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. I just wanted closure…
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 want to help founders in the same position I was in. I want to give founders freedom from the nagging, gnawing, and relentless stress of dissolving a company.
I’ve got a lawyer, an accountant, and a system to take the endless dissolution tasks completely off your hands.
We should chat if:
I've worked with a few YC companies already but am still extremely early on in this journey. You can learn more about what we do here (www.sunsethq.co) but if you have any feedback - I'd genuinely love to hear it.
I can 1000% relate to this, I couldn't find product market fit and made the tough decision to shut down. I thought that part was hard enough, but this next part suckedddd to try figure out on my own.
Yea, I hear ya - sorry you also had to go through that.
Out of curiosity, did you work with a lawyer/accountant or truly do it all solo?
Both lawyer and accountant, but they would drag things out because I wasn't much value to them anymore.
Also it's very much a case of you don't know what you don't know, so I'd ask them a question, and only once I learned that new piece of info would I know to ask the next question. Super inefficient and a bit maddening.
Ah yea - deff feel that. Had so many back-and-forth emails trying to get my lawyer's attention.
Always thought, after going through two of these there needs to be a bereavement helper for shutting down startups.
Yea deff not a sexy job or biz though haha.
But feels good to help founders in the same position I was in.
What was your process like shutting down 2 companies?