The tale of setting the terms (and conditions)

So you may have noticed from my last post that my new project/company site (Foundry Fuel) has gone live for pre-registration and to do this I had to obviously put several things in place. The main one of which is setting up the business with the government and getting a bank account etc. That was all pretty straight forward and had no real bumps in the road. Brilliant! Having spent some time building the pre-registration I was keen to now get it live and get people using it. What I hadn't considered at this point was the T&Cs and Privacy Policy the platform would need. As a CTO I am long experienced in putting these live from content provided from.......elsewhere, but I wasn't so sure where to get the text actually from and to make sure that it was appropriate.

I'm a big believer in the idea that if someone else can do this then there is no reason why I can't and my first thought was getting a solicitor to do these for me. The problem with this was that it's expensive and requires sourcing and engaging with an external professional. This felt like a lot of work for something that should be straight forward. Also, im a startup. I'm not cheap but I don't like wasting money if I can help it so I asked a couple of people what they had done before and the answers surprised me.

The first person I asked gave me the answer I was dreading the most. "I just used ChatGPT". Now, don't get me wrong I am a big fan of AI but this always worries me because I am concerned about accuracy. "How did you make sure it was correct and accurate?" I said. "Dunno, just trusted it I guess and read over it". Now using Chat GPT for text in a presentation or solving a code problem it may be brilliant but as legals isn't my speciality I wanted something between a "hope for best" blind approach and belt and braces "solicitor" approach. This was a no go for me.

The second person I asked explained that they found a competitor online, copied theirs and reworded the bits for their business name and details. Makes sense really but how do you know it's a fit. "I don't but it's going to be close enough" was the reply. Again this worried me from an accuracy standpoint but also didn't work for me as I have no competitors. Again, the person I spoke with didn't seem concerned. It was very much an approach of close enough is good enough.

Maybe it's a neurodiverse thing where I need to feel confident in accuracy and detail that I don't have the old "ask for forgiveness and not permission" approach for items like this. Don't get me wrong, when running a start-up there are times when you have to be a bit more cavalier than you would want** but legal terms and legal situations are ones that fill me with dread.

So where do you go from here. Well thankfully some amazing companies online have thought of this and do it for you. I looked at few and I am not going to tell you what I used but they are all very similar. I looked at the following providers.

1 - Termly
2 - Seed Legals
3 - Law Depot

Any Google search will bring these guys up as results, and there are loads more out there, but these services generate T&Cs and Privacy Policies based on your company information and ask lots (and lots more) questions about how you will do business, charge people, how you collect data what you will do with data and how people can contact (and complain) to you. They felt very much in that sweet spot of where I felt confident and supported without going to the full extent of using a dedicated solicitor.

Now how do you decide between the ones you find online. Well for me it was about several factors. Firstly the level of detail and the reputation of the provider. Then it was a case of the appropriateness of the questions to my location and purpose. Finally the costs of the service and the engagement level with the provider. I wanted something as a one off for now and many of these providers suggest a monthly subscription. So there were options here but overall this was a business decision rather than a legal one at this point so I was confident I was getting what I needed.

What I hated during this process were the other companies out there that lured you in with "free T&C generator" but then make it almost impossible for you to download and use the generated content or making you pay for the additional Privacy Policy on top. Spending 30 minutes of work to complete the process only to find out that the file created is a heavily formatted HTML file with watermarks all over it or that I need to pay £200 for the accompanying Privacy Policy, is really annoying, to say the least.

Afterwards I found a template on NIBusiness that can help if needed but I wanted something a lot more detailed so I was happy with my approach.

** My advice is every situation where legal considerations should be made is to consult a legal expert and neither I or this blog suggest cutting corners or doing anything without the appropriate advice. I'm not an legal expert so don't assume I know what I am talking about.

Coming soon - Toxic People / Prototypes and MVPs / Into the Wild