Selling a shut-down startup's assets: SimpleClosure and the alternatives

SimpleClosure is a wind-down service that dissolves startups and, through its AssetHub, sells or licenses their code and workspace data to AI buyers; it publishes no price for a dissolution, and on an asset sale it charges nothing upfront and takes a percentage it does not publish. Its own FAQ says dissolution pricing depends on many factors and is set after a meeting with each company, and its AssetHub page says there is no upfront cost, only a percentage if the assets are sold or licensed; its press release adds that AssetHub remains free for its dissolution customers. The prices it has reported for shut-down startups ran typically between $10,000 and $100,000 per company, with its first year averaging about $10,000 a deal. The alternatives come in four kinds: another wind-down firm, such as Sunset, which buys closed companies' data at similar prices; selling directly to a buyer with a closed-company track, such as micro1, whose track for shut-down companies asks for 50+ peak employees and substantial Teams or Slack data, Turing, whose repositories typically pay $10k to $100k+, or Ooak, whose deals run from $20K to several hundred thousand dollars; an agent that runs a competing sale for the company, which is what AIData.Broker does; and a sale run by a fiduciary in an assignment for the benefit of creditors or a bankruptcy. The one public auction of a company's records shows what competition does: Spirit Airlines' archive opened at $5M, was won at $10M, and drew a later offer of 2.5x the opening bid, with the sale still awaiting the court's approval.

This guide is for the founder, officer, board member or trustee of a startup that is closing or has closed, deciding how to wind it down and what to do with its code, Slack, tickets, email and documents. It describes SimpleClosure from its own pages, as the established firm it is, then each alternative by what it actually does, the rights questions that decide whether anything can be sold at all, the deadlines that close in once the subscriptions stop, and a side-by-side comparison of cost, time and who keeps the money. Every SimpleClosure term below was read on its own pages on 19 October 2026 and links to the record that holds its words. For the full selling process, start with how to sell company data to AI labs.

This guide is research from public sources, not legal, tax or investment advice.

Contents

1. At a glance: who does what for a closing startup
2. What SimpleClosure does and charges, from its own pages
3. What has value in a closing startup, and why AI buyers want it
4. The rights questions that decide whether it can be sold
5. The deadlines: what disappears when the bills stop
6. How each route works
7. Cost, time and who keeps the money, side by side
8. How a sale through us works for a closing company
9. A checklist for the weeks before and after closing
10. Questions people ask
11. What this means for you

1. At a glance: who does what for a closing startup

A closing startup usually meets these firms in a hurry, through a lawyer's recommendation, an investor's portfolio email or an unsolicited offer, and they are not the same kind of firm. Some dissolve the company and sell its assets on the side; some buy for their own account; one lists assets for buyers who pay to look; and some act for the company in the sale. What each one is decides who sets the price, who signs and where the money goes.

The table sets out, for each firm that states it deals with closing or closed companies' code and records, what it does, what it charges or pays as published, and who removes personal data. Each row is taken from that firm's own page or from the press record cited in the last column. "Not published" means its pages say nothing on that point as we read them.

Three differences in that table matter more than any price. Who acts for the company: a buyer acts for itself, and SimpleClosure's page for investors says plainly that it is not a board advisor or fiduciary. Who receives the money: in SimpleClosure's process it receives and distributes the proceeds, while a direct buyer, or a buyer found by AIData.Broker, pays the company. How many buyers see the assets at once: one, a network the service chooses, or every buyer that fits by one deadline. Sections 6 and 7 come back to each.

2. What SimpleClosure does and charges, from its own pages

SimpleClosure is an established firm with real traction. It was built to shut companies down properly, it raised a $15 million Series A led by TTV Capital in 2025, and its investor page says its platform has supported 6,000+ companies. It added the asset business on top of that base. Any comparison should start from what it actually offers, in its own words.

The shutdown service

SimpleClosure's core product is a managed dissolution. Its FAQ describes a three-step process (legally dissolving the company in its state of formation, winding up its affairs, and distributing what is left to investors), and its pages list the work that goes with it: state filings and withdrawals, payroll and tax accounts, investor distributions and the final records ( SimpleClosure, how it works). One of its own guides says that most startups complete the process in two to six weeks from kickoff. Its terms are also clear about the limits of that role: it may contact and negotiate with investors, vendors, creditors and agencies for the company, but its authorisation does not include any power of attorney or other authority to sign documents or enter agreements for it.

The price is not published. Its FAQ answers "How much does SimpleClosure cost?" by saying that pricing depends on many factors, such as the industry, the complexity of operations, the investment structure and the number of states the company is registered in, and that it meets each company to decide which services it needs. Its home page carries a banner that year-end surge pricing begins November 1, so a quote carries a date. A company does not have to buy everything: the same page says a company can sell assets without going through a full dissolution, and its terms say participation in Asset Hub Services is voluntary, so a company it dissolves can sell its assets another way.

AssetHub: what it sells, and to whom

AssetHub is the part of SimpleClosure that sells a company's assets for AI training. Its product page names two categories: SourceCode, the codebases, repositories, documentation and tests, and WorkspaceData, the communications, documents, designs, tickets and workflows across tools such as Slack, Google Drive, email, Notion and Figma ( SimpleClosure, AssetHub). Buyers, in its words, include AI labs, model developers and companies building reinforcement learning environments. A deal can be a licence, in which the company keeps the assets, or an outright sale, depending on the asset and the buyer.

The process is short to start. A company fills in a form or connects its GitHub account, and most receive an initial viability assessment within days or even hours. With the company's approval, assets it judges qualified are shown to its own buyer network, and SimpleClosure then manages the matching, documentation, receipt and distribution of proceeds. On personal data, its FAQ says the company determines what is in scope, that sensitive employee, compensation and health information is excluded, and that the data is prepared before it reaches AI training.

What AssetHub charges

AssetHub's fee is a share of the sale. Its product page says there's no upfront cost to use AssetHub and that SimpleClosure takes a percentage only if the assets are sold or licensed; the percentage itself is not published anywhere we read. Its September press release adds that AssetHub remains free for SimpleClosure dissolution customers and is now open to other established companies. The two statements can both be true (no upfront charge, and a share of any sale), or "free" may mean no share at all for dissolution customers; the pages do not settle which, so it is the first question to ask.

What it has reported doing

SimpleClosure publishes figures about its own results. Its CEO's analysis of 350+ companies that offered assets reports that company assets can represent tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in value, and that the firm has helped facilitate deals in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for unique assets. Its press release says AssetHub is on track to return more than $10 million to startups by the end of 2026, a forecast rather than money already paid. By October 2026 it had handled over 150 deals, as its CEO told MIT Technology Review.

The individual results that are public show the range. cielo24, a transcription company that closed after more than a decade, sold its data assets through SimpleClosure for mid-six figures. At the small end, one founder of a closed crypto startup told MIT Technology Review he had netted roughly $25,000 for his code base, with about $15,000 more expected for the workspace data. And the early record set the typical level: in its test year it recovered $1 million across nearly 100 deals, about $10,000 each.

SimpleClosure also gives founders sound advice about other buyers. Its CEO warned on 1 October 2026 that new buyers advertise $1 million to $5 million offers with no completed purchase behind them, and that a buyer who takes the raw files and promises to clean them later already holds what was meant to be removed ( SimpleClosure, on judging large data offers). That advice applies to every route in this guide, including its own.

What its terms say about the assets

AssetHub runs under SimpleClosure's general Terms of Service, effective 6 May 2026, and six of its terms are worth reading before anything is uploaded or connected ( SimpleClosure, Terms of Service).

• Submitting is a licence. The licence a company grants on its data includes permission to aggregate, anonymize, and de-identify it for any legal purpose, and it expressly covers the digital assets submitted through AssetHub. That licence starts at submission, before any buyer is found.
• SimpleClosure may be the buyer. Submitted assets are offered for potential acquisition by SimpleClosure, its affiliates and subsidiaries, or third-party buyers it introduces.
• If it buys, it may resell. On an acquisition by SimpleClosure or its affiliates, the acquiring entity may license or sell the assets to third parties without further consent or compensation, unless a separate agreement says otherwise.
• The company warrants every consent. It represents that it has given every required notice to, and obtained every required consent from, the employees, contractors, customers, investors and vendors whose personal information may be in the assets.
• The company carries the claims. It must defend, indemnify and hold SimpleClosure harmless against claims arising from a breach of those warranties, from infringement, or from privacy breaches in the transfer.
• The real terms are in a separate agreement. An evaluation does not oblige SimpleClosure to acquire, and any acquisition needs its own review and a separate agreement, which is not published.

None of this is unusual for a firm that may buy for its own account, and much of it mirrors what buyers ask for in their own licences. It does mean three practical things for a closing company: read the separate agreement before treating any number as an offer, ask in each case whether SimpleClosure or a third party is the buyer, and have the rights work done before warranting it (section 4).

3. What has value in a closing startup, and why AI buyers want it

AI buyers do not pay for a closed startup's brand or its customer list. They pay for the record of how real work was done: the code with its history, the tickets that explain why each change was made, the Slack threads where the decisions were argued, the documents and designs that sit between them. Labs and the companies that build training environments for AI agents use that record to teach models to do multi-step work the way a team actually does it, which is why SimpleClosure's buyers include companies building reinforcement learning environments and why Turing describes its offer as buying a company's operating record.

What a startup typically holds is consistent. Among the workspaces SimpleClosure evaluated for sale, 95% use Slack, 87% Google Drive and 82% GitHub. The companies that offered assets on AssetHub since April represent nearly 500 million lines of code across thousands of repositories, so ordinary code is not scarce, and buyers know it.

Three findings decide where a given startup lands. First, net volume, not raw volume: SimpleClosure found that roughly 37% of raw code disappeared once third-party code, generated code and internal duplicates were removed. Second, links and rarity: a Jira ticket tied to a specific commit is worth more than a standalone document, as Sunset's CEO put it, and less common languages such as Ruby or C++ can fetch top dollar, better still with Jira, Linear or Figma context. Third, size and age: Ooak's estimator gives a winding-down company of one to ten people with two years of Drive and Slack $8k to $11k, while a 13-year archive fetched mid-six figures.

Closing itself costs value. The same estimator prices a closed company's records at about 0.65 times what they fetch while the company operates ( the same 11 to 50 person company with the same tools), because the people who could explain the records have gone and the systems are no longer live. That is the strongest argument for deciding about the assets during the wind-down rather than after it. The valuation guide explains how each of these factors moves a price, and the codebase guide covers code on its own.

4. The rights questions that decide whether it can be sold

A closing startup can only sell what it owns and may lawfully transfer, and someone with authority has to sign. Buyers test each of these, and SimpleClosure's terms make the company warrant them in writing, so they are worth settling before any route is chosen. Four questions decide most cases.

Who can sign once the company is dissolved

Dissolving a company does not make its assets ownerless. In Delaware, where many US startups are incorporated, a dissolved corporation continues for three years (or longer if the Court of Chancery directs) to wind up its affairs, including disposing of its property, and its officers and directors can still act for it in that period. It must also adopt a plan of distribution that pays or provides for its claims before anything goes to shareholders. A sale of all or substantially all of the assets needs board and shareholder approval and any investor consents the charter requires, and a lender with security over the company's IP has to consent in writing, unless its loan documents already permit the licence.

Authority moves once the company enters a formal process. In an assignment for the benefit of creditors the assignee holds the assets and reduces them to money, by public or private sale; in bankruptcy, a trustee or the court-supervised debtor signs, and the old board does not. A founder is not, as founder, a signer: the question is who the law lets act for the company at that moment. Note what a wind-down service cannot do here: SimpleClosure's authority does not include any power of attorney, so a signer has to stay available until every sale is done, even if the dissolution itself finishes in two to six weeks.

Customer contracts

Much of what a B2B startup holds is its customers' material: support tickets quoting their data, files they uploaded, notes about their accounts. Customer contracts and data processing agreements usually limit that material to serving the customer, and a vendor that processes personal information as a service provider must be barred by contract from selling it under California law. The workable answer is to exclude customer content, or to anonymise it where each contract allows, as our rights item on customer contracts sets out: customer content is excluded, expressly permitted, or anonymised. The confidentiality promises in customer contracts can outlive the company itself.

Employees' messages

Slack and email are written by employees, and their messages are full of their personal information. California's privacy law has covered employees since its employment exemption expired on 1 January 2023, so a covered company owes its California staff the same rights as consumers, and message contents are sensitive personal information unless the company was the intended recipient. Delaware employers may monitor staff email only after notice to employees, and the Stored Communications Act generally lets a company that provides its own email or chat system authorise access to messages stored on it. For staff in the EU or UK the question is the lawful basis for the new purpose, and in Canada consent or anonymisation.

The bankruptcy record shows why employees matter even when consumers are protected. In Spirit's sale, the hearing on the records sale has been adjourned five times while the estate negotiates with objectors over employee information. Our guide to employee emails and chats covers the monitoring, consent and privilege questions in full.

Personal data, and the promises that travel with it

Licensing personal information for money is a sale under California law, with notice and opt-out duties, and the privacy promises a company made travel with the data into any sale: the FTC's chairman wrote in the 23andMe case that these types of promises to consumers must be kept. The standard way through is de-identification to a test that holds: California's definition requires reasonable technical measures, a public commitment not to re-identify, and contracts binding every recipient. SimpleClosure's FAQ promises that sensitive data is excluded and the data prepared, without naming a standard or a test; Turing removes personal data itself, in isolated processing, after the company approves the scope; Ooak uses its own engine. Whoever does it, the company should know the standard, who tests the result, and what the buyer promises afterwards. Our de-identification standard sets out one way to answer all three.

Two further checks sit behind every sale. The company must own what it sells, which means signed IP assignments from every employee and contractor and a list of the open-source licences in its code. And it must be able to prove title, because buyers have been offered stolen archives: Surge AI's head of environments described a group shopping an illicit copy of a large company's codebase to every data vendor. For the general privacy rules, see is it legal to sell customer data?; for the rules inside a bankruptcy, selling customer data in bankruptcy.

5. The deadlines: what disappears when the bills stop

A closing startup's records do not wait for a decision. Cash is short at the end: the median non-AI company that shut down through SimpleClosure in the first half of 2026 had $13,000 in the bank when it stopped, which is why software subscriptions are among the first costs cut. Once they lapse, each vendor deletes on its own schedule, and some schedules leave nothing to recover.

Exports take longer than founders expect, so they belong in the plan before anything is cancelled. Google's full export needs a super administrator account at least 30 days old, and arrives no earlier than 48 hours after it starts, and Slack exports private channels and DMs only on higher plans, so downgrading to save money can remove the most valuable history from what can be exported at all.

Three other clocks run alongside. The company's own legal life in Delaware continues for three years after dissolution, after which a court-appointed trustee or receiver is needed to deal with its property. If a company submitted assets to a service and the relationship ends, SimpleClosure's terms return its data on request for thirty days after termination. And prices move with the calendar: SimpleClosure's year-end surge pricing begins November 1.

The practical rule is the same on every route: export before you cancel, using each system's own admin export, and record how each export was made, since buyers ask (our rights item on the export route explains why: a native export by the company's own admin is the clean answer). A few months of subscriptions cost little against a sale of $10,000 to $100,000 or more. The deletion clock counts the days left for each system from the date you cancelled or plan to.

6. How each route works

The routes differ in who finds the buyer, who the buyer is, and how many buyers compete. Each suits a different company, and they can be combined: a company can have one firm dissolve it and sell its assets another way.

Route 1: a wind-down service that also sells the assets

How it works. The service dissolves the company and offers its code and workspace data to the buyers in its own network. At SimpleClosure, the company submits details or connects GitHub, receives a viability assessment within days or hours, approves which assets go to its buyer network, and the service then handles documentation and receives and distributes the proceeds. The buyer may be a third party or SimpleClosure or an affiliate.

What it costs. The dissolution is quoted per company; the asset sale costs a percentage of the sale, with nothing upfront, or nothing for dissolution customers if "free" means no share.

How long. The dissolution in two to six weeks for most startups; the asset sale is not timed on its pages beyond the first assessment.

Who keeps the money. The buyer's payment goes to SimpleClosure, which distributes the proceeds; the company's plan of distribution decides who receives them in the end (section 7).

Who it suits. A small startup that wants one firm to handle everything, whose assets are likely to fetch near the typical $10,000 to $100,000, and whose founders have little time left. Its advantages are real: one relationship, a firm that understands shutdowns, a buyer network already assembled, and a first view of value within days.

Sunset is the other wind-down firm named in this market. SimpleClosure's own guide to dissolution tools names "Sunset HQ" beside itself as a managed service ( SimpleClosure, top startup dissolution tools), and Forbes reported that Sunset also buys defunct company data at similar prices, pricing on the company's size, age and how well its records connect. Where a wind-down firm buys for its own account, the price is the one it offers; there is no second bidder unless the company finds one.

Route 2: selling directly to a buyer with a closed-company track

How it works. The company applies to a buyer that states it takes closing or closed companies, answers its intake, lets it sample, and signs its licence. Four buyers publish such a track or rule:

• micro1 runs a separate track for companies that have shut down, for 50+ peak employees and substantial Teams or Slack data. Its published licence is worldwide, perpetual and irrevocable, with the right to sublicense through multiple tiers, and it pays only after accepting the data in writing.
• Turing (Project Lazarus) takes operating, winding-down and closed companies, pays repositories typically $10k to $100k+, removes personal data itself after the company approves the scope, and says most holders go from first conversation to payment in under two weeks. Its CEO told The Information it had bought five to ten failed-startup codebases.
• Ooak takes operating, winding-down and closed companies, licenses for training only, with the company's exclusions annexed, and pays the company in a headline of 2 to 4 weeks.
• Centific offers companies winding down a faster process under an asset-purchase agreement, and pays when the data is accepted.

Mercor and Labelbox buy too, without a published closed-company rule: Mercor wrote to Warmly offering to buy or license its code base after its acquisition was announced, Warmly received four offers, up to $300K, all declined, and Labelbox says it works with fully defunct startup codebases.

What it costs. No fee to anyone, and some buyers bear the processing: Mercor states its program covers extraction, anonymisation and transfer with no fees or deductions. The cost is in the terms and the company's own time: each buyer sets its own licence, and a single buyer's offer has nothing to be measured against. Our buyer programs compared sets the licences side by side, and the offer check lists the clauses of the buyer whose offer you hold.

Who keeps the money. The buyer pays the company. Who it suits. A company that fits one buyer's rule well, has someone who can run the conversations, and is willing to take one buyer's terms, or one that collects several offers itself before choosing.

Route 3: listing the assets yourself

A listing site lets a company put its assets in front of buyers without a firm in the middle. BuyMyDeadStartup describes itself as charging nothing for the company, with buyers paying $1,500 a month for access to the listings, and says it is not a broker or an escrow. The company keeps full control and pays nothing, but it does all the work itself: describing the assets, answering buyers, negotiating, and deciding who removes personal data. No sale prices are published, so there is no evidence yet of what listings fetch.

Route 4: an agent that runs a competing sale for the company

How it works. The company appoints a sell-side agent, which acts for the company alone: it values the records, settles the rights file, describes the records to every buyer that fits at the same time, and passes every offer back with its terms. The company still licenses or sells the records itself and signs the licence. This is what AIData.Broker does; section 8 sets out exactly how.

Why competition matters here. Most sales of closed startups' records are private sales to one buyer, and the realised averages sit near the bottom of the quoted ranges: SimpleClosure's first year averaged about $10K a deal against a quoted range up to $100K, and Turing paid an average in the tens of thousands per failed-startup codebase against its higher headlines. The one company archive offered in open competition went the other way. In Spirit Airlines' bankruptcy auction, three qualified bidders took Google's opening bid of $5M to a winning price of $10M, and micro1 later filed an offer 2.5x the opening bid. A small startup will not draw Google, but the mechanism is the same at any size: a second written offer is the only test of the first.

What it costs and who it suits. A success fee out of the sale. It suits a company whose records are likely worth more than the typical range (years of linked records, a less common stack, a domain buyers want) and whose signer wants several buyers to compete.

Route 5: an assignment for the benefit of creditors, or a bankruptcy sale

When a company owes more than it has, the assets may be sold by a fiduciary for its creditors. In an assignment for the benefit of creditors, the company assigns everything to an assignee, who collects and reduces to money the assets of the estate, by suit or by public or private sale; it is a state-law liquidation, not a bankruptcy case, so the bankruptcy privacy rule and its ombudsman do not apply, while the privacy policy, state law and every contract still do. In chapter 7, the trustee's duty is to collect and reduce to money the property of the estate; a trustee may hire professionals to sell only with the court's approval, on terms the court approves, which may be a percentage fee. One chapter 7 trustee asked the court to approve an auctioneer at 20 percent of the first $20,000, 10 percent of the next $50,000 and 8 percent of the balance.

Where personal information is involved, the bankruptcy rule in section 363(b)(1) can require a consumer privacy ombudsman and the court's approval. Spirit shows the result: a price set by open competition, and a timetable set by the court and the objectors, with the hearing adjourned to 6 November 2026. These routes suit companies with real debts and assets worth a fiduciary's time; for a small startup with few creditors, a dissolution is usually cheaper. Our bankruptcy guide covers the rules in full.

7. Cost, time and who keeps the money, side by side

The table compares the routes on the questions a board asks. Each cell is taken from the firm's own page or the record linked in it; "not published" means we found no figure.

Who keeps the money is the same answer on every route outside an insolvency process: the company, and then its creditors and shareholders, in that order. A dissolved Delaware company must adopt a plan that pays or makes reasonable provision to pay all claims and obligations before distributing anything, so a data sale's proceeds go to the company's debts first and to shareholders, by their preferences, after. In an ABC or a bankruptcy, the proceeds go to the assignee or the estate, for the creditors. A founder is paid, if at all, as a shareholder through that plan, not by the buyer; an offer to pay a founder personally for the company's records deserves a question about who is really selling.

The fee is only one cost. A route that charges nothing can cost more if it leaves the price unmeasured, and a percentage can be worth paying if competition moves the price by more than the fee. The direct or through us page sets the two routes side by side on what the company keeps.

8. How a sale through us works for a closing company

AIData.Broker acts as the company's agent in the sale: the company itself licenses or sells its records to the buyer, and we do not buy them, take ownership of them or license them in our own name ( mandate 2.3). We take sale mandates from holders based in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. For a closing company, five things work differently from a wind-down service's asset desk.

Who accepts. The mandate is accepted by whoever the law lets act for the company at that moment: its officers during a dissolution, or its liquidator, administrator, trustee or assignee once one is appointed. We settle that first, because it decides who signs the licence later.

What we do. We value the records free, against public prices, with no upload needed: value a closing company's data. We then build the rights file with the company (who owns each part, which contracts limit it, who appears in it), write the datasheet the company approves, and describe the records, without the company's name, to every buyer whose published rules fit and that passes our screening, less any the company leaves out, including the buyers that take closed companies. No buyer gets a first look or a last look, and we pass every offer to the company in writing, with its full terms.

Who decides. The company alone decides whether to sell, to which buyer and on what terms, including de-identification and payment timing, and it may reject any offer. The company also chooses who removes personal data and to which standard; we are not the de-identifier of record.

Where the money goes. The company, or a provider it chooses, delivers the data to the buyer, and each buyer pays the company directly; we have no authority to receive payment for it. In a sale we run no buyer pays us: we decline any introduction fee a buyer offers, tell the company the amount, and ask the buyer to put it into the price instead.

What it costs. A success fee on what the company is actually paid, band by band: 15% of the first $250,000, 10% from $250,000 to $1 million, and 6% above $1 million, payable only out of money actually received, with no retainer and no minimum fee. On a sale paying $300,000 the fee is $42,500. The mandate is exclusive for 2 months, and a sale to a buyer we introduced, made within 12 months after it ends and listed in writing, still carries the fee. The full terms are on the pricing page and in how it works.

Two honest limits. First, the smallest sale we take on is $26,000: a startup whose records are likely to fetch less than that is usually better served by a wind-down service's asset desk or a direct sale, and our valuation weighs its estimate against that floor. Second, our mandate asks the company, like SimpleClosure's terms, to compensate us for third-party claims arising from the data itself, and we compensate the company for claims caused by our breach; the rights file exists so that those claims do not arise.

Working with a wind-down service is compatible with this. SimpleClosure's terms make AssetHub participation voluntary, so a company can have it run the dissolution while we run the sale. What the mandate does not allow is two sale processes at once: during the exclusive period the company does not list the same data with another agent or exchange. The estates page explains how this works for trustees and assignees, and the guide for closing companies and estates walks through the choices for founders.

9. A checklist for the weeks before and after closing

The order matters more than any single step: the exports and the signer come first, because without them no route works.

1. Name the signer. Decide who will sign for the company after dissolution (an officer kept on, or the assignee or trustee), and record the board and shareholder approval a sale of the assets needs.
2. Export every system before cancelling it. Use each system's own admin export and record how it was done. Check the deletion clock for each vendor's window.
3. Keep the records whole. Export Slack, tickets, code and documents together, so that the links between them survive.
4. Sort what you may not sell. Customer content, HR and legal channels, vendors' confidential documents, licensed material and anything privileged.
5. Read the privacy promises the company made to customers and staff, and what it told employees about monitoring.
6. Check title. IP assignments from every employee and contractor, open-source licences, any lender's security.
7. Get a value before talking to buyers. A valuation against public prices, binding no one, tells you which route is worth the effort.
8. Read the terms before uploading or connecting anything. At SimpleClosure, submission is itself a licence to de-identify and use the data.
9. Ask every firm the same questions (below), and get the answers in writing.
10. Get more than one written offer, from buyers with a closed-company track or through an agent, and compare them on terms as well as price with the offer check.
11. Decide who removes personal data, and to what standard, before any raw file leaves the company.
12. Plan the proceeds. The plan of distribution decides where the money goes; tell the board and investors what the sale may bring.

The questions to send any wind-down service, buyer or agent before choosing:

• What do you charge, as a number or percentage, and on what amount?
• Are you, or an affiliate, the buyer? How many other buyers will see the assets, and at the same time?
• Does the buyer's payment come to us directly or through you, and how many days after you receive it do we receive it?
• Is the deal a licence or a sale, for what use, for how long, and can the buyer pass the data on?
• Who removes personal data, to what standard, who tests it, and does the buyer commit not to re-identify?
• What do we warrant, and is our liability capped?
• Can you sign for us? (SimpleClosure's terms say it cannot; someone at the company must.)

Questions people ask

What does SimpleClosure charge? Its dissolution price is not published: its FAQ says pricing depends on many factors and is set per company after a meeting. For selling assets through AssetHub it charges nothing upfront and a percentage if the assets sell, a rate it does not publish, and its press release says AssetHub is free for its dissolution customers.

What are the alternatives to SimpleClosure? Another wind-down firm, such as Sunset, which buys at similar prices; a direct sale to a buyer with a closed-company track, such as micro1's track for shut-down companies, Turing or Ooak; a listing site such as BuyMyDeadStartup; a sell-side agent that runs a competing sale for the company, such as AIData.Broker; or, where there are debts, an assignment for the benefit of creditors or a bankruptcy sale.

How much is a shut-down startup's data worth? Reported prices for shut-down startups ran typically $10,000 to $100,000 per company, with SimpleClosure's first year averaging about $10,000 a deal. Long, linked histories fetch more: cielo24's archive sold for mid-six figures.

Does SimpleClosure buy the assets itself? It can. Its terms offer submitted assets for acquisition by SimpleClosure, its affiliates and subsidiaries, or third-party buyers, and if it or an affiliate acquires them, it may license or sell them on without further payment to the company.

Can a dissolved company still sell its code and Slack? In Delaware, yes, during the wind-up: a dissolved corporation continues for three years to dispose of its property, and its officers can sign. After an assignment for the benefit of creditors or a bankruptcy filing, only the assignee or trustee can.

Do I need to use SimpleClosure's AssetHub if SimpleClosure dissolves my company? No. Its terms say participation in Asset Hub Services is voluntary, and a company can also sell assets through SimpleClosure without a full dissolution.

How fast do I need to act? Before the subscriptions lapse. Google Workspace offers No recovery window stated once an account is cancelled, Jira and Confluence keep data for 60 days, and Microsoft 365 deletes within 180 days at most. Export first, then decide.

Who gets the money from a closed startup's data sale? The company, and through it its creditors first and its shareholders after, under the plan of distribution a dissolved Delaware corporation must adopt. With SimpleClosure the buyer's payment first goes to SimpleClosure, which distributes the proceeds; in a direct sale or a sale we run, the buyer pays the company.

What this means for you

A wind-down service, a buyer and a sell-side agent are three different things, and a closing startup can use more than one of them. SimpleClosure is a capable firm for the shutdown itself, with a track record and a buyer network for assets, and for a small company with little time its asset desk may be the right answer. The questions that decide whether it is the right answer for yours are the same ones to put to every route:

1. Secure the records first. Export every system with its own admin tools before any subscription lapses; nothing else matters if the records are gone.
2. Keep a signer. Dissolution can finish in weeks, and SimpleClosure's terms say it cannot sign for you.
3. Know what you may sell. Customer content, employees' messages and personal data each need an answer before anything is uploaded, connected or warranted.
4. Know the number before the offer. A valuation against public prices shows whether the records are worth a competitive sale or are likely near the typical range.
5. Read who the buyer is and where the money goes. A service that may buy for itself and receives the proceeds is a different counterparty from a buyer that pays you, or an agent that acts only for you.
6. Test the price with a second offer. In the one open contest on record, competition moved the price to 2.5x the opening bid.

The estates page lists who buys a closing company's records and how a sale runs for founders, officers and trustees. The buyer board carries every buyer's current rules, the closures page tracks companies shutting down, the deals page records every public sale including Spirit, and how it works sets out each step of a sale we run, clause by clause. For the rest of the journey, see how to sell company data to AI labs, what a data licensing agreement contains and when AI data buyers actually pay.

This guide is research from public sources, not legal, tax or investment advice.