Guides to closing, selling or licensing a company

All guides

A how-to walks you through one closing or licensing task. A list answers one question, such as who the buyers are.

• Dissolve a Delaware corporation

  Board and stockholder approval, franchise tax, and the Delaware certificate of dissolution.

• What to do with customer data when closing a business

  Inventory, notice, and deletion or return of customer personal data when a business closes.

• How to tell employees the company is closing

  The order for telling staff: federal WARN notice, the meeting, a script outline, final pay, and health coverage.

• Questions to ask before selling company data

  Ten questions for any data buyer: who gets the copy, exclusivity, identification, term, and what you still must keep.

• What to do before canceling software when closing a business

  Nine cross-vendor steps before you cancel: filings, admins, exports, then each vendor's own deletion page.

• How to recover value from a closing company

  Separate ways value still leaves a closing company, from receivables and equipment to a license of records.

• Who buys company data

  Four kinds of AI data buyer, what each wants, and what a seller should check first.

Which guide to read

If you need the order of a whole close or a whole sale, start with that long overview. If you need one task, open the guide for that task. You can hand it to your lawyer, your CFO, or the person who still has the admin logins. Eligibility tells you whether the company can ask. The legal notes tell you whether a step is allowed.

If you are closing

Closing with employees is a sequence, not a single form. Someone has to decide the last day of operations, who tells the staff, what happens to customer records, and which subscriptions are canceled only after an export still exists. Mixing those jobs together makes the checks easy to skip. The long overview keeps the order. Each shorter guide stays on one task so a founder can do that task without rereading the whole close.

Start with how to wind down a company if people are still on payroll or the company is already winding down.

For the state filing itself, read how to dissolve a Delaware corporation.

For the conversation with staff, read how to tell employees the company is closing.

For customer records, read how to handle customer data when closing a business.

Before you turn tools off, read things to do before canceling software when closing.

Two other checks matter. Eligibility is the staff, records, and rights test. What a license never includes is the exclusion list for a data license, which is a different document from a shutdown checklist.

If you are selling the company

Selling the whole company is a different job from licensing a copy of its records. A buyer of the business wants the entity, the customers, and the contracts. A data license leaves ownership of the records with the company and grants a use right. If no buyer is in sight, the useful question is which pieces can still be sold, licensed, or simply closed in an orderly way.

For the full sale, read how to sell a company with no buyer.

For the menu of partial recoveries, read ways to recover value from a closing company.

A sale process and a data license can both be open at once. They are not substitutes. The contract for a sale of the company and the contract for a data license name different rights, and your lawyer should see both before you sign either.

If you are licensing records

Licensing records is a contract about a copy, the exclusions, and who the user is. It is not a valuation of the company, and it is not a promise that any named lab will buy. The useful first read is the buyer categories, then the how-to, then the questions you should have answered before a call about price.

Start with who buys company data for AI.

Then read how to sell company data to AI companies.

Before a call about price, read questions to ask before licensing company data.

Is it legal to sell company data to AI companies? Read that before you treat a step as allowed. The license terms say what a license gives and what the company keeps.

Research has the datasets. News and analysis has the dated explainers. Systems has vendor deletion and export rules. Free tools has the calculators and checklists.

Before you rely on a guide

A guide can show the public record and the questions to ask. A decision to sell data still needs your lawyer and the eligibility rules.

A guide does not rank buyers, and a company named in a guide is not offering to buy from you. A named organization appears because of its own public statement. That is not a relationship with Vetrix, and it is not an introduction. A guide does not compare fees. Public prices are in the sourced price table.

A guide also does not replace the eligibility form. Staff count, years of records, daily use, and the right to license are on the form. Most very small companies will not qualify. Reading a guide does not change that test.

General information only. This is not legal, tax or financial advice.

If the decision is a layoff, a dissolution, or a signature on a data contract, take it to the company's own lawyer. Bring the guide if the citations help. The signature is still yours.

Related

• Selling a company

  How to sell a failed startup, and the options when a company cannot be sold as a whole.

• Research

  Sourced datasets on public prices for company data, each with a CSV.

• News and analysis

  Dated explainers of company data sales to AI, newest first, tied to filings and company statements.

• Systems

  What common business tools do to company data after you cancel, including each vendor deletion window.

• Eligibility

  Staff, records, daily-use systems, and the right to license, plus a checker.

• What's shared

  Which records can be licensed, which details never leave, and what you approve.

• Is it legal?

  What GDPR, US rules, and bankruptcy law say about licensing company data.

• License terms

  The four license terms: what you give, keep, agree, and sign.

• Winding down

  Order of operations to wind down a company, from approval through taxes and dissolution.

• Industries

  What operating records look like by sector, and what is left out.

• Glossary

  Plain-language definitions for wind-down and data licensing, each linked to the guide that explains the topic.