Privacy
What we hold, and what we refuse to.
A Founder's Friend is published by StoryRoots Oy (business ID 3471847-8), Finland, which is the controller for the data described here. Questions, access requests and erasure requests all go to nicolas@afoundersfriend.com.
Reading the site
You can read every article, framework and poem here without an account and without being tracked by us. We set no advertising or profiling cookies. Our hosting keeps ordinary server logs for security and troubleshooting. Embedded players and links (YouTube, Substack, Spotify, LinkedIn) are operated by those companies under their own policies.
Accounts and supporters
If you sign in, we store your email address and authentication records so you can log in. If you support the publication, we store your subscription status, the period it runs to, and the payment identifiers needed to reconcile it — so tools that are a supporter perk can recognise you. We use your email to send authentication links and service messages about your access, not marketing you did not ask for. Unsubscribe and we remove the email record.
Tools you run (Passion Compass, compasses, kits)
Interactive tools keep a snapshot of your own results against your account, so you can see them again and watch them change. They are scoped to you by database-level policies: no other user, and no employer, can read them. You can have them deleted at any time.
The Leadership Rhythm Kit
The Leadership Rhythm Kit helps a team lead prepare 1-on-1s and feedback. That means it sits next to the most sensitive category of workplace data, so it is built to hold as little of it as possible. If you use it at work, your employer — not us — is the controller of performance data about your team, and may have its own rules about tools like this.
What is stored
- —Which of the nine 1-on-1 boxes a session was designed for
- —Which Radical Candor quadrant a feedback draft landed in, and its score
- —Which coaching-grid cell a situation was placed in
- —The pseudonymous label you chose, your account ID, and a timestamp
What is never stored
- —Names, email addresses or employee identifiers of the people you discuss
- —The feedback draft you pasted, or the rewrite you were given
- —The situation you described
- —Anything that can be read by your employer, another lead, or any other user
Pseudonyms are enforced, not requested
Labels are limited to 40 characters and rejected if they contain an email address or look like a person's full name — by the tool and again by a database trigger. The mapping between a label and a colleague exists only in your head or your employer's own systems.
How long
Twelve months by default, then automatic deletion. You can set three or six months instead by calling erase_my_leadership_data with retention_months.
Your rights, without emailing anyone
export_my_leadership_data returns everything held about you as JSON. erase_my_leadership_data with confirm: "ERASE" permanently deletes it — a hard delete, not a hidden flag. Both are free and need no supporter subscription. You can also write to us and we will do it for you.
Who processes data for us
Your rights
You can ask for a copy of what we hold, ask for it to be corrected, ask for it to be deleted, object to a use, or withdraw consent. Write to nicolas@afoundersfriend.com and we will act within a month. If you are in the EU and unhappy with how we handle it, you can complain to your national data protection authority; in Finland that is the Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman.
Not legal advice
This page describes how a small independent publication actually handles data, in plain English. It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for your own organisation's policies. We have written it carefully and intend to have the wording reviewed by someone qualified; if you spot something that reads wrong, tell us and we will fix it.