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Privacy policy

Version 2026-10-08.1, published October 8, 2026

Last updated: October 8, 2026

SeedRank (the iPhone app and seedrank.app) is run by SeedRank LLC, a Virginia limited liability company ("we" or "us"). On the App Store, the app is published under the individual developer account of Batu Yetki, who runs SeedRank LLC. SeedRank is offered in the United States only. This policy explains what we collect, why, who helps us run SeedRank, and how to delete your data. You can reach us through the contact page or at hello@seedrank.app.

What we collect in the app

  • Your sign-in details. You sign in with Apple or with Google.
  • If you use Sign in with Apple: the account identifier Apple gives us and your email address. Apple lets you hide your real email, in which case we only get a private relay address. If Apple shares your name, the app only uses it to suggest a display name; we don't store it separately. We also keep a token from Apple so that, when you delete your account, we can tell Apple to disconnect SeedRank from your Apple ID.
  • If you use Sign in with Google: the account identifier Google gives us, your email address, and the name and profile picture link on your Google account. Our sign-in system stores them with your account record; the app only uses the name to suggest a display name, and never shows your Google picture. We don't keep any Google token after you sign in.
  • Your birth year, never your full birth date. We store it with your account when you sign up and use it to apply the age rules (see "Age" below).
  • Your profile: username and display name, your label if you pick one (Founder or Builder), and, if you add them, a bio, links to your own social accounts, and a profile photo. The app resizes and re-saves your photo before upload, which removes its location and camera details. When you change or remove your photo, the old file is deleted.
  • Your activity: which startups you planted a Seed on and when you first planted it (kept while you take it off and plant it again, so a Seed only counts once on the Today and This Week boards), the startups and members you follow, the members you block, any reports you file (the reason and any details you write), and any requests you send to take down a startup listing (including anything you write in them).
  • Cheers: which updates you cheered, and when.
  • Your interests: the categories you pick as interests, if any, and when you picked them or skipped the step.
  • Your settings: whether your profile is public, and when you last opened your activity inbox (so the app can mark what's new).
  • Updates you post: if you're on the team of a verified startup, the short updates you post on its page (text, and a photo if you add one) and when you posted them. Photos you pick are resized and re-saved by the app before upload, which removes their location and camera details.
  • Photos that aren't published: if a photo you upload doesn't pass our automated check (or the check can't run), it isn't published. The uploaded file stays in private storage that no member can see until you delete your account.
  • Your moderation choice: whether you allowed us to check what you publish with OpenAI's moderation service (see below), and when.
  • Startups you list or claim: the startup's details (name, one-line pitch, description, website, stage, category, business model, founded year, links, and its App Store app or GitHub repository if you add them), your confirmation that it meets the eligibility rules, and the proof you use to show you run it. The proof is one of: a token you add to the startup's website (as a tag or a small file), a DNS TXT record on its domain, a token in the description of its App Store app, or a token in its GitHub repository's README. Where we offer it, you can instead get a code at an email address on the company's domain; we then store that address.
  • The terms version you accepted and when.
  • Sign-in records and request logs: our sign-in system keeps when you signed in and the IP address and app/device type of each sign-in session, to secure your account. Each request from the app also carries its app version, iOS version, and IP address, which our backend provider keeps in standard logs for a short time to run and secure the service.

On your iPhone, the app keeps your sign-in session in the iPhone's Keychain, and remembers on the device whether you chose "Not now" on the moderation screen.

We don't collect passwords, phone numbers, postal addresses, location, or contacts. We never read your photo library: we only get the one photo you pick (for your profile or an update). The app has no ads, no analytics or tracking tools, no crash-reporting tools, and no push notifications.

What we collect on the website

The website has no public accounts, no ads, and no analytics or tracking scripts. It sets no tracking or advertising cookies.

  • Founding cohort (the waitlist): your name, email address, whether you're a founder, a builder, or both, your startup's name and website if you add them, and which page you signed up from.
  • Contact form: your email address, the subject, and your message.
  • Removing a company: the verification method you choose and the value it checks (for example the company's domain, or the work email address a code is sent to).
  • Abuse protection: when you submit a form, we store a one-way keyed hash of your IP address for at most one day to limit repeat attempts. We never store your raw IP address. Cloudflare Turnstile checks that you're not a bot (see below).

Like almost every website, our hosting providers keep standard request logs (such as IP address, browser type, and the page requested) for a short time to run and secure the service.

Information about companies and their founders

  • Pre-listed startups are added by us from publicly available company information: the company's name, website, public description, and its App Store or GitHub page. Pre-listed startups show no founder names and no logo until the company claims and verifies its listing.
  • Founder names for pre-listed startups: we may keep the names of a pre-listed startup's founders, taken from public sources, privately, only so we can let them know they can claim or remove the listing. They are never shown on SeedRank. A founder can ask us to delete theirs at hello@seedrank.app.
  • Checks on startup websites: to keep listings accurate we visit listed startups' public websites, including once a day to check they're still online.

How we use it

We use this data only to run SeedRank: to create your account, show your profile and startups, count Seeds and build rankings, apply the age rules, check listings, suggest startups to follow (from the interests you pick and the rankings), build your activity inbox, keep SeedRank safe (moderation, reports, blocks, abuse limits), reply to you, and, if you joined the founding cohort, contact you about the founding cohort (for example, to tell you when you can get the app). We don't send newsletters or marketing email to this list. We don't sell your data, share it for advertising, or use it to track you across other companies' apps or websites.

What is public

Your display name and your label (if you pick one), and activity in aggregate: for example how many Seeds a startup has today, this week and all-time, its rank, and its number of followers. Who planted a Seed on which startup is never shown, and who follows whom is never shown: only counts are. If you're on a startup's team, your name and label appear on its team list, and other members can open them to report or block you. Updates you post are public on the startup's page (in the app and on the website) with your display name, and appear in the Following feed of members who follow the startup or you and in the community feed that every member can see in the app. Your profile photo, if you add one, is public wherever your name appears.

  • Your profile page: your profile is public only if you turn it on. A public profile shows your @username, bio, links, photo, follower counts, and the verified startups you're on the team of. A private profile shows only your name and label. Bio and links are still part of your profile record, so only add what you're happy for anyone to see.
  • Cheers: the number of cheers on each update is public. Who cheered is not shown to anyone; only you can see whether you cheered an update.
  • Interests are never public.

Your activity inbox

The app has an activity inbox. We build it from data we already hold whenever the app loads it; the only new thing we store for it is when you last opened it. It can show: how many members cheered your updates; new updates from startups you follow; startups you follow that climbed the rankings this week; how many people planted a Seed on your team's startup this week; how many new followers your startup or profile got this week; and when your startup is verified.

The inbox never tells you who planted a Seed on your startup, who followed you or your startup, or who cheered your updates: those appear only as counts. SeedRank doesn't send push notifications.

Services that handle your data

We use these services to run SeedRank. Each gets only what it needs for its job.

  • Supabase (United States): hosts our database, sign-in, file storage, and server functions, and keeps their request logs. Everything listed under "What we collect in the app" and "What we collect on the website" is stored with Supabase, except the website's hosting logs.
  • Netlify (United States): hosts seedrank.app and keeps standard request logs.
  • Google: Sign in with Google, if you choose it. Google's sign-in screen runs inside the app, and Google tells us your account identifier, email address, name and profile picture link (see above). You can remove SeedRank's access at any time in your Google Account (Security → Your connections to third-party apps & services).
  • Apple: Sign in with Apple. If you'd rather not share your email, Apple gives us a private relay address instead. When you delete your account, we send Apple the sign-in token so it can disconnect SeedRank from your Apple ID. If you choose to share analytics with app developers in your iPhone settings, Apple shares crash reports and basic app diagnostics with us. We don't add any analytics or crash-reporting tools of our own.
  • OpenAI: before anything you publish goes live, our own server first checks names, startup details, and updates against a list of offensive words (this check never leaves our servers), and then we send it to OpenAI's moderation service to check it for abuse: your username and display name, bio, links, the details of a startup you list or edit (checked again when a startup you listed is verified), updates you post, and any image you upload. Images are shared with OpenAI as a private link that expires after 5 minutes; the link contains your account's random internal ID, but not your name or email. We ask for your permission first, in the app; you can turn it off in Settings, but you won't be able to publish until you allow it again. We don't send your Apple ID, email address, or birth year. Under OpenAI's API terms, this data isn't used to train its models.
  • Cloudflare Turnstile: checks for bots on the website's founding-cohort, contact, and company-removal forms. It sees your IP address and browser signals.
  • ImprovMX: receives and forwards every email sent to hello@seedrank.app, and it lands in our Gmail inbox (Google).
  • Company logos: for each startup page, we fetch the company's own public app icon or website icon (from its website or Apple's App Store lookup API), check it with OpenAI's moderation service, and keep our own copy. It's shown only once the startup is claimed or verified by its founders. This is company information, not personal data.
  • Listing and verification checks: when a startup is listed or someone proves they run it, we look up only public information about the startup: its website (fetched directly), its domain's registration date (RDAP registries via rdap.org), its DNS records (Cloudflare DNS), its GitHub repository (GitHub API), and its App Store page (Apple's App Store lookup API). We may also send a startup's links to Google Web Risk to check them for malware and phishing.
  • Resend: sends two kinds of email. If you verify a startup with an email code, where we offer it, Resend receives the work email address you enter and the code we send to it. It also delivers short alerts to our own team inbox (hello@seedrank.app) when something is reported or hidden automatically; an alert names the reported startup, the @username of a reported profile, or the startup an update was posted on, with the report reasons. It never includes who reported it or what they wrote. SeedRank sends no other email from the app.

Seeds, cheers, interests, and the activity inbox stay in our database with Supabase; none of them are sent to any other service.

Keeping and deleting your data

We keep your data while your account is open. A cheer is kept until you take it off, the update is deleted, or you delete your account. Founding-cohort signups, messages you send us, and company-removal records are kept until they're no longer needed or you ask us to delete them.

Deleting your account. You can delete your account at any time in the app: open the Profile tab, tap the gear icon (Settings), then Delete account, and type DELETE to confirm. Deletion happens right away and can't be undone. It is not the same as signing out. This permanently removes:

  • Your sign-in account: your Apple or Google identifier, email address, the name and picture link Google sent (if you used Google), and your sign-in sessions. If you used Sign in with Apple, we also ask Apple to revoke SeedRank's Sign in with Apple access; for Google, you can remove SeedRank in your Google Account. (You can check this yourself on your iPhone: Settings → your name → Sign-In & Security → Sign in with Apple.)
  • Your profile: username, display name, birth year, bio, links, every photo you uploaded (published or not), the terms record, your moderation choice, your interests, your label and profile setting, and when you last opened your activity inbox.
  • Your Seeds: every Seed you planted comes off its startup, so its counts go down.
  • The updates you posted and their photos, and the cheers on them.
  • Your cheers on other members' updates.
  • Your follows (and everyone's follows of your profile), blocks, team memberships, and the verifications you started (including any work email address).

A few records stay, with your name, username, and email removed, so our safety records stay accurate. We keep them for as long as SeedRank needs them for that:

  • Reports you filed stay in our moderation records with their reason, but without your account or anything you wrote in them. Take-down requests you sent stay without your account.
  • Our moderation log keeps what we checked or acted on, without your account, your internal ID, or the text you wrote.
  • A startup you listed but never published, with no one else on its team, is deleted along with its check records.
  • A live startup you ran stays listed (its company page belongs to the company), with you removed from its team. The company can still remove it on the removal page.

Hidden updates. An update can be hidden without being deleted: when enough members report it (pending our review), when the startup's page is hidden, removed, or put back to unclaimed, or when its author is suspended. Hidden updates are shown to no one, but they're kept so they can come back if the hiding was a mistake (for example, a report we reject or a startup page we restore). A hidden update is deleted for good when you delete it, when you delete your account, or when we remove it for breaking the rules.

Deleted data may remain in encrypted backups for up to 7 days, and in our providers' request logs for a short time, after which they roll off.

To delete your founding-cohort signup or a message you sent us, contact us.

Age: SeedRank is 18+

  • SeedRank is only for people who are 18 or older. The app asks for your birth year before you sign in, and our server checks it without storing it. If you're 18 or older and create an account, we store the year with your account (see above).
  • If you could be under 18, it stops there: no account is created and our server keeps nothing about you. The app keeps the year you entered on your own device only (in the iPhone's Keychain, which stays after the app is deleted), so the screen can't simply be retried; the app checks that year with our server again when it opens.
  • If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we delete it. Parents and guardians can ask us to delete their child's account and data at any time through the contact page or hello@seedrank.app.

Your choices and rights

You can see and edit your profile in the app, and delete your account there at any time. You can change your interests, your label, and whether your profile is public, take a Seed or a cheer off, and block or unblock members in the app at any time. You can also ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, or to delete it by contacting us. We'll reply within 30 days.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit, and access is limited to what each part of SeedRank needs. The admin area requires two-factor sign-in. No system is perfectly secure, but we'll tell you if a breach affects your data.

Changes

We may update this policy. When we make a material change, the app will ask you to review it.

Contact

SeedRank LLC: hello@seedrank.app, or see the contact page.