Privacy policy

The short version

• There are no accounts, sign-ins, newsletters or contact forms. Nothing you type on this site is sent to me.
• What you save on the list, what you tick as submitted, and your planner answers stay in your own browser.
• The website pages use two analytics services, Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity, so I can see which pages and listings are used. They set cookies. There is no cookie banner.
• The MCP server and the JSON API keep nothing: no keys, no accounts, no sessions, no record of what you asked.
• Vercel, which hosts the site, keeps the usual server logs for a short time.

What stays in your browser

The site uses your browser's local storage, which stays on your device and is never sent to this site or anyone else:

• the places you save (startup-submit:saved) and the ones you tick as submitted (startup-submit:completed), shared between the list and the bundle pages;
• your answers on the planner (startup-submit:planner), so the page remembers them, and whether its More options section is open (startup-submit:planner-more). The planner matches your answers against the list inside your browser; they never leave it. Clear answers removes them.

Clearing this site's data in your browser removes all of it. The Copy button on the homepage writes the MCP server's address to your clipboard and reads nothing from it.

Analytics on the website pages

The pages at submitmystartup.com load two analytics tags. Both load only on the live site, never on previews or local copies: the page checks that it is served from https://submitmystartup.com before loading either.

Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics records each page view: the page address, including any utm_ parameters in it, the page you came from, the kind of device and browser, and an approximate location that Google works out from your IP address. It sets cookies on submitmystartup.com (_ga and _ga_ followed by an ID) to tell one visit from the next. The site also sends it a few named events: save_listing when you save a place, mark_submitted when you tick one, select_listing when you follow a link to a place (each with that place's id and name), and use_planner once per visit to the planner page, the first time you answer a question. That event says only that the planner was used, not what you answered or what it showed.

Google processes this data under its own terms. How Google uses information from sites that use its services explains what it does with it.

Microsoft Clarity

Clarity records how pages are used: clicks, scrolling, mouse movement, and a replay of what was on the screen, with the same named events. It masks what you type in form fields by its default settings, and the planner's questions and results are marked so Clarity masks them completely. It sets cookies on submitmystartup.com (_clck and _clsk) to tell one visit from the next. For visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, Clarity needs a consent signal before it uses cookies, and this site sends none, so it sets no cookies for those visitors.

Microsoft processes this data under the Microsoft Privacy Statement.

What I do with it

I use these numbers to see which pages are read, which places get saved or followed, and which directory listings send visits, so I can publish how many visits each listing sent. What I publish is a count per listing for a period, never anything about a person. The tags carry no name, email or account, because the site has none.

If you'd rather not be counted

The site doesn't ask for consent and has no cookie banner. Browser tracking protection, a content blocker, or blocking googletagmanager.com and clarity.ms stops both tags, and the site works the same without them. Google also offers a browser add-on that turns Google Analytics off.

Server logs

The site, the API and the MCP server are hosted on Vercel. Like any web host, Vercel records each request in its logs (the address requested, the time, your IP address, your browser's user agent, and the response) and keeps them for a short time to run the service. I look at them only to check that the site, the API and the MCP server are working. I don't copy them anywhere.

The MCP server and the JSON API

The MCP server and JSON API are free and read-only, with no accounts, API keys, sessions or cookies. The MCP server is stateless: every request gets a fresh copy of the server, it answers from a data file built with the site, and it keeps nothing between requests. What you ask it (a product type, a country, a budget, a keyword) is used to answer that request and isn't stored by the server. It never fetches anything from anywhere else. The JSON API is a set of static files. Requests to both appear in Vercel's logs like any other.

When you use the server through an AI assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT, your conversation is handled by that assistant's provider under its own terms. This server only sees the tool call the assistant makes.

The Claude plugin and skill

The plugin and the skill are static ZIP files. The plugin tells Claude Code to connect to the MCP server above; the skill is a text file of instructions for an assistant. Neither runs any code on your device or sends anything to this site beyond the download, and neither collects anything.

Links to other sites and the badges

The list, the planner and the bundles link to the directories and communities they describe. Once you follow a link you are on that site, under its own privacy policy. Links from the list and the planner open in a new tab without a referrer; links from the bundle pages send the standard referrer, which tells the other site only that you came from submitmystartup.com.

The "As seen on" badges on the homepage are images served by those directories, because their free listings require a badge on this site. Loading the homepage fetches each badge from its directory's server, which therefore sees your IP address and browser details, as with any image on the web. There are no scripts or frames from them.

When a directory lists SubmitMyStartup, the link it carries has utm_ parameters that name that directory. If you arrive through one, Google Analytics records that the visit came from that listing. That is how the visit counts in the My experience notes are made; they are counts, not people.

What I publish

The public list, my own submission results, and the visit counts per listing are public. None of it is about visitors to this site.

Your choices

You can ask what, if anything, this site holds about you, and ask for it to be deleted. Because the site has no accounts and the analytics data is held by Google and Microsoft in aggregate, there is usually nothing I can find by name. You can clear what's in your browser yourself.

Changes

This page changes when the site's code changes what it records. The date at the top says when it was last updated.

Contact

Open an issue on GitHub. Issues are public, so don't put private details in one.