Note added for clarity: this was not a startup, it was a long established company with around 30 employees. It is in an industry where raising funding would be a disaster and guarantee no orders ever again. I was working for a company some years ago, and pay started to get late. No word from management, no explanations, and when it did turn up, no apologies. We were all starting to look to jump, and some did. I found…
Not telling the employees there is a non-trivial chance they won't be paid for their work when you have actual knowledge of such could pretty easily be shown to be theft of services/fraud in front of a jury, and almost certainly piercing the corporate veil in the process. It's simply not right to force your employees that have no equity in the company to assume financial risk on behalf of the owners, particularly without the employees' knowledge.