Privacy Policy

At FindSimilarStartups, we deeply respect the privacy and confidentiality of your startup ideas and business information. This policy explains what we collect, how we use it, and the principles we follow to protect your data. This Privacy Policy should be read together with our Terms of Service.

1. Your Ideas Are Yours

• We do not claim ownership over the ideas, startup descriptions, or business information you share on our platform.
• We do not sell, share, or reuse your startup ideas or content for our own benefit or for third parties.
• We do not use your startup information to train public AI models.

2. What We Collect

When you use FindSimilarStartups, we may collect:

2.1 Information You Provide

• Account information (email address, name)
• Text you submit (e.g. startup ideas, descriptions, or summaries)
• Optional documents or links you provide for startup profiles
• Support requests and communications you send to us
• Waitlist, beta-access, and feedback form details, such as your email, name or team, workflow notes, and product feedback

2.2 Information Collected Automatically

• Usage data (pages visited, features used, buttons clicked)
• Device information (browser type, operating system, screen resolution)
• IP address and approximate location (country/region level)
• Campaign attribution data, such as UTM parameters, referral page, landing page, campaign channel, and campaign-specific startup or founder labels when they are present in the URL
• Pseudonymous analytics identifiers stored in your browser so we can understand sessions, funnels, and product usage without intentionally sending your raw startup idea text to analytics providers

2.3 Payment Information

• Payments are processed by Lemon Squeezy, our third-party payment processor. We do not store your credit card numbers or full payment details on our servers.
• We receive limited billing information from Lemon Squeezy (such as transaction IDs, plan type, and billing status) to manage your account and credits.

3. How We Use Your Data

We use your information for the following purposes and legal bases:

• To provide the Service (legal basis: contract performance) — processing your inputs through AI to generate research, managing your account and credits, delivering reports.
• To improve our product (legal basis: legitimate interest) — analyzing usage patterns to enhance features, fix bugs, and optimize performance.
• To send transactional communications (legal basis: contract performance) — magic links, account notifications, credit alerts, and support responses.
• To send marketing communications (legal basis: consent) — product updates, new features, and promotional content. You can unsubscribe at any time via the link in each email.
• To process payments (legal basis: contract performance) — managing subscriptions, credit purchases, and billing through Lemon Squeezy.

4. Third-Party Services

To provide and improve the Service, we share data with the following third-party providers. Each operates under its own privacy policy and data processing terms:

• Anthropic and OpenAI — AI providers that process your inputs (startup descriptions, research queries) to generate AI-powered research outputs. Your inputs are sent to these providers as part of the Service. We do not authorize these providers to use your data for training their models.
• Lemon Squeezy — Payment processing. Handles all credit card and billing information. We never see or store your full payment details.
• Google Analytics — Website analytics to understand how users interact with the platform. It may receive page views, product events, campaign attribution, performance timing, device information, approximate location, and pseudonymous analytics identifiers.
• Contentsquare and Hotjar — Behavioral analytics tools that may be used for heatmaps, click and scroll behavior, navigation paths, session replay metadata, and product-friction analysis. We configure these tools to avoid intentionally collecting sensitive form inputs, startup ideas, authentication details, payment details, or private report content.
• Cloud hosting, database, and infrastructure providers — Hosting, database, storage, search, and observability services used to operate the platform. Your data may be processed in the United States and other regions where our providers operate.
• Google OAuth — If you choose to sign in with Google, we receive your name and email address from Google. We do not access any other Google account data.
• Email providers — Transactional email delivery for magic links, account notifications, support responses, payment or report updates, and beta-access follow-up.
• Search, crawl, and research infrastructure — Providers that help retrieve public web information, evaluate startup sources, monitor agent runs, and generate research outputs.

5. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

• Essential cookies — Required for authentication, session management, and core platform functionality. These cannot be disabled.
• Analytics cookies and recordings — Used by Google Analytics, Contentsquare, and/or Hotjar to understand usage patterns and improve the Service. These may collect pseudonymous usage data and behavioral interaction data such as clicks, scrolling, navigation paths, campaign attribution, page timing, and session playback metadata.
• Local and session storage — We may use browser storage for authentication state, user preferences, pseudonymous analytics and session identifiers, campaign attribution, waitlist confirmation, and temporary prefill of a startup idea, website, or onboarding context when you move between product flows.
• Campaign attribution — When you arrive through a campaign link, we may store URL parameters such as source, medium, campaign, content, term, channel, startup, founder, spotlight ID, landing path, and referrer for the current session and related analytics events.
• You can control cookies through your browser settings. Disabling essential cookies may affect platform functionality.

6. Data Retention

• Active accounts: Your data is retained for as long as your account is active and as needed to provide the Service.
• Account termination: Upon account deletion or termination, your data is retained for a minimum of 30 days (to allow for recovery or dispute resolution), after which it may be permanently deleted.
• Billing records: Transaction and billing information may be retained for longer periods as required by tax and accounting regulations.
• Analytics data: Aggregated or pseudonymous usage data may be retained for product improvement, debugging, attribution, and trend analysis, subject to the retention settings of our analytics providers.

7. International Data Transfers

• Our platform uses cloud infrastructure, database, analytics, email, AI, search, and observability providers. By using the Service, your data may be transferred to and processed in the United States and other regions where those providers operate.
• Your inputs may also be processed by our AI providers (Anthropic and OpenAI), whose servers are located in the United States.
• For users in the European Economic Area (EEA), United Kingdom, or other regions with data transfer restrictions: we rely on appropriate safeguards, including our providers' compliance with applicable data protection frameworks, to protect your data during international transfers.

8. Data Security

We take data protection seriously and implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to safeguard your information, including:

• Encryption of data in transit (TLS/HTTPS) and at rest
• Access controls to limit who can view your data
• Authentication via magic links, OAuth, and token-based sessions
• No storage of credit card numbers or full payment details (handled entirely by Lemon Squeezy)

While we strive to protect your personal information, no method of transmission or storage is 100% secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security.

9. Your Rights

Depending on your location, you may have the following rights regarding your personal data:

• Access — Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Rectification — Request correction of inaccurate or incomplete data.
• Erasure — Request deletion of your personal data, subject to legal retention requirements.
• Data portability — Request your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
• Restriction — Request that we limit how we use your data.
• Objection — Object to processing based on legitimate interest.
• Withdraw consent — Where processing is based on consent (e.g., marketing emails), you may withdraw consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing.
• Lodge a complaint — If you are in the EEA or UK, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection supervisory authority.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at contact@findsimilarstartups.com. We will respond within 30 days.

10. Children's Privacy

FindSimilarStartups is not directed at children under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16. If we become aware that we have collected data from a child under 16, we will take steps to delete it promptly. If you believe we have inadvertently collected such information, please contact us.

11. Changes to This Policy

• We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, technology, or legal requirements.
• For material changes, we will notify you via email. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page will always reflect the most recent revision.
• Continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.

12. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, want to exercise your data rights, or have any privacy-related concerns, please contact us: