A startup that failed years ago usually left one asset that nobody sold: its code. The domain lapsed, the bank account closed and the team scattered, but the codebase behind the product is still the work of real engineers solving a real problem. Odys AI Labs, the research and development arm of Odys, buys that kind of code for cash for AI training and R&D. The hard part is not the age of the code; it is finding it and showing who can sign for it.
You are not alone in this
Startup failure is common and well documented. Carta counted 254 startup shutdowns on its platform in a single quarter in early 2024, up 58% in a year, and notes the real number is likely higher. Most of those companies left code behind in exactly the state yours is probably in: switched off, unmaintained and owned by an entity that is winding down or already gone.
What your code is likely still worth
Old code is not worthless code. A product built from 2014 to 2019 in Ruby on Rails, PHP, AngularJS or early React shows how software was actually written and maintained at the time, with all the trade-offs. For AI training and R&D, private code from a real team is scarce in a way public code is not: researchers at Epoch AI estimate the public stock of human-written text could be used up between 2026 and 2032, and private code was never in public datasets at all.
Suppose a logistics startup ran from 2015 to 2019, wrote around 80,000 lines of Python and JavaScript across five repositories, and kept its pull requests on GitHub. Nobody has touched it since. That is still a full product with years of real decisions recorded in it, which is the kind of material a buyer for AI training and R&D is looking for.
What pushes value up is the same as for any codebase: size, originality, languages, quality, history, docs and tests. What pushes it down after years is usually loss: missing repositories, only a final zip, no tickets. Dependencies that no longer install, or a framework version long out of support, are normal for code this age and do not by themselves rule it out. We do not publish price figures; an offer typically follows review, and how we value a codebase is explained on the call.
What a buyer will check
- Can you still get to it? Who controls the old GitHub or GitLab organization, and does the account still exist?
- Is it complete? Every service the product needed, not only the one repo someone kept.
- Is the history intact? A full git clone, or an archive of the last version. Our guide on why git history makes old code worth more shows how to check.
- Who owns it now? The company, a founder, or nobody who can sign.
- What is in it? Old customer data and keys that may still be live.
Three risks specific to this situation
1. The company no longer exists, and neither does the owner of the code. If the company owned the code and was dissolved without assigning it, the code may have gone with it. In the UK, anything a company still owns when it is dissolved passes to the Crown, although UK founders generally have 6 years to restore a dissolved company and recover its assets. Restoration is usually the cleaner route; the Crown’s Bona Vacantia team may sell such IP back, though there is no guarantee it will, and it transfers without any title guarantee, and if the company is later restored the IP reverts to it. Other countries have their own rules. Our guide to selling code after dissolution or liquidation covers the main routes. This is not legal advice; a lawyer in the company’s country should confirm who holds the rights today.
2. The only copy is on someone’s old laptop. Years later, the code may live in a lapsed paid organization, a personal account of a co-founder who left, or a backup drive in a drawer. Accounts get deleted for inactivity and drives fail. Before you do anything else, make a full clone with git clone --mirror or ask whoever has access to make one, and store two copies.
3. Old secrets that still work. Keys committed years ago are easy to forget and often still valid: GitGuardian found that nearly two thirds of valid secrets leaked in 2022 still worked four years later. Payment, email and cloud credentials in an old .env or config file can still cost someone money. Revoke what you can, then scrub history; see how to remove API keys and passwords from old code.
What to do this month
- List every place the code might be: git hosts, cloud storage, backup drives, former engineers.
- Make a mirror clone of each repository you find and keep two copies.
- Find the paperwork: founder IP assignments, contractor agreements and any wind-down documents that mention intellectual property.
- Check the company’s status in its registry: active, dormant, dissolved or in liquidation.
- Contact co-founders early. A short message now saves weeks later if a signature is needed.
- Note the stack, years of activity and rough size (cloc or tokei will give you lines by language).
Your options
| Option | For a startup that failed years ago |
|---|---|
| Sell | Cash for code that is otherwise idle; needs someone who can sign |
| Open source | Possible if rights are clear, but then it cannot be sold exclusively later |
| Archive | Keeps the status quo; the code keeps aging and copies keep disappearing |
| Relaunch | Rarely realistic after years, since the market and the stack have moved |
| Delete | Often happens by accident when accounts lapse; it cannot be undone |
Whatever you decide, keep the process safe. We never ask anyone to install or run anything, no code changes hands before a signed written agreement, and we never take databases, user records or customer data. If any other buyer wants the code, or wants you to run a tool on it, before a contract exists, treat that as a warning sign.
What to do next
- Make mirror clones of every repository you can still reach.
- Work out who owns the code today and who can sign.
- Try the free code value check, then send us a few details for a free code valuation; no code is needed to start.
Frequently asked questions
The company was dissolved. Who can sell the code now?
It depends on where the code ended up. If rights were assigned to a founder or another company before dissolution, that owner can sell. If the company still owned the code when it was dissolved, the rules depend on the country; in the UK it passes to the Crown. This is not legal advice, so ask a lawyer to confirm your case.
Is code from five or ten years ago too old to be useful?
Usually not. Older frameworks and languages are part of real-world software, and code that shows how a team built and changed a product over years is useful for AI training and R&D whatever its age. What matters more is that it is complete, original to your team, has its history and comes with clear rights.
My co-founders are hard to reach. Can I still sell?
You can start the conversation, but a sale needs whoever owns the rights to sign. If the company owns the code, that usually means its officers or a person with authority to act for it. If co-founders hold rights personally, they may need to sign too. A lawyer can tell you what your documents require.
I only have a zip of the code, not the git repository. Is that enough?
A zip can still be sold if the product is complete and original, but history adds value. Before you settle for the zip, check old GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket accounts, cloud backups and former engineers' laptops for a full clone. A clone made by git includes every commit, branch and tag that was pushed.
Find out what your old code is worth right now.
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