Privacy Policy

Who we are

Campus Founders is operated by Alcaraz Technologies, based in Dublin, Ireland. Alcaraz Technologies is the controller of the personal data described here. Our registered details and contact address are at the bottom of this page.

Campus Founders is independent. It isn't affiliated with, endorsed by or run by any university, college or students' union.

What we collect

• Account: your sign-in email address. If you choose "Continue with Google", Google shares your name and email address with us; we don't receive your Google password or contacts.
• Profile (you choose what to fill in): name, photo, headline, bio, affiliation, university or organisation, course, year, graduation year, location, LinkedIn and website links, skills, interests, what you bring and what you're looking for, founder status.
• Membership: whether you're verified and how (university email, invitation or a check by our team). For university-email verification we store only a one-way cryptographic fingerprint of the address and its domain, never the address itself, and we note which institution the domain belongs to.
• Activity: event registrations and attendance (check-ins), connection requests, saved opportunities, startups you add or join, badges, notifications, and reports you submit.
• Preferences and consents: profile visibility, email preferences, newsletter consent and when you accepted our terms.
• Partnership enquiries (non-members): organisation, contact name, work email, role and your message.
• Plus membership: whether you have Plus, which plan (student, professional, founding, Plus Access), how (card or added by our team), the renewal or end date, whether you show the Plus badge and Stripe's customer and subscription references. If you ask for Plus Access, your optional note.
• Paid event tickets and programme places: the amount you paid, Stripe's payment reference and any refund.
• Podcast Q&A: the questions you ask guests, whether you asked anonymously, your votes, and answers guests write.
• Plus benefits you use: office-hours bookings (slot and topic), pitch-review requests (your deck link, stage and question) and the written feedback, and requests you make for Plus Access.
• Price survey (optional): your four price answers, used only as aggregate statistics.
• Featured listings (companies): contact name, work email, company and the listing, plus Stripe's payment reference.
• Opportunity clicks: when a signed-in member opens an application link we count it once a day per listing. Partners only ever see totals, never who clicked.
• Talent pool (only if you opt in): your headline, what you're open to, availability, location preference, CV and portfolio links and summary; which partner organisations viewed your profile and when; contact requests and your answers.
• Programmes: your application answers, the decision on your application, payments and refunds, your deliverables and the feedback on them.
• Newsletter: whether you subscribed and when, and which issues were sent to you.
• Partner contacts: the organisation you represent and the talent-pool contact requests you send.
• We do not collect your date of birth, gender, nationality or phone number, and we never see or store your card details: Stripe handles payments.

Why we use it (and our legal basis)

• To run your account and the platform, including events, check-in, the directory and connections: performance of our agreement with you (the Terms).
• To verify members and keep the community safe, including moderation and safety reports: our legitimate interest in a trusted student community.
• To send service emails you need, such as sign-in codes, receipts and registration confirmations: performance of our agreement.
• To take payments for Plus, tickets, programmes and featured listings and to issue refunds: performance of our agreement, and our legal obligation to keep financial records.
• To send optional emails (reminders, announcements, the newsletter): your consent, which you can withdraw in Settings or with the link in every email.
• To show your talent profile to partner organisations with talent access: your consent, given when you join the talent pool and withdrawn by leaving it.
• To reply to partnership enquiries: your consent, given on the form.
• To report aggregate results to partners (attendance, opportunity clicks, programme numbers), never naming members: our legitimate interest in funding the community.
• To understand how the platform is used (aggregate statistics such as attendance): our legitimate interest. Website analytics are cookieless and anonymous.

Who can see your information

• Your profile visibility is your choice: public, members only (the default) or private. Private profiles are hidden from the directory and matching.
• Your email address is never shown on your profile. It is shared with an accepted connection only if you switch on email sharing.
• People on our team see only what their role needs (for example, the events lead can see registrations for events; the finance lead cannot see member profiles). Team actions on accounts are recorded in an audit log.
• We never sell, rent or share member data with sponsors, partners or anyone else for marketing.
• The talent pool is the one exception you control: if you opt in, partner organisations with talent access see your talent profile, name, photo, course, institution, graduation year, skills and LinkedIn link. They never see your email unless you accept their contact request, and you can see which organisations viewed you.
• Mentors on a programme see the deliverables you submit to it.
• We don't share your data with your university or college.

Service providers

We use a small number of providers who process data on our behalf under data-processing terms: Supabase (database, authentication and file storage, hosted in the EU), Vercel (website hosting), Resend (transactional email), Plausible (cookieless website analytics, EU-hosted) and Stripe (payments). If you sign in with Google, Google acts as an independent identity provider under its own privacy policy. We don't use advertising trackers.

How long we keep it

• Your account data: until you delete your account.
• Accounts that never complete verification: we may delete them after 12 months of inactivity, after emailing you first.
• Event attendance after you delete your account: kept only as anonymous counts.
• Payment records (Plus, tickets, programmes, featured listings): kept for 6 years, as Irish tax law requires, even after you delete your account. Stripe keeps its own records as the law requires.
• Office-hours bookings, pitch reviews, Plus Access requests and price-survey answers: deleted with your account.
• Featured-listing orders: contact details are kept with the payment record; abandoned unpaid orders are deleted after 7 days.
• Talent profile: deleted as soon as you leave the pool or delete your account. Contact requests and view records are deleted with your account.
• Programme applications and deliverables: deleted with your account.
• Podcast questions and votes: deleted with your account. Answers to them are deleted too.
• Partnership enquiries: deleted within 24 months if no partnership follows.
• Audit logs: kept for up to 3 years, then deleted.

Your rights

You can access, correct, download or delete your data at any time. Most of this is self-serve: edit your profile, change privacy and email settings, download a copy of your data, or delete your account from Settings. You also have the right to object to or restrict processing, and to withdraw consent.

If you have concerns, please contact us first at the address below. You also have the right to complain to the Data Protection Commission (dataprotection.ie).

Cookies

We use only essential cookies to keep you signed in. Our analytics don't use cookies or track you across sites, so there's no cookie banner.

Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we'll tell members on the platform and by email before it takes effect.