In This Episode
Dori Yona, co-founder of SimpleClosure, joins host Rory Holland to explore how navigating one of the lowest points in his entrepreneurial life led to building a groundbreaking infrastructure business. Dori opens up about his time commanding a platoon of ships in the IDF Navy, sharing how high-pressure environments shaped his collaborative leadership style. After being forced by his board to shut down a previous startup, he experienced firsthand the isolating, complex, and expensive reality of winding down a business.
That dark moment sparked the vision for SimpleClosure, an automated platform that helps companies close gracefully while monetizing their leftover code, data, and assets . This conversation dives into the emotional weight of founder layoffs, the power of persistent curiosity, and why clean endings pave the way for successful new beginnings.
Key Takeaways
- The Equal Reality of Business Cycles: For a healthy economic ecosystem to thrive, the infrastructure supporting company shutdowns should be just as robust and accessible as the tools used to start them up.
- Leadership Over Rank: True management isn’t about demanding obedience through hierarchical titles or positions of power; it is about treating team members as equals and leading through shared purpose.
- Unlocking Trapped Value: Even when a business fails, it leaves behind unrecognized digital assets like source code and workplace data that possess significant marketplace value if properly monetized.
- The Math of Economic Cycles: The total addressable market for corporate wind-downs is massive, with the number of businesses shutting down each year in the US nearly mirroring the number of new incorporations .
- The Calculation of Layoffs: Letting employees go is arguably a founder’s most grueling task, requiring a complex balance of financial survival, team loyalty preservation, and intense emotional strain.
- The Power of Radical Curiosity: Great business innovations rarely come from sudden genius; they are unearthed by relentlessly asking why to peel back layers of a problem until the root truth is exposed.
- The Mindset of Perseverance: High-pressure environments reveal that perceived physical or mental limitations are frequently just cognitive barriers that can be pushed through with the right mental grit.
Transcript
The Big Leap — My Legs Wouldn’t Move
Rory Holland
Awesome. Well, Dori, such a pleasure to have you on the show. Welcome.
Dori Yona
Thank you, thank you for having me Rory.
Rory Holland
Yeah, man, it’s good to know you. We were just talking off camera about our mutual friend, Levi King over at Nav. It’s good to finally get to chat with you in person. There’s lots of stuff I want to get into, but you’ve done so many interesting things. Sim ple Closure — what a neat business. We’re going to dive into that. But before we do that, you shared a couple of things about your background, some of the things you’ve done. One thing I wanted to ask you about — you mentioned bungee jumping in New Zealand. Tell me about that. Does that have anything to do with the way you run your businesses, that attitude and jumping into things?
Dori Yona
Maybe — great question. I’ll never go bungee jumping again in my life, so I don’t know if that has to do with how I run my businesses, because I probably will start more businesses down the line. Long story short, I used to serve in the military in the IDF when I was living in Israel. One of the most common things that people do post-military service is they go traveling the world for a year. So I went traveling for a year. Part of that journey included about a month and a half in New Zealand. I had never bungee jumped. I actually skydived in the past, which was really fun and I would love to do again. I went bungee jumping — I think it was in Queenstown, New Zealand, in the South Island. I think it’s the highest jump over a gorge. It’s in a gorge. You jump. It was the craziest thing I ever did. I don’t think I’ll ever do it again in my life — that’s the short of it. People always ask me: why was it so scary when skydiving wasn’t scary? I’ll happily do skydiving again. Why was bungee so scary? Because you’re actually on the ledge and you are cognitively jumping to your death in a sense — it’s so close, you can see the ground. I literally couldn’t get my legs to move when I went to jump. Your brain is telling you: don’t die, you’re not supposed to die. And you’re supposed to jump, so everyone’s waiting — jump, jump — and your brain is saying don’t move. I had to be nudged a bit over to take that leap. It was definitely the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life. How does it relate to starting or running businesses? I don’t think it relates. It’s beyond chaos, bungee jumping — at least from my perspective.
Rory Holland
Did somebody push you off?
Dori Yona
I think I got a little nudge, honestly. That whole day is a bit hazy and I don’t remember it clearly. But I do remember that my legs were the heaviest things — I couldn’t move them. I think I just tipped over. I didn’t physically jump like people do off the ledge. I just tipped over because I couldn’t move. I remember not being able to move my feet — that’s what I remember. I don’t think someone physically pushed me — I don’t know if that’s even allowed — but I just remember tipping over.
Rory Holland
They probably wanted you to hurry up. You obviously — the ropes didn’t snap, you didn’t hit the ground, you bounced back. You made it. What a life experience.
Commanding IDF Naval Vessels at 22
Rory Holland
You’ve done a lot of cool stuff. You mentioned the IDF and I want to get into that in a minute. You were in the IDF as a young man — you served in the Navy from what I read — did you end up commanding a ship? What was your role and what was that like?
Dori Yona
I drafted when I was 18, which is the typical draft age in Israel — mandatory service for those that aren’t aware. I actually got routed to the Naval Academy. It was about a four-year training to become the first level of captain of a ship. I went through that entire training process. I ultimately became the captain of a combat ship, then progressed to be an instructor in the Naval Academy for a period of time. My last role in the Navy in Israel was commander of a platoon of ships — I actually commanded multiple ships out on missions, and about 50 to 100 soldiers depending on the mission.
Rory Holland
What was that like? You were 18 when you were drafted — so you must have been in your early twenties commanding a ship?
Dori Yona
Yeah. In retrospect it sounds a bit crazy, but at the time it felt normal. You’re in charge of people’s lives. It’s actually funny — in the military in Israel, whatever position you’re in, they make you sign an agreement that you’re responsible for the equipment they give you. They literally show you the dollar amount of what that equipment is worth. I remember signing what felt like a deed — it’s the military, so it’s not exactly a deed, but I signed a list saying I was responsible for 40 to 100 million dollars worth of equipment. That was when the weight of the responsibility really settled in. It’s something that sounds outrageous, but it’s so unique to go into the military at that age and have that much responsibility, working in such a high-pressure environment. In retrospect it seems crazy to do it in your 20s, but at the time I felt ready for it.
Rory Holland
What an experience. What did that teach you? At such a young age — was there something about that experience that taught you something you maybe wouldn’t have learned anywhere else?
Dori Yona
Two things I take from my military service that probably shaped me the most. First of all, there’s a famous saying — I’ll translate it. It’s probably common in English as well. Everything’s in your mind. Everything can be accomplished. You can accomplish anything — it’s all in your head. There were things I went through, either through the training or the actual service — a week of no sleep, crazy missions that required extreme physical strength and perseverance. And I told myself: I can’t do this. I’m not the most athletic person. I’m not an Ironman. There’s no way I can do this. The military showed me there is no such thing as something you can’t do. It’s all in your head. If you push through, you will get through — whether in a collapsed state or not. That’s one thing I take. The other thing is specific to my role. Commanding people on a ship is very unique because you really have to orchestrate the team to all fire on the same cylinders. You’re in a very small confined space, out at sea, with a lot of challenges. From a leadership and management perspective, it gave me experience that I think shaped my leadership style. Those are the two things I took from there.
Rory Holland
Were there guys and gals on the ship? I don’t want to presume, but I imagine there were people older than you. What was it like commanding people — maybe tell a story or two, like a time you had to confront somebody about following a command they maybe didn’t want to.
Dori Yona
Let me think back. Yes — there are people that are either older than you or not necessarily older than you. When you step foot on the ship as the new captain, they might be a year or two younger than you, but they’ve been on the ship for two or three years. You’re coming in with very little experience. Sometimes they’ll treat you in that way — behave in a way that shows it.
People have challenges with rank in the military and Navy specifically. But I’ve always taken an approach where I don’t believe in leading because of rank. Officers in Israel wear their ranks on their shoulders, and I don’t feel like I want to or need to lead because of the ranks on my shoulder. I would approach every person on the ship — or on shore — as equals. I’m not asking you to do something because I’m an officer or a certain rank. I’m going to ask you to do something because I believe it’s the right thing, and I’ll lead from that perspective.
Rory’s Commentary
I’m blown away by the maturity that Dori brought to his commanding role on that ship. Speaking from 25 years of experience leading teams, this is the essence of leadership and unshakeable credibility. I think a lot of people start their careers believing that rank or a job title will give them the authority to lead, but that’s backwards. If you haven’t earned the trust of your team, no promotion is going to win it for you. Of course, it’s one thing to say that in the boardroom, it’s something else to live it on the bridge with lives at stake.
Commanding IDF Naval Vessels at 22, Continued
Dori Yona
That’s always been my style. There are people who operate a certain way because of their ranks, and I’ve never connected with that.
Rory Holland
Just respecting one another, right? Whether you’re in a position of power, I think it’s even more important.
Good Morning America — Then the Board Meeting
Rory Holland
Being a founder of a company — and I know you founded a few companies, which is what I wanted to transition to — tell me a little about your background prior to Simple Closure. Were there particular highlights? And I wanted to specifically talk about a particular low light that I think turned into Simple Closure from what I read. But before we get into that, what were you doing before Simple Closure and what led you to that point? And then I wanted to read you a little something.
Dori Yona
Sure. I finished my military service — I served for about seven years — and went out into the world to start companies. I just gravitated toward starting tech companies. My parents were founders of a company in Silicon Valley in the late eighties, early nineties, so I grew up in that type of household. The first company I started was back in 2015 — it was a social networking dating app. It didn’t take off the way I’d hoped, so I eventually pivoted to start a company called Ernie. Ernie was in consumer fintech. We built a platform that automated something called price protection. It’s a policy that most major retailers and credit cards offer — imagine you go to Best Buy, buy a TV for a thousand bucks, it goes on sale the next week, you’re actually owed a refund for the difference. No one actually tracks that or knows about these rules or has the time to file these claims. We built that into a pretty decent-sized business. We grew to three and a half million users. At a certain point in time, things weren’t going so well and we were looking at the option of shutting down. That’s pretty much what got me down the path of the shutdown world and understanding the ins and outs — which, fast forward, was what got me to start Simple Closure.
Start Planning to Die
Rory Holland
Can I read you something? I was doing a little research and it was a very positive post on LinkedIn. You guys raised $15 million about a year ago from what I read. What I want to read you really struck me — as a founder of a handful of companies myself, I don’t really like the word failure. I think failure is a true statement, but you can look at it different ways. You talked about mindset — you can look at failure as an opportunity to learn and grow. However you want to frame it, you basically wrote: “Five years ago, my board told me I needed to shut down 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. 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 and tools for closure that power new beginnings.” That’s beautiful. Take me back in time. When you hear me say that, where does your head go? And what was that moment the light bulb went off — I need to start this business?
Dori Yona
It’s powerful to hear it again. I haven’t revisited that post in a year — it was about May of last year. It’s powerful to hear it again. The situation was pretty much as you read it. We had been a Series A company. We had raised a total of about $13 million. We had done relatively well — felt like we were on a roller coaster. We grew to three and a half million users, we were on Good Morning America, we were on Live with Kelly and Ryan. We were at the peak of our company. But also, like any startup, we faced a ton of challenges. When you get into the numbers, the revenue, the growth rates — we weren’t doing as well. We had a really, really tough board meeting. We came in and things aren’t growing as good as we hoped, but we’re thinking — okay, this is fine, this is the journey, we’ll get a bridge from our investors, no big deal. We came to this board meeting, presented the financials, and expected our board to come in and support. The board looks at the financials, looks at the runway, and says: “Hey guys, this doesn’t look good. We’re not going to support the business any further. We don’t think that based on these numbers you can raise more money. I think we need to talk about a plan B.” And in my mind, I’m thinking — there is no plan B. There is only plan A. So I asked the board: “What do you want to talk about? What do you expect to see?” And they said: “We’d like to see a shutdown analysis for the business. We’d like to understand the timeline, the runway — do we need to offer severance packages? What do we do with the office lease? We’re sitting in this beautiful office.” He started to flood me with a ton of questions, and I didn’t have an answer to any of them. Think about what a difficult position that is as a founder or entrepreneur — all you need to think about is how to grow this business, how to make it a success, how to win. And suddenly someone’s telling you: stop thinking about how to live. Let’s think about how to die. That is a very rough awakening. A harsh conversation to have. I remember going home from that board meeting — it was one of the lowest points in my life. You’re still running a business. You still have employees. What are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to go down and plan your funeral while your employees are working their ass off trying to launch the next partnership or the next product feature? It was a really, really tough moment. I had no idea where to even start. So I ended up going down this rabbit hole — the first thing I did was literally go to Google: “How do you shut down a startup?” I expected to find a product, a platform, service providers. I didn’t find anything. Then I went to LinkedIn — let me look at other founders in my network that have shut down their companies and ask them what to do, what are the do’s and don’ts. I started searching LinkedIn. I couldn’t find anyone. And what I realized really quickly is that it’s not that founders don’t shut down. They just don’t write about it on LinkedIn. Then I reached out to our lawyers. We were using one of the top law firms at the time — Fenwick — and we thought they’d for sure help. And the answer I got was: “Yeah, shutting down — that’s not really our bread and butter. I have a friend of a friend who has a boutique law firm in Texas — he might be able to help you.” Those were the answers we got. You’re giving me flashbacks to that time. It was a dark, difficult period.
Rory Holland
I can feel it. It’s interesting how the industry, how the system works when you think about it. Everybody gets excited about an idea, they get behind it, there’s tons of support, tons of money pours in. You have traction — and there maybe was a way out, I don’t know, I wasn’t there — but hearing those words from your board and then being like, “Okay, we’re going to shut it down,” is completely contrary to what any founder wants to hear.
Writing the Playbook from Scratch
Rory Holland
Not enough people talk about the failures in their life. You only see on social media and LinkedIn all the successes. But we know, as humans and as business owners, there’s a lot of failures behind all of those positive posts. None of us live a perfect life. So at that stage in your business, what did you do next? Simple Closure went from need to reality. What did you do after that? You had to pick yourself up, wake up the next day. What happened next?
Dori Yona
First of all, I very much agree with what you’re saying. The system rewards success — it doesn’t reward failure. The system is built in a way where even venture investors, if it’s not a winning horse, if it’s not a company that’s going to do well, they are told and taught to deprioritize, walk away. That’s not where you should be investing your time — you should be investing your time in the 5 to 10 percent of the portfolio that’s going to succeed. It’s an industry-wide issue. But back to your question — I obviously had to get back to the board with answers. I didn’t have answers. So I just decided to roll up my sleeves and dig into the world of shutting down. I started to reach out to industry experts, lawyers that deal with ABCs, bankruptcies, Chapter 7, Chapter 11 — really tried to dive deep into this world to understand what I needed to do. There wasn’t a resource, and I needed to get back to the board with answers. Keep in mind, I’m doing all this while also trying to run the business, trying to raise additional capital, trying to sell the company — any other outcome except shutting down. It’s a very weird state. I was talking to these industry experts and ultimately put a playbook together. It took a few good weeks. I put the playbook together, sent it to the board. The board took a look and signed off — “This plan works.” Luckily, while building the shutdown plan, I was able to raise an extension to our previous round from new investors. That gave us a bit more runway. We actually ended up launching a product line that became one of our largest hockey-stick growths in the company’s history — it had a bit to do with COVID and the timing and transaction data from consumers. So we ended up selling the business.
Dori Yona
Probably about a year and a half later from when that incident happened. We were fortunate enough to exit and sell the business. But we had already done two rounds of layoffs, repaired the company for a full shutdown, gone through the whole exercise, and were ready to pull that trigger. Fast forward to starting Simple Closure — I ended up exiting Ernie, spent some time taking a break, consulting, spending time with family. And I wanted to go back to building. It was something I didn’t want to give up on — the passion of building. This idea for Simple Closure had been bubbling in me ever since that incident, two or three years earlier. I just had to explore it further.
Rory’s Commentary
The founding premise of Simple Closure seems so obvious! Of course, entrepreneurs and investors need guidance and support to shut down a company. Silicon Valley talks a lot about failing fast and failing forward, without addressing what it means to end a company well. When you put all your energy into making a business succeed, it’s hard to give a second thought to shutting it all down. But Dori is the embodiment of the fail forward philosophy. In a minute you’ll even hear him talk about recycling the US economy – salvaging millions of failed businesses for something better. It’s a beautiful vision to bring redemption out of so much pain.
Writing the Playbook from Scratch, Continued
So I went even deeper into the space — spent time interviewing close to a hundred founders who had either shut down, were in the process of shutting down, or were thinking about it — to understand what they did, what they were going through, and really understand the customer pain. And I spent a lot of time researching the market, which opened my eyes to the fact that there are actually millions of companies shutting down every year in the US. The combination of hearing the pain point from customers and understanding how big the TAM was is what ultimately made me pull the trigger and start Simple Closure about three years ago.
A Hundred Founders, One Big Gap
Rory Holland
What is the TAM? I was doing some research before we came on — there are different ways to shape it. Percentage of small businesses that fail every year, percentage of startups that fail every year, seed round, A round, B round. You probably know the math — what does the data look like?
Dori Yona
Great question. It depends how you think of the TAM. Our vision for Simple Closure is to actually recycle the $30 trillion US economy. What’s really fascinating is that if you look at the amount of companies that start every year and the ones that shut down, it’s pretty equal. The US economy has stayed flat for a few decades now at around 30-something million small businesses. You have about four million companies incorporating every year, and about four million shutting down each year. What we see as the opportunity is those four million companies shutting down every year. How do we help them recycle that — shut down the company, monetize their assets — which is something we launched a few months ago and came out of stealth last month. That’s part of how we look at the TAM.
Rory Holland
For those listening, TAM — total addressable market. That’s significant — four million potential customers for Simple Closure. Describe for me what you guys actually do. I don’t know if you have counselors on staff — emotional support people. Maybe you do, but…
Dori Yona
It is one of the most requested features that we don’t offer yet, actually — coaches, psychologists, emotional support. We get that question all the time. But the way to think about it: we built a platform that helps streamline and automate the actual shutdown process of a company. For venture-backed companies, the average time it takes to shut down is typically nine to 12 months. Using traditional firms, it can cost tens of thousands — sometimes north of $100,000 — to shut down entirely and walk away. And in almost every case, when you do it the old way, you do things wrong and there are fines and penalties months and years later. Simple Closure has automated and streamlined that process so we can help companies shut down in a matter of days to weeks. We do it for a fraction of the cost, and we use a lot of technology to streamline the process. Beyond the bureaucratic, legal, logistical side of shutting down, one of the things I think we add a lot of value on is helping companies monetize their assets. When a company comes to shut down, they have assets — and in 95% of cases, companies don’t monetize those assets because they don’t know how. They’ve maybe tried reaching out to a competitor and there’s not a lot of value there. But there’s a lot of value in those assets in other ways. That’s how we assist companies with this process.
Rory Holland
When you started to shape Simple Closure — you had mentioned you were interviewing lots of leaders of companies that were in that difficult season, had either shut down their businesses or were going to. Were you traveling at that point? Was that your in-between, right — were you on the road? I think I read you were in Mexico, pressure-testing ideas.
Dori Yona
Yes, exactly. When I was looking to go back to building, I needed my wife’s permission — obviously it takes a toll on family life to start a company. I told my wife: I really want to go back to building. But before I make a decision that will shape the next potentially decade of our lives, I want to think long and hard about it and make sure it’s something I believe in, I’m passionate about, that it’s the right decision. So I did the first company offsite — the very first official one. I flew by myself to Mexico, left my wife with the kids so I could think. I spent a few good days understanding the TAM and the market and researching other ideas in parallel. It was part of the story that led me to where I am today.
The Part Nobody Posts About
Rory Holland
Just want to go back one thing — prior to Simple Closure, when you were shutting down your other business, not a lot of people talk about this: what about your people? How did you handle that as a leader? What was going on in your head at that time with your team, trying to guide them through this? You had already started to wind it down, you had layoffs. What was that like?
Dori Yona
People is probably the thing founders find most difficult to deal with — along with investors. Those are the two things, because to some extent those are the people we feel we’re disappointing the most. They’ve either invested their time or their money, and those are the things people value most. I think talent and people weighs even higher than investors — at least from what I felt at the time. There’s no easy answer. When you sit down to do layoffs, there are so many factors. Who do I keep? Who do I let go? If I keep these people, will they be so worried about the company’s financial situation that they’ll get up and go look for another job anyway? You start to factor in: by keeping these people, do I think they’ll have higher loyalty to stay — even though they’re not the most critical — while some critical people have low loyalty, so the moment we do layoffs, even if we keep them, they’re probably going to be looking for a job. You get into a crazy amount of calculation — who do you keep, who do you have to part ways with. Then, once you make that list, it’s: how do I share it? Do I share it with everyone at the same time? Do I take person by person and give them the news? How do I update the rest of the team that’s staying? And most importantly — how do you give confidence to the team that’s staying that it’s worth their time, that you’re not going to lay them off in three to six months because you miscalculated? There’s extensive consideration involved — a lot of emotion, a lot of risk, including being sued. Honestly, I think layoffs is maybe the most difficult thing to go through as a founder.
Rory Holland
Appreciate you sharing that. Not a lot of people are going to post about shutting down their business, nor are they going to post about the challenges of layoffs or how to communicate a circumstance like that.
The Airtable MVP and First Customer
Rory Holland
I want to go back to your origin story, back to your Mexico trip. Your wife gave you permission, you decided you’re going to start something. You went on a solo retreat in Mexico, started talking to people. I think I read that you built an MVP on Airtable and shortly after you had a paying customer.
Dori Yona
Yes. I came back from Mexico with the decision: I’m building Simple Closure. That was the decision that came out of Mexico. I continued doing founder interviews — still no product, I have nothing. I just want to learn: what did you go through, how did you shut down, what are the do’s and don’ts. And then by around call 10, 15, 20 — somewhere in that range — I end up on a call with this founder who’s going through a shutdown. They’re already working on their next company. And he says: “Listen, I love what you’re doing. You have so much more knowledge than 90% of the lawyers I’ve talked to about helping us shut down this company. Can I just pay you to consult us through it?” And in my mind I’m thinking: yes, but we have nothing. I have nothing. So I told this founder: “Hey, listen — our beta is almost ready. It’ll be ready in about a week, but I’m happy to bring you on as a beta customer.” He said, “Sure, no problem, sounds good.” I hung up the phone. I went and searched quickly what platform I could build on — this was pre-Claude and all these tools where you can build a website in 10 minutes. I actually built the first version in Airtable. I pulled out from the drawer the shutdown plan we had built for Ernie — from three years earlier. I took that information, spent a lot of time, and built the first version. I emailed him a week later: “Hey, I have a service agreement ready for you — if you want to be part of the pilot.”
Rory’s Commentary
The market was there, waiting for Dori to crystallize his idea into a business plan. Not his first idea, but perhaps his best one. The seeds of Simple Closure were planted in the ashes of Earny. There’s something almost holy about what Dori and his team are doing. In a moment of immense grief, pain, and stress, they’re offering practical support and compassion. As the clinical psychologist and leadership coach Dr. Henry Cloud wrote in his book Necessary Endings, “Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.” That’s what Simple Closure is making possible.
The Airtable MVP and First Customer, Continued
Dori Yona
He said, send it to me. He signed. I remember it was like 10:30 PM. He signed. I think I didn’t fall asleep until about three in the morning, because I was so excited. We had signed our first customer. He ended up being our first customer — we’re actually friends to this day. We became friends from that experience. I help him with his other company, he’s doing really well, and we’ve stayed in close touch and built a relationship from there. That was the story of our first customer.
Rory Holland
Oh, that’s so cool. You built it on Airtable, you called it a beta — I love it. And you won the customer and you’re still friends. That’s awesome.
Costco IS a Great Product
Rory Holland
I’d like to shift gears a little bit. We like to ask our guests a fantasy executive headhunting question, and you picked the founder of Costco. That’s unique. Tell me why.
Dori Yona
Why is that unique? It’s one of the best businesses ever created.
Rory Holland
It is a great one — trust me, raising kids and animals, we’ve got a house full. Costco is always a blessing. But what is it about Jim Sinegal that you like so much?
Dori Yona
First of all, there’s a really good podcast — I think it was Acquired — that did an episode about Costco, Jim Sinegal, and the whole story of Kirkland and Costco. It’s a long one, but it’s interesting. What’s so unique about Costco is — obviously as a consumer, as a shopper, I love it. If there’s anything I need less of in my life, it’s decision-making. I make enough decisions all day, and Costco makes it really easy — you walk into a store and you don’t need to make a decision. But what I really value about that business is what a good product they’ve built. It is a good product. When you think about products, you think about software — but this is a really good product. They have a strong fan following, they’ve mastered their ICP, their customers love their products, their renewal rates are among the lowest churn rates of any product in the market. They’ve built a really successful, thriving business with great unit economics. There are all these calculations of revenue per square foot of a Costco — the numbers are mind-boggling. But more than anything, they’ve built a product that consumers love, value, and appreciate. That’s very unique to do.
Rory Holland
I love it. A highly commoditized market, low margins, yet they pay people really well and have incredible customer loyalty. What an interesting combination. Personally, over the years going to Costco — I can’t confess this on air, but I actually enjoy going with my wife because I like the way they organize it. Like you said, you don’t really think — you’re just grabbing stuff off the shelf. People generally like to work there too, from what I can tell.
The Power of Curiosity
Rory Holland
Okay, another thing I want to ask you — thinking about younger folks today, and the folks listening. You mentioned curiosity as such a powerful soft skill. What is it about that that came to mind, and how do you use curiosity in your day to day?
Dori Yona
When I saw that question, I thought a lot about my kids — what quality or characteristic I appreciate or want my kids to have. Curiosity is just such a broad and important characteristic. It makes you challenge the status quo, it makes you want to learn more, it makes you want to expand your horizons. It’s such a fundamental, important skill. Ask my team — I will ask “why” a hundred times until I get to the answer. Why, why, why, why, why — to eventually get to the actual answer. You learn so much from that. I ask because I’m curious, and by asking questions you unlock five other things you didn’t think of or didn’t know. That’s the short of it.
Rory Holland
Curiosity makes life interesting. Curious about people, things, nature. When we come out of the womb and we’re kids — you probably have little ones — our eyes are wide open about everything. Going to the beach, going to the mountains, stopping at McDonald’s. Everything was exciting and they were curious about everything. Those of us who can tap into that — there are so many interesting things you can do from a business perspective because you’re asking: why does it have to be this way? It doesn’t have to be. We could solve a problem. And that leads me to a couple more things before we close out here. I saw you recently launched Simple Closure Asset Hub. How did curiosity lead you there, and what is Asset Hub?
Dori Yona
Asset Hub is a platform we built within Simple Closure — any Simple Closure customer can have access to it, and we help them sell and monetize the IP and assets of the business. We started in the venture space with two products. The first is source code — if you build a software app, in most cases when companies go to shut down and you ask what they did with their codebase, the answer in 95% of cases is: nothing. Maybe the founder bought it, maybe they open-sourced it. Not much. The second product we launched in beta is workspace data — that’s your Slack history, Google Docs, PowerPoint presentations you created. Again, in probably 99.9% of cases when you shut down, you do nothing with that and you just wipe the data. But it turns out there’s a lot of value in that data. So we started specifically with source code and workspace data for venture-backed companies. On our roadmap, we plan to expand into domains, talent, patents, trademarks, and physical assets. There’s a lot of places we want to expand into. As for how we got there — it’s a combination of two things. Our vision from day one was to help companies shut down. But there’s this whole other realm beyond that: our hypothesis was that these four million companies shutting down every year are actually sitting on trillions of dollars worth of assets in different shapes and forms. If we can help those companies shut down, we have access to this asset class that is unrecognized and unmonetized — because it sits in a very fragmented ecosystem. The world of IP and assets is very fragmented and unconsolidated. Our thesis is: if we own the supply of companies that shut down, we can build that platform in an effortless way and create a lot of value. It’s always been part of our vision. But what got us there even quicker was curiosity. We talked to founders: “Okay, you’re shutting down, we’ll help you — what else can we do? What do you wish we had?” That started getting us down that path. What’d you do with your code base? What’d you do with your data? What’d you do with your domains? Curiosity led us down the path of launching Asset Hub.
Helping Founders Recover and Move Forward
Rory Holland
I love it. Before we close out — a couple more things. What you’ve made me think about is that failures in life can be a stepping stone to something even more brilliant. You might not foresee it, because you can be in the darkness of the moment — it’s darkest before the light, right? It might be the worst time in your life, and then suddenly — you go on your Mexico trip and it hits you. I know what I want to do. You took a circumstance that was really terrible and turned it into something really meaningful. Look at the business you’ve built. I hope you take time to pause and reflect on the beautiful thing you’ve built, because you’re helping founders and leaders out of really difficult circumstances. The new addition of Asset Hub and the ability to value things they’ve built in a way they wouldn’t otherwise be able to — instead of just shutting them down or leaving them on a server somewhere. That’s really meaningful. What I wanted to read was the last sentence from your post last year: “Infrastructure for clean endings. Tools for closure that power new beginnings.” That is a beautiful thing sitting at the heart of what Simple Closure is. I imagine when you first started it, you probably didn’t connect those dots — but you wrote that a year ago. That really resonates with me. I’m really grateful for what you’ve built and what you’re doing.
Dori Yona
Of course. We talk about this a ton as a company — we don’t get excited by shutting down companies. We don’t wake up in the morning like, “We’re going to shut down 10 companies today.” That doesn’t excite us. What excites us is movement. We see ourselves as enabling the movement of the economy — being able to get these founders and entrepreneurs back on their feet as fast as possible so they can go back to building their next business. The more time they’re wasting on the bureaucratic, logistical side of shutting down, that’s time they’re not out there building and making change. That’s ultimately what drives us as a company.
Rory Holland
I love it. I feel like that’s a good place to end. What’s the best way to get in touch with you? For fintech and financial leaders, other folks listening to the podcast — where’s the best place to find you?
Dori Yona
I’m available via email at dori@simpleclosure.com. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn or on X at Dori Yona — I’m pretty available across those platforms.
Rory Holland
Thanks so much for coming on. Great to get to know you.
Dori Yona
Thanks for having me.
