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Most founders build to win.
Dori Yona built to lose better.
Back in January, I interviewed him for the podcast. At the time, he’d raised a $4M seed round for a company that, frankly, a lot of VCs couldn’t wrap their heads around.
The pitch?
SimpleClosure: the easiest way to shut down your startup.
A platform designed for the 93% of startups that don’t make it.
Yes—he’s building a venture-backed business around failure.
And now, just a few months later, he’s closed a $15M Series A.
Why? Because what seemed like a niche pain point turns out to be a massive blind spot.
💥 700,000 to 1 million companies shut down every year in the U.S. alone.
💥 Founders face up to 12 months of paperwork, penalties, and legal fog.
💥 Most are completely unprepared—and most professionals (lawyers, CPAs) won’t touch it.
Dori learned this the hard way.
He’d previously raised $13M, had 3.5 million users, and was featured in Business Insider’s Top 50 Startups to Watch. But then came the board meeting where his investor said:
“The numbers don’t look good. We need a shutdown analysis.”
He Googled what that meant.
And what he found—or didn’t—became the company he’d build next.
There’s a quote from the episode that’s been echoing in my mind ever since:
“I literally asked myself, ‘Am I the first founder in America to shut down a startup?’ That’s how it felt.”
It shouldn’t.
But even now, shutdowns are taboo.
They don’t make headlines. They don’t go viral.
And yet, they’re part of the journey for almost everyone.
That’s what makes SimpleClosure so powerful.
They’re not just building software.
They’re reshaping the story we tell about failure.
And if this Series A is any indication, investors are starting to get it.
So here’s the question Dori leaves us with:
Are you building something resilient—or just something impressive?
Because when the winds shift, what matters isn’t whether you raise the next round.
It’s whether you’ve built something that holds—or something that hollows.
And if it does fall apart?
There’s a way to walk away clean, with dignity, and with the data to build your next big thing.
“Go fucking big. Grow faster.” —Dori Yona, written above his desk.
Let’s go.
– David
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