Startup Shutdown Decision Log: Relay’s Timeline

If you are weighing whether to stop, the decision needs a document before the team hears it or customers see it. A shutdown that ends in jobs is still a shutdown: the team may land somewhere, but the company, the product, and the customer relationships need a closure timeline.

Write the decision log before the meeting

Companies in early stages tend to call in experts only after cash is nearly gone or a planned raise falls through, yet spotting problems sooner works better. A decision log is that earlier conversation. It names the trigger, the math, and the exit path before the meeting decides it.

• Record the stop trigger. Write the condition that makes continuing untenable: runway below a threshold, no path to profitability, failed raise, or a buyer offer. Done looks like one sentence in the log: “We stop when X happens.”
• Run the runway math. Put cash, monthly burn, and months remaining on one line. A startup with €1 million in cash and €100,000 monthly burn has about 10 months of runway. A rise in monthly burn from €100,000 to €150,000 significantly reduces the time to react. A runway that shortens month after month is a warning sign that there is less time to correct problems. The finished version is a one-line calculation with the date it was last checked.
• Set customer cut-off and migration dates. Name the date free users lose access, the date paying users lose access, and the date support, billing, and data export close. Done looks like a table with three dates and an owner for each.
• Define where the team lands. List who is transferring, who is being let go, who is taking a bridge role, and who is handling offboarding. Where an employer of record is involved, it becomes the legal employer of workers in a target country and handles onboarding and offboarding management. The output is a roster with names, outcomes, and owners.
• Sequence the announcements. Decide the order: board, employees, customers, vendors, press. Write the date and channel for each. Customers need the product dates first. Employees need the legal and placement facts next. Press comes after both are stable. The result is a one-page sequence with no gaps between legal notice and public statement.

Keep the log in one place, with a version number and a last-updated date. When the dates move, the log should show the old date, the new date, and the reason for the change.

Relay’s timeline shows the shape

Relay, the startup, first announced its shutdown in July 2026, then confirmed the final timeline on August 17, 2026. The company cut off free customers on August 15, 2026, and set September 14, 2026 as the date paying customers lose access.

In July 2026, Relay faced a choice between continuing with dwindling runway and walking away, and Jacob Bank, Relay's founder and CEO, chose to rejoin Google. Bank's earlier startup Timeful was sold to Google in 2015, and he spent six years at Google before leaving in 2021 to start Relay.

Relay's leadership and Google reached an acqui-hire-style arrangement that placed Bank and some Relay team members into positions within Google's Chrome product organization. The log should state the operating reality: in 2025-2026, Relay was consuming cash without a clear route to profit.

Keep team placement separate from product shutdown

Team placement is a legal and HR track. When the team is moving into a buyer's organization, record the roles, the effective date, and the handoff owner. In an employer-of-record setup, the commercial services agreement sets out the work covered, pricing, liability limits, IP terms, and how the relationship ends.

Direct entity setup can provide a legal shell in 3-6 weeks, while payroll, compliance documentation, and HR infrastructure extend the real timeline; employer-of-record hiring starts immediately. When your shutdown crosses borders, that timing difference belongs in the log.