Use case · Court liquidation
The startup in court-ordered liquidation
You are the founders. The commercial court ordered the liquidation last month. A court-appointed administrator now runs the proceedings. You are no longer in control — and yet the digital history of the company still bears your name. How to preserve it properly, and for whom.
The setting
You raised your Series A eighteen months ago. The numbers did not follow, the bridge round hardened, two investors asked for preferred conversion. The insolvency filing was made in March. The court found that recovery was plainly impossible: court-ordered liquidation is opened, the judicial administrator appointed in the same hearing.
You are no longer directors. You are former directors. You no longer have signatory powers, no operational account access, no ability to sign a deposit with a vendor. But you remain the authors of the code, the historical controllers of the data processed, and — if nothing is done — the eventual recipients of certified letters that will keep arriving for years.
You have a short horizon, a few weeks, to propose a framework to the administrator before the intangible assets are scattered along with unpaid cloud subscriptions.
Court-ordered liquidation does not delete the history; it severs it from its authors. The work is to reattach it before closure.
- 3 years of activity
- 47 former employees
- ~600 customers in waiting
- 8 months average proceedings
What is at stake
- The source code. The administrator considers it an asset and may seek to realise it. Failing a buyer, it becomes res nullius after registry removal, and any public trace disappears with hosting accounts switched off for non-payment.
- Customer data. GDPR does not extinguish with the company (see GDPR after cessation). Without organised transfer of controller liability, former directors carry the residual obligations personally — including before the data-protection authority.
- Customer accounts. Many users are waiting for exports, refunds, or simply an acknowledgement. Without a mechanism, those requests go unanswered, which compounds the damage and exposes former directors to individual claims.
- Documentation and processes. The company's know-how, internal scripts, runbooks, technical notes — all intangible assets that an administrator without specialised insight will set aside if no immediate realisation value is apparent.
- Founder reputation. A poorly documented liquidation leaves blind spots — phantom invoices, bouncing addresses, scattered data — that resurface years later in the form of personal claims.
How Archivum operates
- 1
Tripartite scoping
The contract is signed between the former directors, the judicial administrator and Archivum. It sets the perimeter of the assets concerned, the administrator's access during the proceedings, and the fate of the archives beyond registry removal. No emergency surcharge: the pricing grid does not depend on the procedural context.
- 2
Asset retrieval during proceedings
We coordinate with former technical leads — often on their way out or already gone — the retrieval of Git repositories, database dumps, customer exports, contract files. Storage on sovereign French infrastructure, cryptographic fingerprint of each item, deposit log delivered to the administrator.
- 3
Marketing site frozen as static
The institutional site (before the SaaS shutdown) is regenerated as static HTML and migrated to Scaleway behind Cloudflare. Former customers searching for their exports or the administrator's contact details find the information at the address they knew.
- 4
Email taken over inbound-only
Critical mailboxes (
contact@,support@) are taken over in inbound-only mode. No outgoing message — protection against impersonation. The administrator receives access to incoming mail for the duration of the proceedings. - 5
Contractual conservation beyond removal
The former directors receive a named access grant, valid beyond the closure of the proceedings. Archive duration per asset class is set in the contract, respecting residual statutory obligations (10 years for accounting, 5 years for payroll, 3 years for prospecting).
- 6
End-of-period arbitration
Three months before the contractual deadline, the named successors are notified. They decide collegially between extension, deletion and transfer to the trustee — see end-of-period arbitration.
Five years on
The former directors named in the contract — or their successors if one of them has become unable to decide — settle the matter collegially.
Extension
A new period, aligned with the residual statutory obligations (for example, accounting kept up to 10 years after closure). Same signatories or new successors.
Deletion
Secure destruction of the archive. Certificate issued to the former founders. Attests before the data-protection authority of the end of residual GDPR processing.
Transfer to the trustee
Archivum inherits contractually rights to all or part of the assets (domain, abandoned code, content). Operating terms set in the individual contract.
How much it costs
For a case like the one above — startup with ~250 GB of technical archives, an 80-page marketing site, four critical mailboxes — over five years, the order of magnitude is a few thousand euros per year, with volume tiers. No emergency surcharge linked to the collective proceedings. The final price is set in a quote after scoping with both the former directors and the administrator.
Scope your case
If liquidation is open or imminent, the most efficient path is to talk for an hour — including with the administrator if relevant. We understand the legal context, we validate a perimeter, you walk away with a draft tripartite contract.