Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Welcome to Brainstorm Buddie (“we,” “our,” or “us”). We are committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring the security of your personal information. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use our web application and mobile application (collectively, the “Service”).

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Information You Provide

• Account Information: Email address, password, and display name when you create an account
• Business Ideas: Project names, business ideas, and related content you submit for analysis
• Chat Messages: Questions and conversations you have with our AI assistant
• Voice and Meeting Content: When you use voice features and executive team meetings, the microphone audio and speech you provide, the captions and transcripts produced from it, the AI-generated spoken responses, generated meeting minutes, and any screen content you choose to share during a meeting
• Payment Information: Payment details processed securely through Stripe (we do not store credit card information)
• Print Designs and Orders: Design images and product details when you create print products or mockups; recipient name, email address, phone number, shipping address, and order details when you place a print order
• Stock Media Searches: Search terms you enter and stock-media search plans generated from your project content. Generated search plans are saved with your project's video scripts
• Connected Accounts: When you connect an app, we store its account or workspace identifier, granted permissions, and encrypted credentials needed to maintain the connection. We receive data from that app only for features you choose to use.

2.2 Automatically Collected Information

• Usage Data: Information about how you use the Service, including features accessed and time spent
• Device Information: Device type, operating system, browser type, and IP address
• Cookies and Similar Technologies: We use cookies to maintain your session and improve user experience
• Ad Measurement: With your optional tracking consent, the OpenAI measurement pixel reports completed website subscriptions to help attribute them to our ads. This includes a subscription event identifier and browser, page, and ad-attribution information.
• Analytics Data: We record account-linked feature and usage events in Firestore to operate and understand the Service. With analytics consent, Vercel Web Analytics also measures page visits, referrers, and approximate location; page URLs may include project identifiers

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

• Provide, maintain, and improve the Service
• Generate AI-powered business reports, analysis, and chat responses using Anthropic Claude AI
• Generate and edit logos and marketing images using Google Gemini or Replicate, and remove image backgrounds using remove.bg
• Generate voiceovers using ElevenLabs and background music using Replicate (when you use those features)
• Process real-time voice conversations in voice meetings: your microphone audio is transcribed to text by Google speech-to-text models to produce captions, transcripts, and meeting minutes, and meeting context is used by Google Gemini live speech models to generate spoken responses; if you share your screen in a meeting, the shared content is used to provide meeting context
• Generate website and landing page HTML using Moonshot Kimi AI (when you use the website generator)
• Provide face-to-face AI conversations using Tavus with the audio, camera video, and project context you share
• Process your payments and manage subscriptions
• Create print products and mockups, calculate shipping, fulfill print orders through Printify, and provide shipping notifications
• Find stock photos and videos through Pexels for your marketing content
• Send you technical notices, updates, and support messages
• Respond to your comments, questions, and customer service requests
• Monitor and analyze usage patterns to improve user experience
• Detect, prevent, and address technical issues and fraudulent activity
• Comply with legal obligations

4. Your Ideas Are Protected

Your business ideas belong to you. We want to be absolutely clear about how we handle your intellectual property:

• No Ownership Claims: We do not claim any ownership of your business ideas, projects, reports, or any content you create using our Service. Everything you create is yours.
• Our Use of Your Content: We do not use your business ideas, conversations, or generated reports to train our own AI models or share them for advertising. External providers process the information under their terms and privacy policies linked below; their retention and processing practices vary by provider and service.
• No Sharing: Your ideas are never shared with other users, used for marketing purposes, or disclosed to third parties except as required to provide the Service.
• Confidentiality: We treat your business ideas as confidential information. Our employees and contractors are bound by confidentiality obligations.

We built Brainstorm Buddie to help entrepreneurs succeed, not to exploit their ideas. Your trust is essential to us.

5. Third-Party Services & AI Providers

We use the following third-party services to operate our Service. For each AI provider, we describe exactly what data is sent and for what purpose. The full, dated list of subprocessors — including purpose and processing location — is maintained on our Subprocessors page.

• Anthropic (Claude): Your business ideas, project details, profile context, messages, and documents used for reports, analysis, chat, and meeting planning. Anthropic (Claude) privacy policy
• Google (Gemini): Prompts, brand details, and reference images for image generation and analysis. During voice conversations: microphone audio, transcripts, project context, and any screen content you choose to share, for transcription and spoken responses. Google (Gemini) privacy policy
• Replicate: Prompts and reference or uploaded images for image generation and editing, including when Google image generation falls back to Replicate; music prompts for generated background music. Replicate privacy policy
• Moonshot AI (Kimi): Your business name, idea, brand details, and page prompts when you generate a website or landing page. Moonshot AI (Kimi) privacy policy
• ElevenLabs: Script text for voiceovers; conversation audio, transcripts, and project context when an ElevenLabs voice feature is used. ElevenLabs privacy policy
• Tavus: Project context and the microphone audio and camera video you share during face-to-face AI conversations. Tavus privacy policy
• remove.bg (Kaleido): The image or image URL when removing a background, including completing background removal for a saved logo. remove.bg (Kaleido) privacy policy
• Firebase (Google): Authentication, database (Firestore), and file storage
• Resend: Transactional email delivery for team invitations, task notifications, team reports, and meeting minutes you request
• Stripe: Payment processing for subscriptions
• RevenueCat / Apple App Store / Google Play: In-app purchase processing and subscription management on mobile. For paid subscriptions, we send your account identifier to RevenueCat to verify mobile subscription access. This verification may create a RevenueCat customer record containing your account identifier even when you purchased your subscription on the website.
• Printify: Design images and product details for print products and mockups, and recipient name, email address, phone number, shipping address, and order details for fulfillment and shipping notifications. Printify privacy policy
• Pexels: Stock-photo and video searches using the search terms you enter or that are generated from your project. Our server sends these queries using an application API key; it does not append your account ID or email address or forward your browser cookies. Search text can still contain personal information you include. Pexels' privacy policy describes analysis of search terms to improve search results.
• OpenAI Ads: Consent-controlled measurement of website subscription conversions. Our conversion code sends an event identifier, not your business ideas, conversations, reports, email address, or payment details.
• Vercel: Hosting, deployment, and consent-controlled web analytics. Page URLs sent for analytics may contain project identifiers.

Before you use AI features, we ask for explicit permission to share the categories of information described for those features with the listed AI providers. If that disclosure changes, we ask you to review and agree to it again. You can decline and sign out, and can still access account settings and deletion without agreeing. Optional ad measurement is controlled separately by the cookie banner and does not include your business ideas, conversations, or reports.

6. Data Sharing and Disclosure

We do not sell your personal information. We may share your information in the following circumstances:

• With Your Consent: When you explicitly authorize us to share information
• Service Providers: With third-party service providers who assist in operating the Service (listed above)
• Educational Programs: If your account is provided through an educational institution or campus program, we process account and usage data on behalf of that institution to provide and support the Service, and we will cooperate with the institution's privacy obligations, including FERPA where applicable
• Legal Requirements: To comply with legal obligations, court orders, or government requests
• Business Transfers: In connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets
• Protection of Rights: To protect our rights, property, or safety, or that of our users
• Connected Applications (at your direction): You can connect third-party AI assistants (such as Claude or ChatGPT) to your Brainstorm Buddie account through our connector. See below.

Connected AI Assistants (Claude, ChatGPT, and other MCP clients)

Brainstorm Buddie offers a connector that lets you use your account from third-party AI assistants. Connections are established only when you explicitly approve them on our consent screen (OAuth 2.1). When a connected assistant uses a tool on your behalf, we share the requested data — such as your project details, reports, or generated assets — with that assistant, and the assistant's own privacy policy governs what it does with the data it receives (for example, Anthropic's Privacy Policy for Claude, OpenAI's Privacy Policy for ChatGPT).

If you separately approve connected-app status access, an assistant may see which apps you linked, their connection status, and the account or workspace labels shown in Buddie. This status access does not reveal credentials or content from those apps and does not authorize actions in them.

Infographics and business cards generated through the connector are stored at publicly accessible image links so the assistant can display and download them. Anyone with a link may view its image. An infographic may contain details from your project, and a business card may contain the name and title you provide. Avoid including private information in these images. Replacing a saved infographic does not recall a link or copy already shared.

A connected assistant can only access the account that authorized it, subject to your subscription plan's features, quotas, and rate limits. Access tokens expire automatically (1 hour, with 90-day idle expiry for the connection), and you can revoke any connection at any time from Settings → Connections, which immediately invalidates its tokens. Revocation stops future access but cannot recall data already received by the assistant.

Apps You Connect to Brainstorm Buddie

The Connectors page lets eligible subscribers authorize supported email, calendar, document, marketing, and financial services through each provider's sign-in flow. We store connection identifiers and encrypted access credentials to maintain the accounts you link. The permissions shown by each provider determine what the connection can access. Disconnecting stops future access through Brainstorm Buddie, but cannot undo actions already completed in the provider. Plaid and QuickBooks sandbox connections contain sample data, not your live financial records.

7. Data Retention

We retain your personal information for as long as necessary to provide the Service and fulfill the purposes described in this Privacy Policy. You may delete your account at any time, which will remove your personal information from our active databases. However, some information may be retained in backup systems for a limited period or as required by law. Information that has already been transmitted to the AI providers listed above is retained by those providers under their own retention policies and cannot be recalled by us; payment records held by Stripe and the mobile app stores are likewise retained by those subprocessors for tax and fraud-prevention purposes. Meeting content — including the messages that make up a meeting, its captions and transcripts, and its generated minutes — is retained so you can revisit past meetings, and is deleted when you delete the meeting or your account.

8. Your Rights and Choices

You have the following rights regarding your personal information:

• Access: Request a copy of the personal information we hold about you
• Correction: Request correction of inaccurate or incomplete information
• Deletion: Request deletion of your account and personal information
• Opt-Out: Opt out of marketing communications (we currently do not send marketing emails)
• Data Portability: Request your data in a machine-readable format
• Withdraw Consent: Withdraw consent for data processing where consent is the legal basis

To exercise these rights, please contact us at support@brainstormbuddie.com or through your account settings.

To permanently delete your account in the app, open Settings → Subscription → Delete Account → Delete My Account and follow the confirmation prompts. Account settings and deletion remain available without agreeing to AI sharing. If you own an active shared course, transfer its ownership first to preserve classmates' work. Apple and Google Play subscriptions must be managed separately in the store where you subscribed.

9. Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your personal information against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. These measures include:

• Encryption of data in transit using HTTPS/TLS
• Encryption of sensitive data at rest
• Secure authentication through Firebase Auth
• Regular security assessments and updates
• Access controls and authentication requirements

However, no method of transmission over the internet or electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

10. Children's Privacy

Our Service is not directed to children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us so we can delete such information.

Printify printing features are for adults aged 18 or older who have reached the age of majority where they live. Before sending a design or order to Printify, you must confirm that the designs, text, metadata, and recipient details contain no minors' personal information or sensitive personal information. This includes minors' names, photographs, and contact details. We do not collect birth dates for this confirmation.

11. International Data Transfers

Your information may be transferred to and processed in countries other than your country of residence. These countries may have different data protection laws. By using the Service, you consent to the transfer of your information to the United States and other countries where our service providers operate.

12. California Privacy Rights (CCPA)

If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA):

• Right to know what personal information is collected, used, shared, or sold
• Right to delete personal information held by us
• Right to opt-out of the sale of personal information (we do not sell personal information)
• Right to non-discrimination for exercising your privacy rights

To exercise these rights, contact us at support@brainstormbuddie.com.

13. GDPR Rights (European Users)

If you are located in the European Economic Area (EEA), you have rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR):

• Right of access to your personal data
• Right to rectification of inaccurate data
• Right to erasure (“right to be forgotten”)
• Right to restriction of processing
• Right to data portability
• Right to object to processing
• Right to withdraw consent

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

14. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page and updating the “Last Updated” date. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes.

15. Contact Us

If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us: