Terms of Service

By accessing or using the Service, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated here by reference. If you use the Service on behalf of a company or other organization, you represent that you are authorized to bind that organization, and “you” refers to that organization.

• You must be at least 18 years old and capable of forming a binding contract to use the Service.
• You agree to provide accurate, current, and complete information when registering and to keep it up to date.
• You are responsible for safeguarding your login credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. Notify us immediately of any unauthorized use.
• You may not share, sell, or transfer your account, and you may not impersonate any person or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity.

StartWise is a platform for the startup ecosystem. Depending on your role and plan, it may provide AI-assisted business plans, pitch decks, financial models, and market research; an AI Co-Founder; investor discovery and matching; outreach from your own email and messaging accounts; a Master Inbox; Atlas, a relationship workspace with a web app, a mobile app, and public profiles; data rooms; pitch practice; free tools such as Deck Check and validation tools; an MVP builder; Expert Review; mentorship bookings and courses; tools for accelerators and university programs; messaging; and tools that help founders, investors, project managers, mentors, and programs connect and collaborate. We may add, modify, suspend, or discontinue any feature, in whole or in part, at any time without liability.

We may offer features identified as beta, preview, early-access, or experimental (“Beta Features”). Beta Features are provided “as is,” may be changed or withdrawn at any time, may contain bugs or errors, and are not guaranteed to be released generally. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Beta Features are excluded from any service-level commitment and are used at your sole risk.

• Certain features require a paid subscription, one-time purchase, or consumption of in-app credits. Pricing, credit allotments, and feature limits are described at the point of purchase and may change prospectively.
• Unless stated otherwise, subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period until cancelled. You may cancel at any time; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current period. If a plan starts with a free trial and you give a payment method, your paid subscription starts and we charge that method when the trial ends, unless you cancel before then.
• Fees are charged through our third-party payment processors. You authorize us and those processors to charge your selected payment method for all amounts due.
• Credits. Paid plans include a monthly allotment of credits, and you can buy more. Credits are used by AI features and by some lookups, such as unlocking investor matches or asking the contact directory for a missing detail (charged only when a detail is found). Credits reset at the start of each monthly credit period, including on annual plans, and unused credits, including purchased credits, do not carry over unless we say otherwise at the point of purchase. If an AI run fails, the credits it used are returned automatically. Credits have no cash value and cannot be transferred, sold, or exchanged for money.
• Except for the 14-day money-back guarantee below, the mentorship refunds in Section 7, where required by law, or where otherwise expressly stated, payments and consumed credits are non-refundable, and we do not provide refunds or credits for partial periods, unused credits, or features you did not use. Promotional pricing (for example introductory offers) applies only as described and may revert to standard pricing afterward.
• 14-day money-back guarantee. If you are a new subscriber, you may request a full refund of your first subscription payment by emailing [email protected] within 14 days of that payment. We refund it to the original payment method, and your paid plan ends when the refund is issued. The guarantee covers only your first subscription payment: renewals and credit top-ups remain non-refundable. The guarantee applies once per customer. If you, or the organization you subscribe for, have already received a guarantee refund, you are not eligible again, including after cancelling and re-subscribing, changing plans, or opening a new account. If your plan started with a free trial, your first subscription payment is the first charge after the trial ends. The guarantee covers subscriptions bought directly from us. It does not cover Expert Review, mentor bookings, courses, or purchases made through an app store.
• App store purchases. If you subscribe through the Apple App Store or Google Play (for example in the Atlas mobile app), Apple or Google bills you under its own terms, and refunds for those purchases are handled by Apple or Google under its policies. We cannot issue those refunds ourselves.
• We may change our fees on a prospective basis. If you do not agree to a fee change, your remedy is to cancel before it takes effect.
• You are responsible for any applicable taxes other than taxes on our net income. If a payment is reversed or charged back, we may suspend your account and recover the amount owed.

Expert Review is a one-time purchase in which a human reviewer reads documents you submit, such as a pitch deck or business plan, and gives you written feedback.

• Price. An Expert Review costs USD $200 per review, plus any applicable taxes, charged once at checkout. It is not a subscription and does not include credits.
• Reviewer. StartWise chooses the reviewer, who is a member of our team or an expert or mentor we engage. You authorize the reviewer to read the documents you submit, and the reviewer may use them only to prepare your review.
• Nature of the review. The review is the reviewer’s opinion. It is not professional, legal, financial, tax, or investment advice (Section 10), and it is not a promise of any result (Section 12).
• Delivery. We deliver the review, as a reviewed file and written notes, on your Expert Review page in the Service. Any time estimate we give is not a guarantee.
• Refunds. The 14-day money-back guarantee does not apply to Expert Review. If we cannot deliver your review, we refund the fee in full. Once a review is delivered, the fee is non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise.

The Service may let you book one-to-one sessions with mentors and buy mentors’ courses.

• Mentors are independent. Mentors are independent providers, not employees or agents of StartWise. Each mentor sets their own prices and is responsible for their sessions, courses, and any advice they give. StartWise does not supervise, endorse, or guarantee mentors, and Sections 10 and 27 apply to your dealings with them.
• Booking and payment. You pay through Stripe when you request a session. The mentor then approves or declines it. If the mentor declines, or has not approved by the session’s start time, the booking is cancelled and you are refunded in full.
• Cancellation. If you cancel a confirmed session more than 24 hours before it starts, you get the session price back. If you cancel within 24 hours of the start, you get 50% back. If the mentor cancels, you get the session price back. These cancellation refunds, and the refund when you cancel a request the mentor has not yet approved, exclude the payment processor’s fee, which is not refundable. Mentors may also issue full or partial refunds themselves.
• Payment hold and disputes. We hold the mentor’s payment until 72 hours after the session ends. If you raise a dispute in that time, we keep holding it while we review the dispute, and we may refund all or part of the price. We decide disputes in good faith based on what both sides tell us.
• Courses. You pay for a course when you buy it. Course refund requests are reviewed case by case.
• If you are a mentor. You must complete Stripe Connect onboarding to receive payments. Funds become available after the hold period, and each withdrawal is paid after we approve it; minimum amounts apply. If you cancel a confirmed session, the learner is refunded as described above, and if you cancel within 15 minutes of its start, an additional 25% of the session price may be deducted from your balance. Refunds we issue to learners are taken back from your balance. You are responsible for your own taxes and for complying with the laws that apply to your services.

“User Content” means any data, text, documents, files, ideas, financials, and other materials you submit to or generate through the Service. As between you and StartWise, you retain all ownership rights in your User Content.

You grant StartWise a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable license to host, store, copy, process, transmit, display, and create derivative works of your User Content solely as needed to operate, provide, secure, and improve the Service and to perform the functions you request (for example, generating a deck from your inputs or sharing a data room with parties you authorize). Improving the Service does not include training AI models on your User Content, and we do not use your User Content to train AI models unless you agree to it in a separate written agreement. You represent and warrant that you have all rights necessary to submit your User Content and to grant this license, and that your User Content does not violate these Terms or any law or third-party right.

You are solely responsible for maintaining your own backups of your User Content. We are not a backup service and are not liable for any loss, deletion, or corruption of User Content. You can download a copy of your data and delete your account in Settings, as described in our Privacy Policy.

The Service uses artificial intelligence and third-party AI models to generate content such as business plans, decks, financial projections, summaries, outreach drafts, inbox briefings, scores, and matches (“AI Output”). Our Privacy Policy lists the AI providers we use. You understand and agree that:

• AI Output is generated automatically, may be inaccurate, incomplete, outdated, or misleading, and must be independently reviewed and verified before you rely on it.
• AI Output is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional, legal, financial, tax, investment, or accounting advice.
• Any financial models, forecasts, or projections are illustrative only, depend on inputs and assumptions you provide, and are not predictions or guarantees of any outcome.
• Scores, rankings, and matches, such as investor fit, data room engagement scores, and program application scores, are automated estimates, not facts or decisions.
• The AI Co-Founder remembers facts about your venture and uses them across features, including outreach drafts.
• Some features act for you after you approve them, for example Outreach sending messages you approved or sequence steps you started. You are responsible for reviewing anything sent in your name.
• Similar or identical output may be generated for other users; to the extent permitted by law, we make no exclusivity guarantee over AI Output.
• You are solely responsible for your use of AI Output, including any decisions, filings, disclosures, or representations you make based on it.

StartWise is a software tool, not a law firm, accounting firm, financial adviser, or fiduciary. Nothing on the Service, including feedback from mentors and expert reviewers, is, or should be construed as, professional advice from StartWise. You should consult qualified professionals before making legal, financial, tax, or business decisions. Your use of the Service does not create any attorney-client, fiduciary, or adviser relationship.

The Service may help founders and investors discover one another and communicate. You acknowledge and agree that:

• StartWise is not a broker, dealer, broker-dealer, investment adviser, funding portal, or placement agent, and does not offer, solicit, recommend, negotiate, or facilitate any securities transaction or investment.
• We do not endorse, vet, or guarantee any user, venture, investor, deal, valuation, or representation made on the Service, and we receive no transaction-based compensation for any introduction.
• Investor information in the Service comes from public filings, websites, data providers, and AI research, and may be incomplete, outdated, or wrong. Verify it before relying on it. Being listed does not mean an investor is active, is interested in your company, or has agreed to be contacted.
• You may use investor information only to contact investors about your own company in a lawful, relevant, and respectful way. You may not sell, publish, bulk-export, or share it with others, or use it to build a database or a competing product.
• Free and paid match limits, and the credits needed to unlock more matches, are described in the Service.
• Any communication, due diligence, negotiation, agreement, or investment between users is solely between those users, at their own risk. Investing in startups is highly speculative and may result in the total loss of capital.
• You are responsible for conducting your own due diligence and for complying with all applicable securities, anti-money-laundering, and other laws in connection with any fundraising or investment activity.

We do not promise or guarantee any particular result from using the Service, including any investment, funding, introduction, reply, meeting, partnership, revenue, valuation, acceptance into a program, or business outcome. Any examples, testimonials, or statistics describe past results of others and are not a promise that you will achieve the same. Your results depend on many factors outside our control, including your own efforts, your venture, and market conditions.

When you connect an email, calendar, or messaging account (such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Instagram, or Telegram), you authorize StartWise and its providers, including Unipile for messaging accounts, to access that account and act for you as described in our Privacy Policy. That includes reading your messages and contacts, keeping a synced copy in the Master Inbox, and sending the messages, invitations, and other actions you write, approve, or set up. You must have the right to connect each account you connect.

• You are the sender. Messages sent through Outreach or the Master Inbox go out from your own accounts and in your name. You are responsible for them, including AI-drafted messages you approve and automated sequence steps you start.
• Anti-spam and consent laws. You must comply with every law that applies to your messages, such as the CAN-SPAM Act in the United States, data protection and electronic marketing rules in the EU and UK (including the UK Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations), Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation, and the U.S. Telephone Consumer Protection Act for text and WhatsApp messages. That includes having consent or another lawful basis where required, identifying yourself truthfully, using honest subject lines, giving recipients a way to opt out where the law requires it, and honoring opt-out requests promptly. Outreach does not add an unsubscribe link to your emails for you, so add one where the law requires it.
• Platform rules. LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, Google, and Microsoft have their own terms, which may restrict automated activity. Automated actions such as connection invitations, profile visits, endorsements, and repeated messages may break a platform’s rules even within the daily limits we set. You use these features at your own risk. If a platform warns, restricts, or closes your account, StartWise is not responsible, and we do not guarantee that any connection will keep working.
• Limits. We set default daily limits and may pause sequences, lower limits, or disconnect accounts to protect you, the people you contact, or the Service.
• Master Inbox. AI features read the content of your synced messages to rank, summarize, and draft. You can delete the synced copy or disconnect an account at any time. Disconnecting stops future access but does not undo messages already sent.

You may bring information about other people into the Service, such as contacts you add or import, investors you track, people in your connected mailboxes and chats, people you invite to a data room, team members, and program applicants. You represent that you have the right to share that information with us and to use it as you do through the Service, including giving any notice and obtaining any consent the law requires.

• Contact directory. Professional contact details from the contacts you add, import, or sync may be added to our shared contact directory and used as described in our Privacy Policy. If you ask the directory for a missing detail, you may use it only to contact that person for a legitimate professional purpose, and you may not resell, publish, or bulk-export it.
• Data room viewers. As the owner of a data room, you decide which checks apply to viewers (for example email verification, a passcode, NDA acceptance, watermarks, and, once it is available, access approval), and the room records viewers’ reading activity. You are responsible for that information as its controller, including telling viewers about it where the law requires. We process it on your behalf.
• Sensitive information. Do not upload sensitive information about other people, such as health information, government identification numbers, or financial account numbers, unless it is necessary and lawful.
• Requests from those people. If someone asks us about information you brought into the Service, we may handle the request under our Privacy Policy, which can include correcting or deleting that information.

• Atlas helps you manage contacts, notes, documents, and events. It can enrich contacts from public sources, and that information may be incomplete or wrong. Use enrichment, network scans, and tone suggestions only for your own professional networking.
• If you publish a public profile, you are responsible for its content. It can be viewed by anyone and indexed by search engines until you unpublish it. People who book a meeting through it share their details with you, and you must handle them lawfully.
• The Atlas mobile app is also subject to the terms of the app store you downloaded it from. App store purchases are covered by Section 5.
• We may create profiles for investors, ventures, or programs that have not signed up, using public information. You may claim a profile only if it is about you or an organization you are authorized to represent. Claiming may require verifying your phone number, and we may refuse or revoke a claim.

• Accelerators and university programs use StartWise to run applications and cohorts. Each program is responsible for its selection decisions, its program, its messages to applicants (including decision emails sent through StartWise), and its use of applicant information.
• AI screening gives programs scores and recommendations only. The program makes its own decisions and must comply with any law that applies to automated decision-making.
• When you apply to a program, your application, venture information, and profile are shared with that program. StartWise is not responsible for a program’s decisions.

• We offer free tools, such as the homepage website reader, Deck Check, validation tools, the Investor Exam, and limited Atlas chat, that you can use without an account. These Terms apply to that use.
• Free tools are provided as is, may have usage limits (including limits per IP address), and may change or end at any time. Their results are AI Output (Section 9).
• Upload only content you have the right to share. We keep free reports so you can claim them by signing up, as described in our Privacy Policy.
• The Investor Exam creates a temporary anonymous account. If you do not sign up, we may delete it.

You agree not to, and not to permit anyone else to:

• use the Service for any unlawful, fraudulent, deceptive, or infringing purpose, or in violation of any applicable law or regulation;
• upload or transmit malware, or attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Service, other accounts, or our systems or networks;
• scrape, crawl, harvest, or use automated means to access the Service except via documented interfaces we authorize, or circumvent rate limits, credits, or access controls;
• reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract source code or underlying models, or use the Service or AI Output to train or develop a competing model or product, except to the extent this restriction is prohibited by law;
• post or transmit content that is defamatory, obscene, harassing, hateful, or that infringes intellectual property or privacy rights;
• misrepresent your identity, ventures, financials, or affiliations;
• send spam, send messages that break anti-spam, telemarketing, or privacy laws or a platform’s rules (Section 13), or keep contacting people who have asked you to stop;
• use the investor database, the contact directory, or other people’s information for anything other than your own legitimate professional purposes, or sell, publish, or bulk-export it;
• use data room analytics, enrichment, or any other feature to stalk, harass, or monitor individuals;
• resell, sublicense, or commercially exploit the Service without our written consent, or benchmark it for a competitor.

We respect intellectual property rights and respond to notices of alleged infringement under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, send a written notice to our designated agent at [email protected] including the information required by 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3). We may remove allegedly infringing content and terminate repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances.

The Service integrates with third-party providers, for example payment processors and app stores, cloud and AI providers, email and calendar providers, messaging connectors and the platforms behind them, data providers, document services, and the platform our MVP builder runs on. Your use of those services is governed by their terms and privacy policies, and StartWise is not responsible for them. Links to third-party sites are provided for convenience and do not imply endorsement.

The Service, including its software, design, text, graphics, logos, and trademarks (including the StartWise and Wise Start names and marks), and all related intellectual property, is owned by Wise Start Inc or its licensors and is protected by law. Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the Service for its intended purpose. We reserve all rights not expressly granted. If you provide feedback or suggestions, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free license to use them without restriction or compensation.

The Service may let you share confidential materials through data rooms and to sign or request non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). NDAs and confidentiality terms you enter through the Service are agreements between you and the other parties, not with StartWise. We provide tooling to facilitate these arrangements but are not a party to them and are not responsible for any party’s breach. You are responsible for deciding what to share and with whom.

• Dataroom. Data rooms are provided through Dataroom, a separate service that is part of the Service. It runs on its own systems and web address, and these Terms and our Privacy Policy apply to your use of it.
• NDA acceptance. A viewer accepts an NDA by clicking to agree and typing their name. We record the NDA text, its fingerprint, the typed name, the IP address, the browser, and the time. This is a click-through acceptance, not a certified electronic-signature service, and we do not verify a viewer’s identity beyond the email checks you turn on. Any NDA template we provide is a starting point, not legal advice.
• Viewer activity. A data room records viewers’ reading activity, including time spent on each page, and shows you who is reading, what they opened, and how far they got. We are adding per-page reading times, notifications when someone opens or reads a document, and approval of access requests; where these features are available, they are described in the Service. Use this information only to manage your own fundraising or transaction.
• Limits of protection. Watermarks, download controls, passcodes, and link expiry reduce risk but cannot prevent screenshots, photos, or onward sharing by people you let in.
• AI and other features. The data room assistant reads only the folders you allow. Data room content and viewer activity are not used in Atlas, the AI Co-Founder, or other StartWise features.
• Viewers. If you open a data room as a viewer, any NDA or conditions the owner sets are between you and the owner.

You represent that you are not located in, and are not a national or resident of, any country or region subject to U.S. embargo or comprehensive sanctions, and that you are not on any U.S. government restricted-party or denied-party list. You agree to comply with all applicable export control and sanctions laws and not to use the Service in violation of them.

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service at any time, with or without notice, if we believe you have violated these Terms, created risk or legal exposure for us, or for any other reason at our discretion. You may stop using the Service and close your account at any time. Upon termination, your right to use the Service ceases. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including ownership, disclaimers, limitation of liability, release, indemnification, and dispute resolution) will survive. We may delete your User Content following termination, subject to our Privacy Policy and applicable law.

THE SERVICE AND ALL CONTENT AND AI OUTPUT ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE,” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, StartWise disclaims all warranties, express, implied, or statutory, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement, and any warranties arising from course of dealing or usage of trade. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free, that defects will be corrected, or that any content, data about other people, or AI Output will be accurate, complete, reliable, or fit for your purposes. You use the Service at your own risk.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL STARTWISE OR ITS OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, OR LICENSORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL, BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES, OR INVESTMENTS, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE, AI OUTPUT, OR THESE TERMS, WHETHER BASED ON CONTRACT, TORT, NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, OR ANY OTHER THEORY, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE TOTAL AMOUNTS YOU PAID TO STARTWISE IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS (USD $100). SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW CERTAIN LIMITATIONS, SO SOME OF THE ABOVE MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

ANY CLAIM ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS MUST BE BROUGHT WITHIN ONE (1) YEAR AFTER THE CLAIM ACCRUES; OTHERWISE IT IS PERMANENTLY BARRED, EXCEPT WHERE APPLICABLE LAW REQUIRES A LONGER PERIOD THAT CANNOT BE WAIVED.

The Service connects you with other users and third parties, including founders, investors, project managers, mentors, expert reviewers, accelerators, university programs, data room viewers, and the people you contact. StartWise is not responsible for, and you release StartWise and its officers, directors, employees, and agents from, any claims, demands, damages, and losses of every kind arising out of or related to disputes, dealings, transactions, or interactions between you and any other user or third party. If you are a California resident, you waive California Civil Code § 1542 and any similar law in any jurisdiction, which would otherwise limit a general release to claims you know or suspect to exist.

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless StartWise and its officers, directors, employees, agents, and licensors from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of or related to: (a) your User Content; (b) your use of the Service; (c) your violation of these Terms or any law or third-party right; (d) any dispute, transaction, or dealing between you and another user or investor; or (e) messages sent from your connected accounts and your use of information about other people.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Florida, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.

Binding arbitration

Except for claims that may be brought in small-claims court, any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be resolved by final and binding arbitration administered under the rules of a recognized arbitration provider, seated in Miami-Dade County, Florida, before a single arbitrator. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction.

Class-action waiver

You and StartWise agree that disputes will be brought only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, or representative proceeding.

30-day right to opt out

You may opt out of this arbitration agreement within 30 days of first accepting these Terms by emailing [email protected] with your name and account email and the statement that you opt out of arbitration. Opting out does not affect any other part of these Terms.

Injunctive relief

Notwithstanding the above, either party may seek injunctive or equitable relief in the state or federal courts located in Miami-Dade County, Florida to protect its intellectual property or confidential information, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts for that purpose.

By using the Service, you consent to receive communications from us electronically, including by email, by text message when you verify a phone number, and through the Service, and you agree that all agreements, notices, disclosures, and other communications we provide electronically satisfy any legal requirement that they be in writing.

We may update these Terms from time to time, including when we add features. If we make material changes, we will update the “Last updated” date and, where appropriate, provide additional notice. Your continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.

• Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and Wise Start Inc regarding the Service.
• Severability. If any provision is found unenforceable, it will be modified to the minimum extent necessary, and the remaining provisions remain in full force and effect.
• No waiver. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to do so later.
• Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them freely, including in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
• No third-party beneficiaries. These Terms do not create any rights for anyone other than you and Wise Start Inc.
• Force majeure. We are not liable for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control.

Questions about these Terms? Contact Wise Start Inc at [email protected].