Last month I executed the documents to formally dissolve my failed startup, Canvas Networks. The documents included a provision to donate the remaining capital—about $40,000—to charity, and for the company’s intellectual property to be open sourced.

When I originally announced the company’s demise, I noted that while it had failed as a business, it had not as a product. At the time, DrawQuest was a thriving drawing community with 400,000 monthly users, and I felt it was a shame to shutter the app when we could conceivably continue to operate it for another year with the remaining capital. I requested and received the blessing of our investors to defer a dissolution and continue operating the app, even after the team and myself moved on. It was my hope that in addition to doing right by our community, that perhaps the app would one day become popular enough to be a viable business, or someone would come along and take over the app and continue our mission. I figured it was better to optimize for the possibility of value creation down the road—however unlikely—than to extinguish that possibility by dissolving the company or firesale-ing its assets immediately.

Unfortunately that dream was cut short when, three months later, the company’s Amazon Web Services account was broken into—likely by a Bitcoin miner. Without any full-time employees to perform a full-scale security audit and rebuild from metal, we felt the most prudent course of action was to disable the service immediately and notify users of the breach. As a consequence of the sudden shutdown, members of our community lost access to all of their incredible artwork—some 10 million drawings in total.

And so we decided to defer a dissolution once more, this time with the task of recovering the community’s artwork. With the assistance of a former backend developer, we launched a complete web archive that allowed users to browse all of the galleries and profiles as they had existed in the app. We gave them 30 days to access the archive and download a ZIP file of their artwork, and also provided Archive.org with a copy of the data.

With that obligation fulfilled, I scrambled to wind down the company before year-end so our investors could close out their books, and I could tie off a four and a half year long chapter of my life. This consisted mainly of paperwork, but also deciding what to do with the company’s remaining assets.

Before announcing the company’s failure in January, I’d spent months trying to find a home for the team and product to no avail. With the team’s disbanding, AWS account compromise and subsequent shuttering of the app, I found it extremely unlikely we’d find a buyer for the IP, so I acquired it personally with the intention of open sourcing the company’s work on GitHub. I especially remember how challenging it was to build and refine the drawing tool portion of the app, and hope others will benefit from our team’s hard work. And selfishly, I hope that somebody will consider reviving DrawQuest, even as a single-player experience, because I still miss it dearly.

After settling its outstanding liabilities, the company was left with roughly $40,000 in capital. I reasoned that the one cent on the dollar return was unlikely to move the needle for any of our shareholders, since divided proportionally based on ownership, no single investor would receive a significant amount of money from the dissolution. However that sum in aggregate had the potential to be very meaningful to a charitable organization. I asked our investors to waive their liquidity preference and allow me to donate the remaining money to charity, and once again received their unanimous support. The designated beneficiary, Free Arts NYC, is an organization that provides disadvantaged children with access to art programs, and continues DrawQuest’s mission of helping people develop and become confident in their creative abilities.

Throughout this entire process I’ve had one goal in mind—to create positive outcomes at every step of the way, for as many people as possible, given that I wasn’t able to generate a venture return for our investors. It’s a weight I still carry to this day, but I take solace in knowing that I was able to provide the best possible outcome for our employees, users, the developer community, and local community.

None of this would have been possible without those who shared my outlook and agreed to my rather unconventional requests. I was surprised to learn that most of our investors hadn’t seen leftover capital donated in this way before. This is probably for two reasons—first because founders rarely ask, but also because it could be considered in tension with a firm’s fiduciary responsibility to its limited partners, to whom they are ultimately accountable.

I understand that neither venture firms nor their LPs are charitable organizations, but I can’t help but think there are better ways to handle dissolutions that would see immaterial amounts of money returned to the fund. Perhaps a provision could be added to future partnership agreements that removes that conflict by giving firms greater flexibility in waiving their liquidity preference and designating a beneficiary for returns in situations that would not move the needle for the fund, but could be impactful to a non-profit or worthy cause.

My intention isn’t to preach, but to provide an alternative to the usual startup dissolution that rarely leaves a smile on anyone’s face or benefits society. I don’t feel the satisfaction most would after making a charitable contribution because the money wasn’t my own, but deep down I do feel that I created the most value possible for all of our stakeholders given the circumstances, and a debt of gratitude to my investors and their LPs for allowing me to do what I felt in my heart was “right.”

Thank you.