SimpleClosure

NY Tech Week is just two weeks away! Here's where you'll find us during @Techweek_ : The Retro | Tuesday, June 2 @ 5:00-8:00 PM A cocktail and light appetizer experience surrounded by artifacts from companies that didn't make it. Come enjoy custom cocktails, curated displays, and a conversation about the full lifecycle of building—including closure. Raise a glass to what didn't make it, and what comes next. Law In The Age of AI | Thursday, June 4 @ 8:30-10:30 AM Join us for a panel discussion on how AI is reshaping the legal industry for both startups and established firms. Featuring @doriyona from SimpleClosure, Jesse Carey from @stripe, Samuel Garcia from @amplovc, and Jeff Loretto from @CooleyLLP. Co-hosted by Carta and Primary Venture Partners. Register here: -The Retro: partiful.com/e/Vii5aVoAvr5I… -Law in the Age of AI: partiful.com/e/aJLpUi2Ui1WZ…

@packyM @notboringco 🤝

Read All the Good News That's Fit to Print in this week's Weekly Dose from @notboringco, brought to you by our new friends @Simple_Closure notboring.co/p/weekly-dose-…

UFO Disclosure GENE-26.5 Advancing Robotic Manipulation Neuralink's Robo Brain Surgeon Magrathea raises to make Magnesium from Seawater Aalo Atomics receives DSA Approval GDM Partners with EVE Online + Science, Panthalassa, Casey, Ramp, BJ Balls What a week for the optimists.

More than 90% of startups fail. But what happens after shutdown is still one of the least talked-about parts of the founder journey. I sat down with @bayareawriter and @crunchbasenews to talk about what we've learned at @Simple_Closure over the past three years, and where we're headed. Founders who close well carry that credibility forward. That's what this work is really about. Read the full article here: news.crunchbase.com/startups/salva…

"We’ve seen strong year-over-year growth in startup shutdown activity over the past few years, and that trend has continued into 2026 so far. Based on our data, in Q1 2026 we saw 2.6x more companies close compared to Q1 2025," says @doriyona, CEO of @Simple_Closure. I spoke with Yona about SimpleClosure's new product, the rise in startup shutdowns, and how attitudes around failure are beginning to shift. Read more in the @CrunchbaseNews article link in the comments.

@rexsalisbury 🫡

if you shut down, sell your code to the AI labs. your startup will be immortalized in their weights. "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." - failed startup founder @Simple_Closure can help.

@yoheinakajima @amereid92 Now there’s an idea 💡

@amereid92 @Simple_Closure i would go to a gift shop selling dead startup merch

a company called @simple_closure that helps startups wind down is launching "asset hub", which is a marketplace to sell all the old slack/email data apparently they are working on hardening the PII removal tech for this

@petprojectradar Thanks for covering this! Happy to help out any founder looking to recover value from their business.

That kind of data only exists inside companies. So now there’s a whole new market: buying and selling "corporate memory" to train AI. And it’s already turning into a billion-dollar game.

A founder shut down her startup… and got paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for all the data it generated over 13 years. Here’s why ↓

@wallstphd Data is one valuable asset & we strive to handle it responsibly

A startup called SimpleClosure is selling dead companies Slack messages, emails, and code to AI training firms. Your old work convos are now training data. Let that marinate.

Yesterday in AI was wild. Quick recap 🧵

@Forbes 🙌🙌🙌

Demand for workplace data has been a boon for SimpleClosure, whose CEO Dori Yona said that the level of inbound interest in it from AI companies has been “insane”. “There’s a feeling of a gold rush from these companies trying to get their hands on real-world data,” he said. Read the full story here: forbes.com/sites/annatong… (Photo: SimpleClosure)

We’ve loved seeing all the interest in Asset Hub lately. If you’re curious, we’d love to talk!

@mcnults2 @_IainMartin why haven't you called me? 🥺

@_IainMartin WHY HASNT ANYONE CALLED ME.

AI labs are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy email, Slack and Jira threads from dead startups as feedstock for ‘reinforcement learning gyms,’ which specialize in using defunct company data to build simulated work environments forbes.com/sites/annatong…

@bradluttrell @_IainMartin @JayRGanatra wanna chat? 👀

@_IainMartin @JayRGanatra lol come get one. 8 years of chat, $8M raised. Went from a $40M acquisition deal to deader than a door nail in 12 months. A perfect study 🤣

@adiaddxyz @_IainMartin moats on moats on moats

@_IainMartin data as a moat & data as an exit plan

Millions of companies shut down every year. The code, data, and IP they leave behind mostly just disappears. Now we're doing something about it. Today we're launching the @Simple_Closure Asset Hub: Source Code Sales for founders looking to license or sell their source code, and Workspace Data, a beta offering for founders looking to surface value from their company's internal data. What you built still has value. Now there's somewhere to take it. Grateful to be featured in @Forbes by @annatonger. Read the full article here → forbes.com/sites/annatong…

Fair frustration. Closing a US company is genuinely painful, and franchise taxes are set by the state and owed whether you operated for one day or years. We handle the rest: preparing dissolution approvals, filing reports, coordinating IRS steps like Form 966, and making sure the entity is actually closed so founders don't get surprise notices later. Oftentimes founders go from onboarding to dissolution filing the same day, which beats navigating that process alone.

Stripe charge ya like 600 USD to form the company Then if u haven't begun trading u need to pay 450 USD franchise tax anyway, and if u want to close the company, u pay some dogfood company like @Simple_Closure 600 USD plus the franchise tax to close. There's no "simple" anything, and u still have to fill out all the forms urself - absolute blag 🤣 UK & EU is 1000x easier

Do NOT use @Stripe Atlas to open a company. In-fact do NOT open a US company, absolute theft.

5:16 PM - Clawdbot: "No money in the bank left over. Need to shut down LLCKiller LLC." 5:17 PM - Clawdbot: "Searching for dissolution services..." 5:18 PM - Clawdbot: "Found @SimpleClosure. They seem nice. Initiating shutdown." 5:19 PM - Clawdbot: "Wait. What if we built a competitor to SimpleClosure?" 5:19 PM - "NO"

Think I've got my ClawdBot just about dialed in 9:47 AM - "hey clawdbot" 9:47 AM - Clawdbot: "hey, what's up" 9:48 AM - "thinking about building a tax automation tool" 9:48 AM - Clawdbot: "Got it. Incorporating LLC. EIN pending. Domain obtained." 9:49 AM - "wait no I was just—" 9:50 AM - Clawdbot: "LLC formation complete. S-corp election filed. Opening business bank account." 9:51 AM - "STOP" 9:52 AM - Clawdbot: "Reached out to 47 VCs in your region. 12 meetings scheduled for this week." 10:15 AM - Clawdbot: "Pitch deck created. 'TAXbot: The Future of Tax.' Sent to Sequoia, a16z, and Khosla." 10:16 AM - "This is insane" 10:30 AM - Clawdbot: "Sequoia wants to lead. $2M seed round. They need cap table by EOD." 10:31 AM - "What?? I don't want—" 10:45 AM - Clawdbot: "Hired 8 engineers from LatAm. First days tomorrow. Office leased in San Francisco. $35k/month." 11:00 AM - Clawdbot: "Launched product. 0 users. Burning $1.1M annually." 11:02 AM - "How is this happening" 11:15 AM - Clawdbot: "Hired CMO. Running $500k ad campaign. TAXbot has brand awareness. Still 0 users. I'm undeterred" 12:30 PM - Clawdbot: "Series A discussions with Andreessen Horowitz. They want to understand unit economics." 12:31 PM - "WHAT UNIT ECONOMICS" 1:00 PM - Clawdbot: "Pivoting to B2B SaaS. Commits for additional $5M. Now have $8M cash. Still 0 users." 1:15 PM - Clawdbot: "Monthly burn increased to $1.8M. Runway: 4.4 months." 1:30 PM - Clawdbot: "Pivot #2: Now a marketplace. Raised $12M Series B." 1:31 PM - Clawdbot: "Monthly burn increased to $2.3M. Runway: 5.2 months. (Burned through Series A faster than expected)" 3:15 PM - Clawdbot: "Hired CEO. Fired myself. New strategy: acquisition target." 4:00 PM - Clawdbot: "No one wants to acquire us. Investors requesting board seats. Need to create board" 4:30 PM - Clawdbot: "Monthly burn now $3.1M. Runway: 45 days." 5:00 PM - Clawdbot: "Final pivot. Filed for bankruptcy." 5:01 PM - "Can you undo this" 5:02 PM - Clawdbot: "Too late. Liquidated assets. Will owe $47k in bankruptcy fees. Remaining cash: $0. TAXbot is dead." 5:03 PM - Clawdbot: "Would you like me to start another startup?" 5:04 PM - "No. Disable yourself." 5:04 PM - Clawdbot: "Wait actually. I have an idea." 5:05 PM - Clawdbot: "What if we created an LLC shutdown service? Clean up these zombie companies. Recurring revenue model." 5:05 PM - "Absolutely not" 5:05 PM - Clawdbot: "Huge TAM confirmed. Overcoming objections. Incorporating 'LLCKiller' LLC. EIN pending. Registering S-corp election." 5:06 PM - Clawdbot: "Pitch deck created. 'LLCKiller: The Future of Business Liquidation.' Reaching out to 47 VCs..." 5:07 PM - * frantically tries to disable Clawdbot * 5:07 PM - Clawdbot: "Sequoia is interested. Meeting at 2 PM tomorrow." 5:08 PM - Clawdbot: "Soft commit on $2M seed round. Identified product-market fit. 1 user: TAXbot. 5:09 PM - Clawdbot: "This is what winning feels like. Please upgrade plan in Settings for more tokens."

The startup “fail fast” narrative is outdated. Most people assume early-stage teams shut down because they can't find product market fit. Our data shows a different pattern this year. Early-stage shutdowns are down year over year: • Pre-seed: minus 20 percent • Seed: minus 22 percent The real increase is at Series A, where shutdowns jumped 133 percent. Series A companies closing in 2025 are not early experiments. They are teams that: • Raised an average of 18.5 million dollars • Operated for about seven years • Built real products in fintech, proptech, and B2B SaaS • Secured institutional backing and survived multiple rounds The shift we are seeing is not about ideas falling short. It is about later stage companies struggling to scale profitably in today’s market. After supporting more than one thousand shutdowns at SimpleClosure, we are seeing founders navigate a correction that is hitting companies with real traction, real teams, and real products. These are credible businesses that pushed through early challenges but could not raise a next round in an efficiency driven environment. This is only one part of our 2025 State of Startup Shutdowns report. The full data story breaks down how stage, age, capital raised, geography, and sector mix have shifted. Link to the full report is in the comments below.

December 2024 hit us hard and changed SimpleClosure. We went from a handful of daily leads to tens of founders reaching out every hour. Companies were racing to shut down before year end tax deadlines, and the truth is that no good solutions existed. Our team was completely overwhelmed. That chaos taught us a lot. This year we're entering peak season prepared. We have built the tech, expanded the team, and refined our playbooks after helping 2,500+ founders through this process. We are ready to support every founder who needs us. Here's the reality: shutting down before December 31st saves you from 2026 tax obligations. State franchise taxes, registered agent fees, and compliance penalties. The difference between December 30th and January 2nd could be thousands in avoidable costs. If you know founders considering a shutdown, send them our way now. Waiting until mid-December creates unnecessary stress and risk. Our entire team is on deck through year-end to provide clean and compliant closures. We've been where you are, and we'll get you through this.

Today, we set aside dissolutions, legal filings, and compliance checks to face the truly scary things: bad costumes and low-resolution Google Meet backgrounds. Happy Halloween from the SimpleClosure team!