Privacy policy

This policy explains how startupappraisal.com (the "site"), operated by FIH LLC ("FIH", "we", "us"), collects and uses personal information. FIH also provides the sell-side advisory described on the site. To ask a question or exercise a right below, use our contact form.

1. What we collect

Valuation tool

The company details you enter: company name, website, industry and sub-industry, stage, description, and any figures you choose to add (such as revenue, growth, customers, acquisition cost, lifetime value, burn, runway, funding raised, employees and year founded), plus what the valuation is for. We store these with the resulting valuation and an AI analysis of your website.

Report unlock

Your work email and, if given, your name. We store them with your company details, the valuation, the page you came from and any campaign tags in the link, and we give the enquiry an internal priority score from the company details so our advisory desk knows which to answer first. Unlocking also sends a double opt-in email for the weekly brief; you are only subscribed if you click it.

Contact and advisor-request forms

Your name, email, company and message, and on the advisor form any phone number, interest and context you add.

Purchases

For an advisory session: your name, email, phone, company, website, industry, revenue, timeline and what you want to cover. For either purchase: your email, the Stripe session reference, amount and payment status, and for the investor list, the firms it covers. Card and bank details are collected by Stripe; we never see or store them.

Weekly brief

Your email address and where you signed up. You are added to the list only after you confirm by email.

Technical data, analytics and cookies

Our hosting provider receives your IP address, browser, pages requested, referrer and time, in short-term logs. We record your IP address against a daily count to limit use of the valuation tool. We use Google Analytics 4 to measure visits; it sets first-party cookies (such as _ga) and receives your IP address and device details. You can block it with your browser settings or Google's opt-out add-on. Our forms use Cloudflare Turnstile, a security check that reads device and browser signals to tell people from bots. When you start an investor-list checkout, the list of matched firms is held in your browser's session storage until you return from payment. We do not run advertising pixels.

Information about investors

The investor directory and paid investor lists include business contact details of people at investment firms (name, title, work email and public professional profile), compiled from public and business sources. We use them so founders can approach relevant investors directly. If you are one of these people, you can ask us to correct or remove your details through the contact form.

Funding-round pages republish information from public SEC Form D filings about companies, not individuals.

2. How we use it

• to produce your valuation, deliver what you paid for, and send your report and confirmation emails;
• to answer enquiries and, where you have asked for it, to discuss FIH advisory services with you;
• to send the weekly brief you confirmed;
• to process payments, prevent fraud and keep records required by law;
• to limit use of the tool and protect the site against abuse and bots;
• to understand how the site is used and improve it, including the valuation method and benchmarks.

The priority score in section 1 only orders our replies; it does not decide anything about you, and we make no automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects.

3. Legal bases (EEA and UK visitors)

We rely on performing a contract, or taking steps at your request, for valuations, purchases and replies; on consent for the weekly brief, which you can withdraw at any time; on our legitimate interests in following up enquiries about our advisory services, keeping the investor directory, securing and measuring the site; and on legal obligation for payment and tax records.

4. Who we share it with

Your information is read by FIH's advisory desk. We do not sell it, and we do not give your details or your company's figures to investors or buyers without your agreement. We share it only with service providers that process it for us:

• website hosting and our database host;
• email delivery, for confirmations, reports and form notifications, and our newsletter platform;
• Stripe, for payments;
• AI model providers, which receive the company details and figures you enter (and your website address) to produce the valuation and website analysis, but not your name or email;
• Google, for analytics, and Cloudflare, for the security check.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect rights and safety, or as part of a sale or reorganisation of the business, in which case this policy continues to apply.

5. Your California privacy rights

We do not sell your personal information and do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, as the California Consumer Privacy Act (as amended by the CPRA) defines those terms. We use Google Analytics to measure the site, not to target advertising. California residents may ask to know, access, correct or delete their personal information and to limit the use of any sensitive information, and we will not discriminate against you for asking.

6. How long we keep it

• Valuation inputs, results and enquiries are kept while they are useful for following up and improving the tool, and deleted on request where the law allows.
• Purchase and payment records are kept as long as tax and accounting law requires, typically seven years.
• Weekly brief addresses are kept until you unsubscribe, after which we keep only what we need to honour it.
• Daily usage counts and server logs are kept for short periods.

7. Security

We use HTTPS, restricted access to our database, email and payment systems, a security check and rate limits on forms, and verified payment webhooks. No system is perfectly secure, so please do not submit information you are obliged to keep confidential.

8. International transfers

We are based in the United States and our providers process data in the United States and other countries. Where the law requires it, transfers rely on safeguards such as the European Commission's standard contractual clauses or the provider's certification under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

9. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete or receive a copy of your personal information, to object to or restrict some uses, including follow-up about our services, and to withdraw consent. Use our contact form to make a request; we may need to verify it comes from you and will answer within the time the law sets. Every weekly brief has an unsubscribe link. If you are in the EEA or UK you can also complain to your data protection authority.

10. Children

The site is for founders, owners and professionals and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has sent us information, contact us and we will delete it.

11. Do Not Track

Browsers' Do Not Track settings have no agreed standard, so the site does not respond to them.

12. Changes

We will post any change to this policy here with a new date. If a change materially affects how we use information you have already given us, we will take reasonable steps to tell you. See also our terms of use.