Privacy Policy

Early Stage Startups ("we", "us" or "our") operates the website earlystagestartups.com (the "Service"). This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose and protect your personal information when you use our Service.

We are committed to protecting your privacy and complying with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other applicable data protection laws.

2.1 Information You Provide

We collect information that you give us directly:

• Account information: your email address when you sign in with an email link or with Google, and the name and picture Google shares if you use it. There is no password to store, so we store none.
• Job alerts and the newsletter: your email address, the filters you chose, how often you asked to hear from us, and your time zone, so the email arrives in your morning rather than the middle of your night.
• Saved jobs: the jobs you saved and the ones you marked as applied. This list is yours and is not shown to anyone else.
• Pro membership: which plan you are on, when it renews or ends, and a record of each payment.
• Job posts and Spotlight bookings: if you buy either, the details you enter for the listing and the contact address for the order. A published job post is public by design.

2.2 Automatically Collected Information

We use Umami Analytics, a privacy-friendly analytics service that records:

• Page views and navigation patterns
• Device type and browser information
• General location data at country level

Note: Umami sets no cookies and does not track users across websites. The page address is recorded without its query string, so what you type into a search box is never written down. All data is anonymised and aggregated.

2.3 Payment Information

All payment processing is handled directly by Stripe. We do not store or have access to your card details. Please refer to Stripe's privacy policy for how they handle your payment data.

We use the information we collect to:

• Provide, maintain and improve our Service
• Create and manage your account and your membership
• Send the job alerts and newsletters you asked for, and nothing you did not
• Keep your saved jobs available to you across devices
• Confirm purchases and tell you about a renewal or a failed payment
• Check that a new sign-up is a working address rather than a bot
• Understand how people use the Service through anonymised analytics
• Comply with legal obligations

We do not sell or rent your personal data, and we do not share it with employers.

We share your information only in the following limited circumstances:

• Service providers: with trusted providers who help us operate the Service, such as Google for sign-in, Stripe for payments, and email providers for delivery and list management. They receive only what their task requires and may not use it for their own purposes.
• Legal requirements: when required by law, or to protect our rights, safety or property
• Business transfers: in connection with any merger, sale or transfer of our business assets

We do not sit between you and an employer. When you apply, you leave our site and apply on the employer's own page, under their privacy policy. We do not see your application, your CV or anything you send them, and we do not receive a copy back.

Marking a job as applied here is a private note to yourself. It tells the employer nothing and it is visible to nobody but you.

Under GDPR and other data protection laws, you have the following rights:

• Access: request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• Correction: request correction of inaccurate or incomplete data
• Deletion: delete your account and its data at any time from account settings
• Data portability: download everything we hold about you as one file, also from account settings
• Withdraw consent: unsubscribe from alerts and the newsletter at any time using the link in every one of those emails
• Object: object to processing of your data for direct marketing

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at [email protected].

We keep your personal information only for as long as we need it to provide the Service and for legitimate business purposes. When you delete your account, the associated personal data is deleted from our systems, except where the law requires us to keep it.

Payment records are the main exception: accounting law sets how long they must be kept. After your account is deleted they are no longer linked to you.

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal information against unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure or destruction. No method of transmission over the internet is completely secure, however, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

We operate from Europe. If you use the Service from outside the European Economic Area, your information may be transferred to, stored and processed in the EEA. We make sure appropriate safeguards are in place for any such transfer.

Our Service is not directed at anyone under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe we have, please contact us immediately.

We use the minimum cookies needed to sign you in and keep you signed in. Our analytics provider sets none. You can control cookies through your browser settings, though blocking them will stop you staying signed in.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will tell you about any material change by posting the new policy on this page and updating the date at the top. Please review it from time to time.

If you have any question about this Privacy Policy or about how we handle your data, contact us at [email protected].