Never Hated Anything More Than Shutting Down My YC Startup

[bmaho]

I went through YC in 2018. I had visions of running a trillion-dollar startup and surfing with Zuck into the sunset.

Over 4 years, I had built 2 startups. We sold one but had to shut down the other.

After finally calling it quits, I was burnt out. All I wanted was a clean break, but instead, what I got was a metric ton of the world’s worst chores.

It was the never-ending long tail of dissolution. Another email to our lawyers, doc to sign, government to pay, service to cancel, asset to liquidate, tax form to file. It was like being anchored to a manipulative ex who wouldn’t let me move on.

I just wanted to dissolve a company that no longer “existed” (at least in my mind). Genuinely just wanted closure from the whole thing.

In the end, the dissolution process took over 6 months of my life to complete.

I’ve sat with this pain/frustration for a while. At one of my lowest points in life, this process kept knocking me down further.

Hence me writing this — I'm helping out a few YC founders shut down their startups. Some clear flaws with this being a potential business (not recurring revenue, insolvent companies, etc.) but have been enjoying helping out founders who were in the same position I was in.

Wanted to get HNs thoughts on this - what do y'all think? Did you have to shut down a startup before? And if so, what was your process like?

I threw up a quick landing page to learn a little bit more about what I'm playing around with here: https://www.sunsethq.co/

[blululu]

Undertakers are a grim necessity. The unfortunate reality is that there are legal, moral and personal obligations that must be met even after the all money is gone. Basic things like mailing out W2 forms for all the terminated employees need to be done (and sadly, in my experience, these things are not guaranteed). I could imagine this being a useful service for the creditors assuming that their money is still seeping out. Having a faster and more efficient way to sign the forms, check the boxes and tell the lawyers and government bureaucrats to move along would could have a real monetary benefit.

[bmaho]

All too true. Was talking to a buddy and he said this was service should be called the "Doula of Death"

It is a fairly brutal process - especially for people who've never gone through it before (which is most founders). So many steps involved and traps to fall into. Botched one thing for my own dissolution (and I paid a lawyer thousands of dollars to help) and had to pay out of pocket a year later :(

Really appreciate the kind words though - thanks for responding and taking a read

[kolnik]

1000% needed this when I shut down my startup

[bmaho]

Appreciate it / good to know