Terms of Service

Welcome to FounderCircle. These Terms of Service (“Terms”) are an agreement between you and Amirhossein Savizfar, the individual developer based in Turkey who operates FounderCircle (“we”, “us”, or “our”). They govern your use of the FounderCircle iOS application, the foundercircle.app website, and any related services (together, the “Service”). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you don’t agree, don’t use the Service.

1. Who can use FounderCircle

FounderCircle is a professional community for founders, builders, and entrepreneurs. To use the Service you must:

• Be at least 18 years old. The Service is not available to minors, full stop.
• Join as yourself — a real person building or running something — not as a bot, a brand account, or someone else.
• Have the legal capacity to enter into these Terms, and not be barred from using the Service under applicable law.

2. Your account

You sign up with an email address and password. You are responsible for keeping your credentials confidential and for everything that happens under your account. Keep your profile truthful: your name, title, bio, and city should describe you, not an invented persona. If you suspect unauthorized access to your account, email support@foundercircle.app immediately.

3. What FounderCircle is for

You are welcome — encouraged — to use FounderCircle to:

• Discover founders and builders in your city on the map;
• Share what you’re building in posts and comments;
• Message other founders to connect, ask, and help;
• Meet up in real life and build a genuine local network.

4. Zero tolerance for objectionable content and abusive users

FounderCircle has zero tolerance for objectionable content and abusive behavior. The following are prohibited everywhere on the Service — posts, comments, messages, profiles, and photos:

• Harassment and abuse: bullying, hate speech, threats, stalking, doxxing, or coordinated harassment of any person.
• Illegal content: anything that violates applicable law, including any sexual content involving minors — which results in immediate, permanent removal and, where legally required, a report to the authorities.
• Sexually explicit, violent, or hateful material.
• Fake profiles and impersonation: pretending to be another person or company, fabricating an identity, or running multiple deceptive accounts.
• Spam and scams: pyramid schemes, fraudulent offers, repetitive promotional content, or deceptive links.
• Scraping and data extraction: harvesting profiles, posts, or any Service data in bulk, whether manually or with automation.
• Technical abuse: attempting to access accounts, data, or systems you are not authorized to access, probing or disrupting our infrastructure, or reverse-engineering the app.

We review every report and act on confirmed violations within 24 hours — by removing the content, suspending or permanently banning the offending account, or both. There is no appeal for content sexualizing minors or credible threats of violence.

5. Blocking, reporting, and moderation

The app gives you tools to protect your own experience:

• Report: every post, comment, message, and profile can be flagged from inside the app. Reports go straight to us and are reviewed within 24 hours.
• Block: blocking a user immediately hides their content from you and prevents them from messaging you or seeing your activity.

We may remove any content or restrict any account at our discretion if we reasonably believe it violates these Terms — with or without prior notice. We are not obligated to pre-screen content, but we may do so.

6. Messaging rules

Messaging is for genuine connection between founders. Do not use it for unsolicited mass promotion, cold sales blasts, recruiting spam, or repeated unwanted contact. If someone doesn’t respond or blocks you, move on. Repeated unsolicited promotion is treated as spam under Section 4.

7. Your content

You own what you create. Posts, comments, messages, photos, and profile content remain yours. By submitting content to the Service, you grant us a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, and display that content solely to operate and improve the Service — for example, showing your post in the feed or delivering your message to its recipient. This license ends when you delete the content or your account, except where content has been shared with others (e.g. a message already delivered) or where retention is legally required.

Remember that posts and comments are publicto all FounderCircle users. Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want other founders to see, and only share content you have the rights to share. We do not sell your content or use it to train third-party AI models.

8. Location

The map is built on city-level location only. By setting your city — manually or via automatic detection — you consent to it being shown to other users on the map and on your profile. Your exact GPS coordinates are never stored or shown. You can change or remove your city at any time, and the map feature works without automatic detection. See our Privacy Policy for details.

9. Push notifications

Notifications (e.g. new messages or comments) are entirely opt-in through the standard iOS permission prompt. You can turn them off at any time in iOS Settings, and the Service remains fully usable without them.

10. Intellectual property

The FounderCircle name, logo, app, website, and design are owned by Amirhossein Savizfar and are protected by intellectual property laws. These Terms don’t grant you any right to use them except as needed to use the Service normally. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.

11. Third-party services

The Service is built on infrastructure from Supabase (backend and authentication), Expo and Apple (push notification delivery), and DiceBear (placeholder avatars). Your use of the Service is also subject to Apple’s standard terms applicable to apps downloaded from the App Store. We are not responsible for outages of these third-party providers, though we’ll always do our best to keep the Service running.

12. Meeting people — stay safe

FounderCircle helps you find real people to meet in real life. We do not vet, background-check, or verify the identity of users beyond normal account controls. You are solely responsible for your interactions with other users, online and offline. Use common sense: meet in public places, tell someone where you’re going, and trust your instincts.

13. Disclaimers

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied — including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We don’t guarantee that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that any particular founder, connection, or opportunity will materialize.

14. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages — including lost profits, lost data, or business interruption — arising out of or in connection with your use of the Service or your interactions with other users. To the extent liability cannot be excluded, our total liability is limited to the amount you paid us to use the Service in the twelve months before the claim (currently: zero, as the Service is free). Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

15. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service at any time if we reasonably believe you have violated these Terms — immediately and without notice for serious violations such as those in Section 4. You may stop using the Service at any time and delete your account from inside the app or at foundercircle.app/delete-account. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including Sections 7, 10, 13, 14, and 16) survive it.

16. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Turkey, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service shall be subject to the jurisdiction of the competent courts and enforcement offices of the Republic of Turkey. Mandatory consumer-protection rules of the country where you live are not affected by this choice.

17. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as the Service evolves. If we make material changes, we will notify you in the app or by email at least 7 days before they take effect. Continuing to use the Service after the effective date means you accept the revised Terms; if you don’t, simply stop using the Service and delete your account.

18. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email support@foundercircle.app.