Privacy policy

Draft: this document will be reviewed by a lawyer and completed before the service opens.

We process your personal data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This page explains what data we collect, why, who can see it, how long we keep it and how to exercise your rights.

Who is responsible for your data

Seedinity is operated by DG Technology SRL, Brussels, Belgium (company number 0824.504.453), the controller of your personal data.
For any question about your data or to exercise your rights, write to privacy@seedinity.com. We answer within one month.

The data we process

Account: your email address and password (stored only in encrypted, hashed form by our provider Supabase), the dates you signed up and last logged in.
Profile: your name, the kind of member you are (founder, investor or idea person), headline, city and country, languages, introduction, sectors, skills, what you are looking for, your LinkedIn profile and website if you add them, and an optional photo. Investors also give how they invest: investor type, stages, ticket size, parts of the world and involvement.
Projects: what you publish about a project (teaser and full details), its pitch deck if you add one, its status and our moderation decisions.
Activity: the access requests you send and receive, the projects you follow and open, the members you save, conversations and messages, blocks and reports, the last time you were active, the site language you use and your email preferences.
Premium: the plan you have, its start and end dates and, if you pay online, the status of your subscription (your card details are handled by the payment provider, never by us).
Technical data: IP address and browser information in our providers’ security logs, and the cookies described in the cookie policy.
We don’t ask for sensitive data (health, religion, political opinions…). Please don’t put any in your profile, your projects or the documents you share.

Why we use it, and on what legal basis

To provide the service you signed up for: your account, your profile, your projects and their access requests, search, matching, saved members and followed projects, messages and Premium (performance of the contract, GDPR art. 6(1)(b)).
To keep members safe: review of photos and projects, reports, suspensions, warnings on messages that look like investment scams, and limits on the number of messages and access requests (our legitimate interest in a safe service, art. 6(1)(f)).
To send you the emails the service needs (confirming your address, logging in, resetting your password), and emails about new messages while you are away, which you can turn off at any time (contract and legitimate interest).
To meet our legal obligations, for example answering a request from the authorities (art. 6(1)(c)).
We never sell your data, show no advertising and do not use your data to build advertising profiles.

Verification: the verified badge and the Verified investor badge

Verification is optional. Founders and idea people send a selfie copying a pose shown on screen; investors send their company or fund, their role, their LinkedIn profile and, if they wish, a website and a note about their investments.
Purpose: to show other members that a profile is real and, for investors, that our team checked that they invest, and to fight fake profiles and investment scams. Legal basis: your consent, given by sending the selfie or the details (GDPR art. 6(1)(a)). You can withdraw it at any time by asking us to remove the badge.
A member of our team checks by hand: the selfie against your profile photo, or the investor details against public sources such as your LinkedIn profile and your company’s website. No automated facial recognition is used.
If the automatic pre-check is turned on, a selfie is first checked by an artificial intelligence model provided by Anthropic PBC (United States), our processor: only that the pose is the one asked, that one face is clearly visible and that it is a real selfie. It never compares your face with your photo and never tries to identify you. A selfie that clearly fails is refused at once with the reason, without being stored; you can ask for a person to review that decision by contacting us. Anthropic does not use your data to train its models.
Selfies and investor details are never shown on your profile or to other members. Selfies sit in private storage at Supabase in the European Union (Ireland), without their hidden information (such as location), and are deleted as soon as a decision is made. Investor details are kept with an approval, as the record of what was checked, and deleted with a refusal.
We keep the result (verified or not, the date and, if refused, the reason) for as long as your account exists.

Automatic checks of photos and projects

A profile photo is optional. New photos can be checked automatically by an artificial intelligence model for nudity, contact details or advertising, the absence of a face, or a photo that is too blurry or dark. The model never tries to identify anyone.
Before a project is published, and when the words of a published project change, its texts (name, pitch, description) are checked automatically against our rules: no promised returns, no requests to send money, no contact details in the public teaser, nothing prohibited. The check publishes clear projects and sends any doubtful one to a member of our team; it never refuses a project on its own.
Purpose: to keep the community safe and publish compliant content quickly. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in moderating the service (GDPR art. 6(1)(f)). You can ask for a person to review any automatic decision by contacting us.
The model is provided by Anthropic PBC (United States), acting as our processor, under contractual safeguards for transfers outside the European Union. Anthropic does not use what it checks to train its models.

Matching

The Matches page suggests projects, investors and people that fit what you told us in your profile and your projects: sectors, stage, country and part of the world, ticket or funding range, skills and what you are looking for. Each suggestion shows its reasons.
Matching follows fixed rules on these fields (no artificial intelligence) and only suggests: it never decides anything about you, and you can always browse every project and member yourself. Legal basis: the service you signed up for (GDPR art. 6(1)(b)).
You can change these details at any time in My account and in your projects.

Who can see your data

Other logged-in members see your profile and approved photo, never your email address. Members you blocked, or who blocked you, no longer see each other or each other’s projects.
Every logged-in member sees the teaser of a published project and who presents it. The full details, the exact amount and the pitch deck are only shown to the members whose access request the owner accepted. Pitch decks are only reachable through links that work for two minutes.
When you ask for access to a project, its owner sees your profile and your message. When you open or follow a project, its owner sees how many members did; owners with a Premium plan that includes it also see who and when.
Authorised members of our team see what they need to moderate the service (photos, projects, verification requests, reports and the conversation concerned by a report).
Our processors, bound by contract and only for the service: Supabase (database, files and logins, European Union, Ireland), Vercel (website hosting, servers in Dublin), Resend (sending emails), Anthropic (automatic checks of photos, selfies and projects) and, if you pay online, Stripe (payments).
Some of these providers are companies based in the United States. Transfers outside the European Union are covered by the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses or by the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.

How long we keep it

Your account, profile and projects are kept until you delete them. Deleting your account (My account, Privacy and data) immediately removes your profile, photo, projects with their pitch decks and access requests, the requests you sent, what you follow and opened, saved members, blocks, verification and conversations (for both sides).
Copies in our providers’ backups disappear within a few weeks.
Reports and the decisions taken on them are kept for as long as needed for the safety of members and our legal obligations, even after the accounts concerned are deleted.
Security logs are kept by our providers for a limited time, usually a few days to a few weeks.

Your rights

You can see and correct your profile and projects at any time, and download all your data in a file (My account, Privacy and data, Download my data).
You can delete your account and data at any time, without having to give a reason.
You can also ask for access, correction, erasure, restriction or portability of your data, object to processing based on our legitimate interest, and withdraw your consent, by writing to privacy@seedinity.com.
You can lodge a complaint with the Belgian Data Protection Authority (www.dataprotectionauthority.be) or the authority of your country.

Adults only

Seedinity is reserved for people aged 18 or over. If we learn that a member is under 18, their account is deleted.

Security

Data travels encrypted (HTTPS), passwords are never stored in readable form, pitch decks and verification selfies are kept in private storage, and only authorised team members can access moderation tools.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in an important way, we will tell you on the site or by email before the change applies.