- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JAXG193W2FS3DQP8TF9S9P3Q (via Ben Ornstein’s account, imported 2026-08-06)
Transcript
Dori Yona: Hey. Hey, Dori. How’s it going? Good. How are you? Doing well, doing well. Sorry that I did. I just now saw your email about asking to change it, so. Not a problem. Ben Ornstein: I figured it out, we can do it now. And yeah, I apologize for the last minute change. Dori Yona: Change never happened, but yeah. The change request, I’ll say. How are you doing today? Ben Ornstein: Very good, how are you? Doing well, doing well. Nice. Where are you based? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Sorry? Dori Yona: Where are you based? Ben Ornstein: I’m actually right now, I’m in Delaware. Dori Yona: Why are you doing there? Ben Ornstein: Yeah, that’s what everyone says, right? Wanted to live with my, well, my then girlfriend, now fiance, so we’re eventually gonna, thank you, eventually gonna move out from here, but we’re living with her sister for now. Nice. Dori Yona: And like, usually Delaware isn’t it like banking? There’s a lot of banking there. What else is there? Ben Ornstein: Yeah, well, so in like the Wilmington area, there’s a lot of big banks. You’ve got JP Morgan, you’ve got, We’ve got Bank of America. It’s not very big for like the tech startup or yeah. It’s not the best physical location for me to be honest. Yeah. Dori Yona: But all startups are actually based there. Correct, exactly. Ben Ornstein: Where are you based? I’m in Santa Monica. That’s a better spot. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: That’s awesome. Dori Yona: Are you there? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Really? Ben Ornstein: Oh, yeah. No, I’m here. It’s interesting. You’re not the first to have said that. Dori Yona: Operations at Founder Journey? That’s me. Yeah, weird. It doesn’t show your picture at first, and then, yeah, OK. Cool. Ben Ornstein: Found you. Yeah, that’s me. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Cool. Dori Yona: Are you originally from Philly? Ben Ornstein: So I say Greater Philly, but it’s just basically Delaware. I’m actually from New York originally, about an hour north of the city. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Nice. Ben Ornstein: How about yourself? Dori Yona: I’m originally from Israel, but I’ve lived kind of like half my life in California, mostly in last few years in Santa Monica, LA, but I was spent a few years in the Bay Area as well. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Very cool. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. Well, I think your startup is fascinating. It’s an interesting, very interesting business to start. So I’m very excited to hear more about it. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Awesome. Ben Ornstein: Before that, do you have context for this call? Dori Yona: No. Ben Ornstein: Okay, so you have none. That’ll be helpful. Okay, so I work with, founder named Michael Hauk, do you know him? So you know Hauk. So I work with him. He wanted to create a resource for founders for fundraising. And he figured what better way to do that than by actually speaking with founders themselves who have done it. So basically we have these conversations with founders of all different industries, all different stages, regions, and We have this read AI guy in here because I’m going to take the transcript from this video call, the video goes nowhere, and turn it into a text-based document that then gets placed into a paywall place for founders to access. Dori Yona: Nice. Where’s an example of the website which the paywall lives? What’s the website name? Ben Ornstein: Just foundingjourney.com. Foundingjourney. Dori Yona: By the way, I do read, I don’t know who writes the content, but I get the newsletter and it’s one of the newsletters I appreciate the most. There’s a lot of newsletters and a lot of spam and a lot of that, but it’s actually thoughtful content and smart thinking. I don’t know who writes it. Ben Ornstein: It’s Hawk himself. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, he takes a ton of time to do it. So I’ll forward that to him, I’ll appreciate that. Dori Yona: Legitimately good content, yeah. Anyways, so now I remember the context. Like, him and I were chatting about recording potentially a video. And then he said a video podcast, like he has like the videos of fundraising. Yes, we also have a podcast. Yeah, so I think he said that that’s also, I’m not sure if this is on the call or a separate call or how that works. That’s kind of how we started chatting. Ben Ornstein: Understood. Okay. Yeah. The podcast is separate from this. That’s a potential thing that we could do afterwards. Potential I’d have to speak with, talk about it. Cause I don’t know the prior context of that conversation, but this is completely separate from that. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Got it. Okay. Cool. Dori Yona: So we talk about fundraising and then this lives on your website as a resource? Behind a paywall. Ben Ornstein: Yes. Okay. Dori Yona: And then do I get any visibility in terms of like before it goes live to just to make sure I feel comfortable with everything there? Yes, absolutely. Ben Ornstein: After this is done, I’ll send you the first version, you can edit it however you feel if there’s things you didn’t. Yes, you get a chance to edit it before it goes live. Dori Yona: Okay. And how do we like what’s the best way to continue the conversation on the podcast side? Ben Ornstein: I’ll chat with Afterwards about how he wants to move forward with that. Okay, sounds good. He’s the one who would be interviewing you I just help on the back end and kind of do a bunch of research and come up with the questions Okay Awesome By the way, like if we if you write the Dori Yona: article and you know, not the podcast with the article Does it go out in a newsletter or anything? Does it get any or is it just like like how do people come across it other than being paying support? Ben Ornstein: So what we do is for the non-paid subscribers, we do give some visibility for some of the case studies. I can chat with Hauk about how that would be more answered better. It’s not like you don’t get any visibility for this kind of thing. Dori Yona: Where does it live here? Supposedly like, yeah. Ben Ornstein: So this is, this is within a membership. So if you go to upgrade or if you go like to the membership, yeah. So people, what they do is they, when you get access to the membership, you’ll see those are some of the ones we’ve done. Dori Yona: I see. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Cool. Ben Ornstein: And how many members do you guys have? Yeah. Dori Yona: Um, God, it’s gotta be a few hundred, I believe. Few hundred members? Ben Ornstein: I’m honestly not even positive on that number. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay. Ben Ornstein: And so the membership is it came into it’s like the paying subscribers. I’m less involved on the newsletter side itself. So I don’t have as much visibility there. Okay. Dori Yona: And how long will the now the interview take in terms of like, because I’m sure it’s like you need to eventually summarize it to not too long of a document, right? So like, how long does it take the process now for the call? Ben Ornstein: Yeah. I mean, we, I schedule an hour for this. Dori Yona: It usually doesn’t take. Okay. Let’s do it. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay. Ben Ornstein: Uh, so Dori, could you please introduce yourself and your startup? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Uh, sure. Dori Yona: My name is Dori Yona. Uh, I’m the co-founder of a simple closure. Uh, we’ve built a platform to help automate and streamline the process of shutting down companies. Uh, I’ve been an entrepreneur and founder for the majority of last decade, Simple Closures, the third company I’ve started. Amazing. Ben Ornstein: Can you share a bit about the fundraising journey of the company? This could be like the, you know, how many rounds you’ve done, if you’re comfortable sharing valuations, how long the rounds took, et cetera. Dori Yona: Yeah, so we’ve been around for a bit over a year. That year we’ve done two official rounds of funding, a pre-seed and a seed. We raised the pre-seed of $1.5 million. And then about six months later, we did a seed round of about $4 million. So total raise to date is $5.5 million. Awesome. Great. Thank you. Ben Ornstein: What did you plan ahead of time to use the money for? Like, were there specific milestones you wanted to achieve with the funding? Yeah. Dori Yona: Yeah, so we were actually, we had started the company without raising any money. We already had like initial customers on the platform. So we were like generating revenue from day one. But as I was continuing to build out the company and the product and the team, I felt like we could continue to kind of bootstrap and build the business. But given this was like, early mid 2023, there was a lot of talk about a moment in time in the market where there would be an increase in companies shutting down. And so we wanted to make sure that we were primed and set up to be able to handle the growth and the scale of that and capitalize on the situation. And so we ended up raising some capital to kind of kick things off so that we could, you know, instead of having a platform up and running in a year, have a platform up and running in three months. That was kind of like the thinking behind the fundraising. Awesome. Ben Ornstein: And when you were finding investors to actually fund you, how did you decide which investors would be a good fit? Yeah. So first of all, we weren’t looking for funding. Dori Yona: I think the opportunity kind of fell in our lap. I was literally at a conference, a FinTech meetup. If you know, it’s a FinTech conference in Vegas. There, you know, just kind of catching up with colleagues and seeing what’s going on in the space. I ran into a friend that I hadn’t seen in quite a few years. He was at a growth stage fund. He asked me, you know, what was I working on? I kind of shared, you know, the premise of Simple Closure. And he said, listen, this sounds super interesting. I really want you to meet a friend of mine. He’s a partner at an early stage fund. I think he’s going to love it. And so he took me from there. Where we actually went to one of the events at Money, it was at Syntech Meetup, we went to one of the events, met the partner, we totally hit it off, I shared with him what we were building, what we were working on, and pretty much I had a term sheet the next day. So it kind of fell in our lap, it wasn’t a planned fundraise. So that’s kind of the process we went through, but bottom line, we ended up getting a lot of interest very quickly term sheet came in. And the decisions that I use to choose investors are a combination of a few things. First of all is, do I enjoy spending time with this person? Do I want them to be a partner with me in the company? Do I want to get a beer with them? Do I want to go out to dinner with them? That’s kind of like bucket number one. Bucket number two is how much value I think they will be adding to the company beyond the cash. And I think the third factor that I use to kind of make my decision is I rely heavily on previous founder feedback. So founders that have worked with them, and I have a series of questions that I typically ask. Everyone says investors are great, so I don’t just ask, were they a good investor? Everyone says yes. I try to ask a lot more strategic questions to get to the core of how they were and how it was working with them. So yeah, those are kind things that we do. Ben Ornstein: I’m kind of surprised more founders don’t do that. I’ve spoken with, you know, over 65 founders now, and there’s only been a couple founders who have said that they actively ask other founders who they’ve invested in questions about that. I think that’s like, it seems like it would be something that most should do, but it’s not. Yeah. Dori Yona: So I actually, I actually, I’ll even divide that into two parts, like all for references from the investor to founders they’ve worked with, but then I’ll also back channel myself to people they haven’t recommended because I think that obviously there’s a bias to certain people you recommend. You know, you kind of know that they’ve had a good experience with you and I think you should also check the ones that maybe didn’t have a good experience or weren’t necessarily recommended. So yeah, that’s kind of how I think about it. Ben Ornstein: It’s a great point. And so, I guess you You told me how you got in touch with that first investor who gives you a term sheet in a day. That’s insane. How did you get in touch with the other investors? Dori Yona: In the same round or rounds later? Ben Ornstein: It can be both or either. Dori Yona: So honestly, at that point, our person that wrote the term sheet was really excited about the investment and they wanted their friends to join the party. I would say it’s kind of like, you know, and so they they immediately like, you know, introduced me to a few other very close firms that they work with and that they appreciate. And honestly, kind of took a few of those meetings and within a few days decided on who would fill the remainder of the round. Had multiple opportunities there. And I’m glad I chose who I chose. I think we had a really strong pre-seed team of investors. And so honestly, most of the interactions came from the lead. Plus a few that I had in my network. Ben Ornstein: Amazing. So did you do any cold outreach? Dori Yona: I don’t think so. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Wow. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: That’s, that’s pretty amazing in terms of, so this question is centered, usually centered around like the, the cold outreach done. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Sure. Ben Ornstein: But you know, how many, roughly how many investors did you have first meetings with or, or reach out to in current? Didn’t do, let’s break it into. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: How many, how many initial meetings did you have? How many, you know, the second and third meetings and then ended up in actual investments? Dori Yona: First of all, I think the majority of outreach I did for the precede was the angels that I wanted to have joined the company. I wanted to allocate a certain amount of money for like strategic angels that could help the business. And so I would say there was the majority of outreach. And typically angels is like one call, right? They’re making a decision of investing anywhere between five to 50,000. And they do this, you know, they don’t have time to do like multiple meetings and things like that. So with angels, it’s usually like a one call with the firms themselves. So like I said, we got a term sheet the next day between that evening where I met the partner, I met the next morning, another partner on the team and spend time with him. And like I said, I was on the flight home from Vegas back to LA. And before I landed, I already had like the terms. But with other firms, I would say, almost everyone, we had a second meeting, if I’m recalling correctly. And then at that point, again, it’s a pre-seed, so there’s not a ton of diligence to do. And at that point, like we had decided, I think by meeting number two, who we kind of wanted to go with. Ben Ornstein: Wow, what an amazing experience. You know, when you were What did you emphasize in the pitch? Dori Yona: It’s a good question. I think the things that stood out and we emphasize in the pitch is one is like the vision. Second, how big this opportunity is. Third is why I think I and the team can execute on this vision. And the fourth thing is that that like, we don’t need capital right now, the company’s like, you know, already generating revenue from day one. And so, you know, we’re raising out of opportunity and not out of necessity. I think those are the things that we highlighted. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, that last point actually leads right into the next question. That’s interesting of, you know, how did you or did you drive urgency among investors? To close that round. I mean, it’s interesting that it came in one day. Yeah. You did? Dori Yona: Um, no, I didn’t do I think like they, they, I hope they loved what they saw. They were excited about the opportunity. They were bought in and they wanted to move fast. So I didn’t do anything to drive urgency. I did drive urgency regarding closing the rest of the round and I gave it about a week end to end and said like, Hey, we’re going to close this and make a decision. Like if you want to chat, let’s chat. If it doesn’t align with timeline, that’s fine as well. But I didn’t drive urgency on the term sheet of the lead, but I did drive urgency regarding making decision regarding the rest of the round. Yeah, I mean, you have that leverage, so why not? Ben Ornstein: We weren’t planning on fundraising. Dori Yona: I didn’t want to distract the focus of the business and the company and the team. And so I also didn’t want to spend too many resources. I want to get back to building as quick as possible, building and growing. Ben Ornstein: 100%, that’s what it’s all about. So, looking back, you talk about it like it was so simple and easy, but I’m sure there were some challenges that came up. What was the biggest challenge that came up during fundraising? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Look, fundraisings have challenges. Dori Yona: I think, and I’ve been through, this is not my first company. In the previous company, we had a ton of challenges and we pitched like 50 people and got 50 no And so we got a yes. So I’m familiar with that as well. I think we happened to be very, very fortunate and to be at the right place at the right time and really didn’t have a ton of challenges. But also my perspective on what are the things that are important to argue about and what are the things that are not important to argue about change. So you could say, oh, we’re trying to negotiate about these terms or certain provisions and things like that. And after doing this for the third time, I realized, really focus on what matters. I actually think the things that may have been seen as challenges in my previous cycles as a founder, this time I didn’t see them as challenges because they’re not material. I said the biggest challenge was incorporating and moving that quickly and opening a bank account to be able to get the money in, deciding on a name. I would say those were the challenges because it all sparked… So you need a bank account in order to get the money, but you can’t get a bank account if you’re not incorporated. Incorporate if you don’t have a name. And so it was like, it was like, I had to choose those things really, really quickly and didn’t want them to like prolong the process. But I would say those those were honestly the challenges. And, you know, the biggest challenge is honestly choosing the right people. Like you spend a lot of time, you know, like, you can just say, sure, I’ll take the first check I get. But like, it takes time to interview two, three, four port founders of every VC in like your, you know, in your, in your considering like multiple VCs to fill the round. And so each one of them that you’re considering like, you know, the two, three, four VCs that you’re considering, you want to talk to at least three founders of each of those VCs. So you’re on calls with like 10 to 15 founders and coordinating and scheduling and spending time. So it ends up taking a ton of time. I would say those are probably like the things. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. Yeah. Just a ton of time. Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. Your one day term sheet is an amazing story, but are there any other unique or interesting stories related to fundraising that you haven’t brought up yet? So that was our pre-seed round. It was really an insane story. Dori Yona: Like I went to a conference for free. I got a free ticket cause I was like unfunded and they had a ticket for like founders in between roles kind of things. I went on that ticket and I, it was funny. I told my wife, I’m going to go check out what’s going on the conference. I landed. I think we just raised the round. It was quite a surreal experience. And I’m super grateful because we have great investors around the table. And honestly, our last round, our seed round, where we ended up raising an additional 4 million, we were actually preempted with that round by a fund. And it happened a week or so before Money 2020, which is a big conference where a lot of FinTech investors go to. And so So we had been preempted with that round and I ended up going to the conference and catching up with our investors and saying, what’s going on? I said, listen, we just got preempted for a round. I’m considering it. And they’re like, wait, wait, before you consider that, I want you to speak to a few people here at the conference that they’re investors as well. You should also evaluate that. So I ended up speaking to a few investors at Money2020. And about a week later, we had five term sheets to lead our seed round. I think was five total and so that was like another super fortunate journey where You know, we were preempted and were able to close around really really quickly and choose the right investors Yes, I would say that that as Ben Ornstein: well Man, you’ve had some crazy stories. That’s wild Yeah, that’s amazing So yeah moving into like that kind of like reflection section here of you know, what’s one piece of fun? I’m raising advice that you give to other founders. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Dori Yona: I think it’s, it might sound cliche, but like there’s multiple pieces of advice that come to mind. One is like, you’re always raising, but you’re never actually saying you’re raising. That’s like one. Second thing is raise when you can and not when you need to, that obviously changes the whole narrative. And then obviously, Like, I don’t think we did it in our case, but I think it’s really helpful to come prepared to fundraise. Because, like, having all your documents in order, your deck, your numbers, will just make the company and the team look a lot more professional, and will also expedite the process. Luckily, like, both rounds, we did have a deck. Not for our pre-seed and not for our seed. So we were able to raise two rounds without a deck, which I think is, like, special, but that’s not typical or trivial. And so I think having all of that information in order in advance will help. Yeah. Especially not having a deck. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. Yeah. It’s so interesting. There are so many people that haven’t had the data rooms that are, you know, ready and a lot of them don’t. Yeah. A few more, couple more questions. Who is an investor that you would recommend other founders work with? Yeah. So I, we have four main lead investors. Dori Yona: I’m not going to name one of them out because I think each one is special in their own way. I don’t want it, but we have Infinity Ventures, Rex from Cambrian Ventures, Vera Equity, and Anthemis, now it’s called Fox Capital. Each one is unique and helpful in their own way, but we’re very fortunate to have all four of those as like lead investors in the company. Ben Ornstein: That’s amazing. Yeah. Are there any resources that you would recommend to other founders? Books, podcasts, newsletters, anything, anything. Dori Yona: Regarding to fundraising or in general? Ben Ornstein: Just in general. Dori Yona: Yeah, I actually think there’s two books I reread recently that I think are really good. One is called The Mom Test. That’s a great one. It’s a great one when you think about product and building the initial product and being able to vouch for your idea or being able to vet if you’re really building the right thing. I think it’s helpful. Actually, I think another book that I really appreciated reading again was Ben Horowitz’s The Hard Thing about hard things. That’s also, I think, a really interesting book. And in general, there’s another one I think that stands out is Dale Carnegie, I think, like How to Win Friends and Influence People. It’s also a book that’s good to read every few years. Ben Ornstein: Great recommendations. I totally agree. Those are some of my favorites. And the last question is, do you have any hot take regarding the fundraising process? Dori Yona: What do you mean by hot takes? Ben Ornstein: Things that maybe not everyone agrees with you on. Dori Yona: Yeah. Yes. Two things. Number one, like, sorry, let me start with one thing. I’ll say two things. One is kind of, I didn’t invent, so I don’t want to take credit for it. It’s actually a guru fundraiser taught me once and the other one’s like something that I’ve learned from experience. One, I think that every no you get is actually one step closer to a yes. There’s so many funds out there. There’s so much money out there. Like you shouldn’t be discouraged. Like it kind of goes with dating. Like eventually you’ll find someone to marry. Like every no or swipe no you get on a dating app, it’s like one step closer to the yes. I actually think in fundraising it’s the same. You’ll eventually find a partner that believes in your vision, that likes the team, that connects with what you’re doing. So I don’t think founders should be discouraged from no. I think every no you get is actually one step closer to the yes, you should actually be encouraged. And the other thing is, I found this pretty accurate and true, but if you have a meeting with a firm and they don’t follow up within 24 hours, it’s dead. Waste of time, don’t spend another minute on it. They need to follow up within 24 hours. If they do not follow up within 24 hours, you can consider the deal dead. It’s proven itself very accurate from my experience. I actually learned it from someone that’s like a master in fundraising. And so, I wouldn’t invest another minute in someone that’s like, I had a meeting, you know, could you spare a part of me, whatever. And if they didn’t proactively follow up within 24 hours on the clock, it’s dead. Ben Ornstein: That’s an interesting one. I mean, it makes sense, right? It’s like, if they really want you, they’re going to show that they want you. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Exactly. Ben Ornstein: Awesome. Well, Dori, this has been amazing. I really appreciate the time. I will take, I don’t know, up to a week probably to turn this into a case study. I’ll chat with Hauk about, and then I’ll send you the first version. I’ll chat with Hauk on the podcast side of things and him or I or both of us will get back to you. And yeah, any questions in the meantime, of course, feel free to reach out. Dori Yona: Given it’s a note-taking, I thought I’d through it quickly to, yeah, and give you time back. So sorry if we didn’t use the full hour. Ben Ornstein: No, it’s all good. I think it was, I think we used it well. Dori Yona: Awesome. Awesome. All right. Ben Ornstein: Have a great rest of your day, Dori, and we’ll chat soon, I’m sure. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: See you later.