Dori Yona, Co-Founder and CEO, SimpleClosure

Dori is a serial entrepreneur who decided to turn his setbacks into a new idea for a startup.

“I was born in Israel, and at the age of eight months old, my family moved to Silicon Valley. I lived in the Bay Area until I was thirteen years old before returning back to Israel. After high school, I spent seven years in the Israeli Defense Force where I served as a captain of a battleship and led a platoon of ships in the Israeli Navy. After finishing my service, I embarked on my entrepreneurial journey.

I've been an entrepreneur for almost ten years now — I started three companies in my lifetime. One was in the world of social networking and dating, pre-Tinder times, and another was a consumer fin-tech company called Earny. My latest startup is SimpleClosure.

My previous fin-tech company, Earny, grew to 3.5 million users in the U.S. at its peak. It raised some initial funding and we ultimately sold the company later down the line. However, our investors had asked us to put together a shut down plan during a downturn in the business.

Closing a company is one of those things that, as a founder, you never stop to think about. You're always pushing and looking forward so no one talks about what happens when your business ends.

I remember sitting in a meeting, going over the financials with our board members and our investors telling us to put together a shut down analysis because we were running out of money. Many questions were asked, and the truth was, I didn’t know the answer to any of them.

I went home and frantically Googled but couldn't find any substantial information. I tried speaking to tech law firms and other founders in my network, but again, the results were limited. Through this experience, I quickly realized that it wasn't that no one experiences shut down, but it was because no one likes to talk about it. In the U.S., between 700K to a million companies shut down every year. Everyone talks about successes, like their exits or M&A, but no one likes to share their setbacks as a founder. Failure almost feels taboo but statistically speaking, 93% of startups fail.

When I spoke to other founders who had to shut down their companies, all of them complained about the same pain points that I had. Some founders even made mistakes in their process, which ended up costing them penalties and fees years later.

So I thought to myself, there has to be a better solution. After delving into the world of shutting down a startup, I decided to start SimpleClosure, a platform to help founders with their shut down process.”

Can you tell us more about SimpleClosure and how it works?

“SimpleClosure is a platform to help founders and stakeholders manage and track their dissolution and wind down process. You start by filling out an onboarding form. In this onboarding form, we collect necessary information about the company and put together a personalized shut down plan.

Some information includes uploading your cap table, operating agreements, incorporation information, state filings, and so forth. With this information, we generate a tailored shut down plan that takes into consideration all the laws and requirements. Whatever cannot be automated is prepared and outlined for you, allowing you to manage and complete it directly on our platform.

Our technology includes a combination of fin-tech, legal-tech, and AI to help automate and streamline the process.”

What advice would you give to those dealing with setbacks?

“The best advice I can give is to talk about it. We talk a lot about it as a team and we encourage everyone to share and ask questions. There is no better wisdom than to learn from the mistakes that others have made, and to learn from those mistakes so you can avoid them in the future.”

After your previous startups, where did you get the motivation to become a founder again?

“I get bored if I’m not building a company. I love creating something out of scratch and challenging the status quo. I get excited by the challenges of being an entrepreneur, where every day is different and I have to confront challenges that I have never encountered before. I thrive on that.

I love building a team and solving pain points for customers. There's nothing more rewarding than getting on a customer call and hearing them say they love the product.”

Who is on your current cap table?

“We recently closed a $1.5 million pre-seed round and had participation from Vera Equity and Cambrian Ventures, along with a slew of angel investors.”

What do you like to do for fun?

“I am an avid traveler and have been for many years. After my military service, I was backpacking around the world and met my wife in Fiji (she’s Dutch). She had just finished her Master’s in Psychology in the Netherlands and was traveling for a year.

My family and I love going to places that have not been fully explored and are off the beaten path. Next month, I’m exploring Uzbekistan!”