. I’m doing some shopping here … Could you please leave me alone? I’m not Julie Meyer.”

• Additional reporting: David Pegg

• Think like a billionaire, a two-part series about Julie Meyer from the Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast, is available now. (Subscribe to Today in Focus wherever you get your podcasts.)