As a startup, how do you create a Terms of Use and a Privacy Policy?

Question

verdverm · Accepted Answer

Copy (and edit) one from a competitor until you can afford to pay for your own

muzani · Answer

This was my best attempt at a minimalist one: https://random-character.com/privacyI don't know how legally binding this is or if it covers me sufficiently. Maybe someone can comment on it.

brudgers · Answer

Pay an attorney experienced in such matters.
If the startup cannot afford to pay an attorney, the startup is under-capitalized.
Under-capitalization is a reason to question the startup's viability and by extension the urgency of legal documents that are designed to protect ongoing businesses.
Or to put it another way, if the startup can't pay for an attorney, terms of use and privacy policies are not urgent and are of only slight importance. Because they only help when a lawyer is arguing in court.
The simplest privacy policy that might work is not collecting private information. The simplest terms of use is make something that provides a clear exchange of value such as money for services.
Good luck.

__sy__ · Answer

We recently started publishing our legal stuff for Seam: https://getseam.com/legal
The TL;DR, I had an excellent attorney friend (who, cherry on the quake, has a CS degree and understands APIs very well) write all of it for us. All in all, it was sub $5K and I had some very specific wording/requirements around privacy which took a lot of work. I think a regular law-firm would have charged 10X this, maybe more.
If your product is simple (Saas), a cheap attorney should be able to loosely model something that works based on other example companies out there. Maybe have a more experience counsel also take a second look ("second opinion").

MattGaiser · Answer

Most startups I have been with have copied one from a company that could trivially afford lawyers and dropped it in.

linkdd · Answer

I use [1] and [2] generators, and then I review the generated document. I plan to review it with an attorney once it becomes really needed. [1] - https://www.termsofservicegenerator.net/ [2] - https://www.gdprprivacynotice.com/

As a startup, how do you create a Terms of Use and a Privacy Policy?

As a startup, how do you create a Terms of Use and a Privacy Policy?

Copy (and edit) one from a competitor until you can afford to pay for your own

This was my best attempt at a minimalist one: https://random-character.com/privacy
I don't know how legally binding this is or if it covers me sufficiently. Maybe someone can comment on it.

Most startups I have been with have copied one from a company that could trivially afford lawyers and dropped it in.

I use [1] and [2] generators, and then I review the generated document. I plan to review it with an attorney once it becomes really needed.
`[1] - https://www.termsofservicegenerator.net/ [2] - https://www.gdprprivacynotice.com/`