Tech start-up leaves creditors $5m out of pocket
Thursday, 7 August 2025
Once hailed as a start-up on its way to global success, RIPA Global was placed into liquidation earlier this year. Now, founder Mel Gollan is fighting bankruptcy, while her former employees speak out about the tech mogul’s “fall from grace”. Senior reporter Katie Ham investigates.
“This particular business I have built here has the potential to turnover $100 billion ‒ not million ‒ $100 billion in five years.”
These were claims made by Mel Gollan in a 2020 interview. But far from basking in a $100 billion dollar profit, five years on the tech entrepreneur has lost her flagship company in a multimillion-dollar collapse ‒ and is fighting potential bankruptcy at the High Court in Wellington.
Gollan founded The Work Shop Limited, which traded as RIPA Global New Zealand, in 2011.
The tech start-up branded itself as having “game-changing” technology that would reduce the time and cost of accounting through an app that automated the processing of receipts, invoices and payments.
'Effectively what we're saying is: ‘nothing beats doing nothing’ and that’s what we’re offering to our customers,” Gollan said at the time.
But in February, Inland Revenue successfully applied to put The Work Shop into liquidation.
The first liquidator’s report released in March shows RIPA Global having debts of more than $5.5 million. Inland Revenue is owed $316,978, employees $252,289 and unsecured creditors a further $4.96m.
The Post has spoken to some of Gollan’s former employees about the impact the company’s collapse has had of them.
Where some have had to take loans to be able to afford their bills, others say they have faced losing their homes and have had to sell their possessions to get by.
For one former employee, Linda Cilliers, the first sign something was amiss came in July 2024.
“We started getting paid late. Then, in the August, we had our second late pay. I asked Mel if there was something I needed to know. I’ve got a mortgage and kids. But she said she would never do that to us.
“Then, of course, it all came crumbling down. There was zero transparency with us at any stage. We kept being told she was waiting for an investment that would come through on the Monday, then the next Monday, then the next. She kept dodging everything.”
It was only after the liquidation was announced that Cilliers started to “piece it all together”.
Cilliers says she is still owed about $26,000: “We almost lost our house and couldn't stay on top of bills. All of us from RIPA are still trying to dig ourselves out of the financial holes we had to dig to survive.”
Like Cilliers, Craig Knox worked for Gollan for three years and says he has been left about $47,500 out of pocket.
The former Operations Manager said he was left in “no man’s land” without pay from September 2024 through to the company’s liquidation in February.
“She left everyone in a hole just before Christmas. It’s not a good time to be trying to get a job, when everything winds down.
“Financially, it was crippling for all of us. It’s not like redundancy when you get holiday pay or, if you’re lucky, sick pay. We got nothing.”
Knox said he had only recently started working regularly again, having set up a business with two other former RIPA employees.
Where once Gollan was receiving accolades, like the MWDI Māori woman’s innovator of the year award in 2019, she had experienced “quite the fall from grace”, Knox added.
Another former employee, who The Post agreed not to name to protect his privacy, worked as a developer at RIPA and told a similar story.
“The first time we were paid late was around the time of the CrowdStrike bug that took down a lot of systems around the world. I gave her the benefit of the doubt that it could have been because of that.
“But I’d been unhappy for a few months before that, so I was already looking for other jobs. I guess I had a funny feeling about it all. I definitely wasn’t surprised. There were all kinds of rumours about her owing money to different people.”
The employee said he thought the strategy of RIPA had been wrong.
“Her ambition gets ahead of her ability to execute. Mel can dream big, and has the ability to convince investors of those dreams, but the problems come when you can’t actually realise those dreams. She’d give the outward impression of being very successful but there wasn’t a lot of truth to that.
“Ultimately the responsibility is with the CEO to decide if the company is solvent to continue trading, and Mel let the train wreck get ahead of her.”
All three former employees pointed The Post towards Gollan’s latest venture: Kumara Pai Ltd.
“I just don’t want anyone else to be dragged into business with her.
“I have no idea how she’s paying those new employees, maybe through equity in the business or something, but if there’s any income being generated, then that money should be ours,” the developer said.
Kumara Pai had been talked about in the RIPA office, Cilliers said, but had later been separated into a different entity. “It’s like she wanted to jump ship.”
On July 29, Gollan appeared in the High Court in Wellington after BNZ applied to have her declared bankrupt. Gollan spoke for herself, disputing several issues about the application.
Associate Judge Andrew Skelton said a later hearing would consider the issues, but no date was set.
The liquidator’s second report is due to be filed on September 1. More information would be available then, national manager of the Insolvency and Trustee Service, Russell Fildes told The Post.
The service was in contact with the company’s director, Fildes said, but at this stage it could not estimate when the liquidation would be completed.
When approached for comment, Gollan said she was “unable to comment until the legal situation is resolved”, but that she would be “happy to comment post that”. She did not reply to further questions.
Gollan had previously acknowledged funding was an issue for the business though, conceding in an interview in 2021 that international investment had been more forthcoming than local.
“The New Zealand investment landscape has what I call the America’s Cup mentality ‒ they will only help you when you’ve got your hands on the cup.”
But Gollan remained determined, setting her sights on expanding RIPA into every commercial shop: “We are not yet, but neither was Visa when they started.”