There’s a startup sunsetting startups

There’s a startup sunsetting startups — business is booming

2025 was a year of records. The US reached new highs in median household income, vinyl sales topped $1B for the first time this century, and Truett Hanes managed over 10k pull-ups in just 24 hours.

The land of opportunity keeps on giving. American business joined in, too. Last year saw record new companies, with over 5.5m small business applications filed. That's an all-time high, and 2026 looks set to break it.

Just as in the case of Truett Hanes's pull-ups, anything that goes up has to come down.

Startups also set a record in the number of shutdowns; just ask the man who formed a company around it.

"It's painful. It's emotional. It's bureaucratic. It's archaic. No one wants to help you," Dori Yona, founder and CEO of SimpleClosure, told The Hustle.

Yona was speaking from personal experience, having shut down his previous company.

Inspired by stories from fellow founders, in-depth market research, and how often a business disappears — a record-scratching realization, and a bittersweet business opportunity, Yona and Nimrod Ram founded SimpleClosure in 2023.

Perfect timing — 2.4m+ establishments closed in 2023 and 2024 alone, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, and 284k shuttered in Q1 of 2025.

Yona said shutting down a business can take months to years — time, ideas, and opportunity lost untangling documents.

Its biggest challenge isn't competition, it's the old way of doing things.

"Would you rather manage a 90-step process over an endless email chain with your lawyer?" Yona said. "Or would you have a platform that does it for you?"

Turns out, founders are picking the platform.

There were 2.6x more businesses closed via SimpleClosure in Q1 of 2026 than Q1 2025.

The company has 50+ employees and offices in NYC and LA.

It's raised $20m+ in venture funding.

The company says it has already returned $300m+ to founders and has 85% faster shutdowns that take days or weeks instead of years.

Yona hopes SimpleClosure is the No. 1 platform in the world for helping companies shut down and monetize their assets.

"The team doesn't get excited to wake up and say 'yay, I'm going to shut this company down.' What excites us is helping founders move on."

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