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It almost sounds like a type of insurance company. While the actuarial tables would be horrible on startups, the cost of keeping relatively small amounts of data alive could be easily spread across lots of startups.

Besides, you wouldn't have to buy the servers until the startup died.

I wonder if this would work as an add on for a backup company? Calling @backblaze!

Or possibly The Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/) and/or Archive Team (http://www.archiveteam.org/).

If you've read some of the rationale and things Dustin is trying to put in place "when you go out of business with zero warning" can mean get hit by a car. Being all hand-wavy as though not fucking people over in that instance isn't particularly helpful or realistic. Especially when such a high percentage of people expect to the services they use to be completely free in perpetuity.

Business continuity and succession plans aren't free.

It's been done: http://www.shutdownify.com/

... and they've shut down. How predictable.

Honestly that was a very very bad idea for a startup.