Dori Yona

I had tears watching this.

For any founder out there, this is a must watch.

I’ve been there myself, and this captures exactly why we do what we do at @Simple_Closure.

Close clean. Begin again.

Big news for @SimpleClosure today.

We’re partnering with @Intuit to bring SimpleClosure to QuickBooks Workforce customers.

Having a company with the scale and reach of Intuit trust us to help business owners close their state payroll tax accounts, and when needed, their businesses entirely, is a huge milestone for us.

A big thank you to the Intuit team for the partnership, and to everyone at SimpleClosure who worked to bring this to life.

Proud to be your partner and excited for what’s ahead. 🚀

Founders spend years building assets they’ve never thought to value.

At @SimpleClosure, we analyzed 350+ companies that have offered assets through AssetHub since April. A few things stood out:
→ More isn’t always better. Buyers care about what’s proprietary, useful and hard to recreate.
→ Context matters. The decisions and iterations behind a finished product can make the underlying work more valuable.
→ Scarcity matters. Some of the most interesting opportunities are in industries where real-world data is harder to find.

We’re already seeing startup assets valued in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Full report:
simpleclosure.com/blog/insights/…

I talked to Kate Clark at The Wall Street Journal about what we're seeing at @Simple_Closure and what the "SaaSpocalypse" looks like from where we sit.

More than half of the venture-backed companies we wound down in H1 were software/tech companies. A year ago it was 44%.

Non-AI companies are having a tough time fundraising right now. In some cases, it's easier for founders to shut down and restart.

@KateClarkTweets @WSJ
wsj.com/tech/ai/saas-s…

Today we’re rolling out a new brand for @Simple_Closure.

Over the last few years, we’ve helped thousands of companies navigate one of the most difficult moments in the startup journey. Along the way, we’ve learned a lot about the founders we serve and the role we play in helping them move forward.

Our new identity reflects that.

It’s not a new mission. It’s a better expression of the one we’ve had from the beginning: helping founders close with the same care and professionalism that goes into building.

As the shutdown standard, we wanted a brand that better reflects the company we’ve become, the trust founders place in us, and the category we’re defining.

Today, we’re proud to share the next chapter of SimpleClosure.

See it in action here: simpleclosure.com

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…

A few months ago, someone from the @Simple_Closure team came to me with an idea.

We've helped thousands of founders shut down their startups. Every single one of them gave everything they had, and got no recognition for what they built.

They deserve a proper send-off.
So we bought some land.

I'm so proud of what this team has built for the ecosystem. 🙏
Tag a founder who needs to see this.

93 percent of startups don't make it.

So we asked a simple question: what does that look like right now? Our team at SimpleClosure analyzed hundreds of shutdowns to understand what is actually happening in the startup ecosystem today.

The story is not collapse. It is maturation.

Here is a breakdown of the shifts we are seeing across stages, sectors, geography, and the first wave of AI shutdowns. Read the full report on our blog: simpleclosure.com/blog/posts/sta…

The top piece of advice I give is “Don’t run out of money before shutting down.”

That is the fastest way to get hit with personal fines and penalties.

There are a lot of costs that come with shutting down, and not being able to pay them is a dangerous game.

First, there’s the actual shutdown process – lawyers, accountants, filing fees, etc. If you can’t pay this, service providers won’t help you shut down in the most compliant way possible.

But second and even more important are all the lingering liabilities.

Salaries are paid in arrears. If you shut down mid-month, your team has already worked and you owe them salary. If you don’t pay them, that will pierce the corporate veil and you will be personally liable for penalties, suits, and fines.

Cloud bills and vendor invoices are also paid in arrears. If you have no money left, you will owe a lot of people.

Then you have severance, open contracts, taxes, etc.

Payroll taxes also pierce the corporate veil. The IRS can freeze your personal bank account or put a lien on your house if you don’t pay them.

This is information you want to know even if you never need it.

When I was faced with shutting down my last company, I felt like I was the only founder in the world who had gone through this. Then I found that 700,000+ businesses shut down in the U.S. every year. This number stuck out to me for two reasons:

1) If so many businesses shut down every year, why were there no services to make it easier?
2) That is almost the same number of businesses that are incorporated in the US every year.

An average of about 800,000 businesses are incorporated annually.

And there are a million services promising to launch your business. Fast, easy, cheap.

What this told me was that the small business market isn’t really growing; it’s recycling.

Companies are constantly being born and constantly shutting down, but there seem to be only solutions for the incorporation side of the market.

There is a huge, stable TAM of businesses shutting down, and it goes largely unaddressed.

And there are a whole bunch of founders who get a helping hand to start their businesses and then are left hanging when they need to shut down.

That realization is what pushed me to build SimpleClosure. If that many businesses are going away every year, someone needs to make that part of the lifecycle a lot easier.

For our first 100 customers at SimpleClosure, I handled every sale personally.

But then I needed to let go. We needed to scale empathetic selling.

This was a delicate shift. Empathy is not traditionally a scalable feature.

But it is integral to our sales. We are selling something that founders wish they didn’t need. Something they essentially don’t “want.”

When I was selling, the empathy came naturally. We connected over being founders and my experience facing a potential shutdown in my previous company.

That built rapport, trust, and comfort from the start.

But my personal experience doesn’t scale.

We had to find a way for our sales team to connect with founders at their lowest moments.

The key to doing this was communicating why every team member was at SimpleClosure.

Communicating their belief in the mission, their own experiences, and their desire to help founders above all else.

Our goal is to sell peace of mind for founders, and that peace of mind needs to start from the very first call.

Scaling past founder-led sales is tough for every company, but I have to humbly say that our team is crushing it beyond my wildest expectations.

In helping founders find peace of mind, they have given me my own as well!

Trying, failing, and trying again are natural cycles of entrepreneurship.

They aren’t deviations from the path. Churn is inevitable.

That’s why we’re here. I decided it was time for someone to address a challenge that has always existed for businesses, but has gone unsolved for too long.

Shutting down is hard, complex, and lonely. We make it less so.

We aren’t excited when businesses need to shut down, but we are here to help them when some inevitably do.

We are happy to guide them through a natural process that should be treated as such.

Some businesses are built to retain, and some are built for resolution. Ours is the latter.

Our users are founders who are navigating the sharpest, shortest customer journey in tech.

And, they aren’t coming back to us (hopefully). That’s okay. That’s the point.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of businesses shut down. The market refreshes, even when the customer doesn’t. This is why retention isn’t our metric; replacement is.

Our job is to show up fast, do it right, and leave founders with peace of mind when they are forced to shut down.

Thanks to CJ Gustafson for the writeup discussing this. Give it a read for more:

mostlymetrics.com/p/when-churn-i…

Today’s a big day: SimpleClosure raised $15M in Series A funding.

5 years ago, my board told me that I needed to shutdown my company. That moment was one of the lowest points in my life as an entrepreneur, especially as I searched for help and found none.

I struggled to navigate the shutdown process alone.

What I learned then, drives me today—shutting down is as natural as starting up, and it should come with the same amount of support.

So, we're building what I desperately needed back then: infrastructure for clean endings; tools for closure that power new beginnings.

Entrepreneurship isn't linear. Those who've had to close one chapter are often the most prepared to write the next one.

To the 1,500+ founders who've already trusted us with their toughest decisions: your resilience inspires our team daily.

We are excited to use this funding to bring peace of mind and practical support to many more founders facing shutdowns. This funding isn't just money—it's validation that our vision resonates.

Huge thanks to everyone who made this possible: our investors, our team, and of course, our customers.

Big things to come 🚀

It was great to join CJ Gustafson on the Run the Numbers podcast a few weeks ago. Thanks for having me!

Check out the video to hear our discussion about what to do when you run out of cash and how to budget for a potential shutdown.

We also talk about acqui-hires, dissolution, returning investor capital, hidden liabilities, tax implications, corporations vs. LLCs, and more.

Feel free to reach out with any questions you have on these topics.

youtube.com/watch?v=k9mFmS…

Slow economic growth affects every industry. No one is immune.

Even if interest rates and tariffs don’t directly impact your business, the ripple effect will.

This happens because all “non-essential” spending depends on consumer trust in the broader economy.

People and businesses need to believe their economic futures are relatively stable in order to feel comfortable spending money.

When uncertainty rises, belts tighten.

Not just for those directly affected by changes, but also for everyone downstream.

wsj.com/articles/ad-fo…

If LinkedIn headlines were honest, most people who say they are “Serial Entrepreneurs” would say, “My first startup failed.” People who say “3x Founder” would say “My first two startups failed.”

“Y Combinator” would actually say “I finally got accepted to Y Combinator.”

“Stealth Startup” would say “I’m afraid this won’t work.”

I’m not saying this to make fun of anyone.

By this logic, my headline should also be “My first startup failed.”

I’m saying this because there’s the LinkedIn version of founder life, and then there’s the reality.

The reality is failure, rejection, and continuing to get kicked in the teeth until something sticks.

It’s running out of money, shutting down, and having to start again from nothing.

The LinkedIn version is: “I am successful.”

It’s the tip of the iceberg.

And it’s easy to mistake that for the whole story.

No founder has had it easy—I guarantee you that.

Excited to share that SimpleClosure has been named #1 in Business Services on Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies of 2025! 🏆

When I struggled to shut down my previous company, I saw firsthand how broken the process was.

That painful experience sparked our mission to fix it.

Two years later, we've helped 500+ startups close properly.

We've returned $85M to investors.
We've made shutdowns 5x faster.
This recognition belongs to our team.

Also, to our investors who believed fixing the "ending" was just as important as the beginning.

And to every founder who trusted us during a challenging time.
The journey is just beginning.

We're making closure a normal, accepted part of the entrepreneurial journey - not something to hide.

Earlier this month we shared some insights with @TechCrunch from our work this past year at @Simple_Closure. Thanks for the mention @bayareawriter!
Founders - Focus on building a sustainable business model + KEEP GROWING (but do it in a way where you can can control those spending levers)

I hate to say it, but 2025 may be a tough year for many startups.
Stay strong, keep building!

techcrunch.com/2025/01/26/202…

I am excited to join an exclusive panel at @Techweek_ LA by @a16z next week. We will be discussing the future of #LegalTech!
I will be joined by @rexsalisbury and Nick Hobson at @CooleyLLP

You can register for the event here → lu.ma/bba7lr1p

@Simple_Closure

@flynorse Hello i have emailed your team 5 times in the last week and have not heard back!!!