Privacy Policy.

1. The short version

• We collect what you give us, what you forward to us, and basic technical logs. We don’t use advertising or analytics cookies, and we don’t track you across other sites.
• Your data is private by default. Startups see anonymous or combined information unless you choose to share more.
• Vendors are never told who forwarded their email.
• We don’t sell your personal information.
• Raw forwarded emails are deleted after 90 days. Ask us to delete your data and we will, within 30 days.
• Questions or requests: privacy@awsmlabs.ai.

2. Who we are and what this covers

SMRTN is run by AWSM LABS LLC (“AWSM LABS”, “we”, “us”). This policy covers smrtn.ai, the SMRTN platform, the pitches@smrtn.ai forwarding address, the emails we send, and SMRTN GTHRNGS, our in-person and virtual gatherings (together, “SMRTN”).

It doesn’t cover CRFT or KNTRL, which have their own policies, or implementation work AWSM LABS does for a company under a separate contract; that contract governs the data involved.

SMRTN is a business service for enterprise leaders, professional services firms, and B2B AI companies. Use of SMRTN is also governed by our Terms of Service.

3. What we collect

What you give us

• When you sign up: your name, work email, company, and title, plus your answers, such as your function, the areas you want AI for, your priorities, how and when to reach you (including a phone number if you choose phone), who referred you, and whether you’d like a seat at a Gathering. Startups also give us their website, stage, revenue band, the areas they sell into, their ideal buyer, and whether they want deployment support.
• When you use the platform: your priorities, the tools you already use, your watchlist, ratings, feedback, notes, and the actions you take, such as tracking or ignoring a pitch or sharing your interest with a startup.
• At a Gathering: your attendance, your seating or meeting requests, the ratings and feedback you give afterwards, and anything you tell us to make the evening work for you (for example, dietary or accessibility needs).
• When you contact us: what you write and how to reply.

What you forward to pitches@smrtn.ai

When you forward a vendor’s email to us, we receive the whole message: your forward, the original email inside it, its headers, and any attachments. That includes personal information about other people, such as the vendor’s name, email address, title, and signature. We use it to identify the vendor, summarize the pitch, and score it against your priorities. See Forwarded emails for how we handle it.

Collected automatically

• Server logs. Our hosting provider records technical details of each request, such as IP address, browser type, the page requested, and the time. We use them to run, secure, and fix the service.
• Cookies and browser storage. When you sign in, we set cookies that keep you signed in; they’re needed for the platform to work. The marketing site keeps a few things in your browser’s session storage for the length of your visit (your light or dark choice, your progress through the sign-up form, and an invite link you arrived with). We don’t use advertising or analytics cookies, and no third party tracks you on our site.
• Email. When we receive an email, we check its sender authentication (DKIM and similar signals) to confirm it really came from the address it claims.

From other sources

• People who invite or refer you. If a member invites you or a partner introduces you, we learn your name or email from them and record who invited you.
• Public sources. We keep a catalog of AI companies built from public information, such as company websites, press, job listings, and public filings. It’s mostly business information, but it can include the names and roles of founders and executives as published by them. We respect robots.txt and site terms, and we never log in to other services or scrape LinkedIn.

4. How we use it

• To run SMRTN: set up and secure your account, and show you your matches, Pitchbox, watchlist, and updates.
• To match buyers with AI solutions and explain each match, and to screen the companies we recommend.
• To read, summarize, and score the pitches you forward.
• To decide which startups to research and invite, using combined, de-identified demand across members. This never identifies you or your company.
• To plan and run Gatherings: choosing who’s in the room, seating, pre-reads, and follow-up.
• To communicate with you: confirmations, sign-in links, service messages, and the updates you’ve asked for. You can turn off anything that isn’t essential to your account.
• To review applications and keep our relationship records, including who referred whom.
• To keep SMRTN safe: preventing spam, abuse, and fraud, and verifying senders.
• To improve SMRTN, using aggregated or de-identified information wherever we can.
• To meet legal obligations and to enforce our Terms.

5. How we use AI

We use Claude, from Anthropic, to process some of your information, for example to pull the vendor and the pitch out of a forwarded email, to explain why a startup fits your priorities, and to summarize feedback into themes. Anthropic processes this for us under its commercial terms, which don’t allow it to train its models on our data.

A person on our team reviews matches, briefs, and feedback reports before they reach anyone. We don’t make decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you by automated means alone.

6. Forwarded emails

• We accept forwards only from an address we can verify (it must pass sender authentication). Mail that fails is dropped, and we don’t reply to it.
• If you’re a member, the pitch is added to your private Pitchbox. Only you can see your forwarded pitches; our team’s sourcing tools show only counts of members across vendors, never who forwarded what.
• If you’re not a member yet, we either reply once to tell you how to join, or open an unconfirmed account and ask you to confirm it. If you don’t confirm within 30 days, we delete the account and everything you forwarded.
• Emails that aren’t pitches are discarded; we keep only a note of what kind of email it was.
• We never tell a vendor who forwarded their email, and our invitations to vendors never name or hint at a buyer or their company.
• Raw emails are deleted after 90 days. The details we extracted (vendor, summary, score) stay in your Pitchbox while you’re a member, and you can delete any of them at any time.

Please forward only email you’re allowed to share, and don’t send us sensitive personal information such as health, financial account, or government ID details.

7. Who sees your information

Other members and startups

• Private by default. Your intake, priorities, watchlist, stack, ratings, and forwarded pitches are private to you.
• Anonymous interest. A startup may learn that a buyer is interested, described only in ranges (for example, role level and company size), and only when at least three members share those attributes. Your name and company are shared only if you choose to share them, and you can stop sharing at any time.
• Feedback. Vendors receive feedback about their product only as themes across at least three buyers, never word for word, unless you choose to share yours directly.
• Gatherings. When you confirm a seat, your name, role, and company are shared with the startups and members attending that session. We never name buyers or their companies in event promotion.
• CRM sync. A startup can receive identified buyer information in its CRM only after you’ve agreed to share with that startup.
• Field Notes, when you post them, are visible to signed-in members. Anonymous notes show only broad attributes; we know who wrote them, but other members and vendors don’t.

Service providers

We use these companies to run SMRTN. They process information on our behalf, under contract, and only for that purpose:

If you pay us, our payment processor handles your payment details; we don’t store card numbers.

Otherwise, only when required

• To comply with the law, a court order, or a valid request from a public authority.
• To protect the rights, safety, or property of our members, the public, or AWSM LABS.
• If AWSM LABS or SMRTN is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, in which case this policy continues to apply to your information.

We don’t sell personal information, and we don’t share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

8. How long we keep it

• Raw forwarded emails: 90 days.
• Your account and what’s in it (including the details extracted from your pitches): while you’re a member. When you close your account or ask us to delete your data, we delete it within 30 days.
• Unconfirmed accounts: 30 days, then deleted.
• Sign-ups and relationship records: as long as we’re reviewing your application or in touch with you, and deleted when you ask.
• Server logs: for the limited period our hosting provider keeps them.
• Combined, de-identified data that can’t identify you or your company may be kept longer, for example in reports on what buyers are being pitched.

9. Your choices and rights

Wherever you are, you can ask us to:

• tell you what personal information we hold about you and give you a copy;
• correct anything that’s wrong;
• delete your information or close your account;
• stop sharing anything you chose to share (going forward);
• stop sending you emails that aren’t essential to your account.

Email privacy@awsmlabs.ai from the address on your account. We may need to confirm it’s you before we act. We reply within 30 days, and we won’t treat you differently for using these rights. You can also delete forwarded pitches yourself in the platform at any time.

United States

Depending on your state (for example, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, or New York), you may have rights to know, access, correct, delete, and port your information, and to opt out of its sale, of targeted advertising, and of profiling. We don’t sell personal information or use it for targeted advertising. You can use an authorized agent to make a request; we may ask for proof that they act for you. If we decline a request, you can appeal by replying to our answer.

European Economic Area, United Kingdom, and Switzerland

We process your information because it’s needed to provide SMRTN to you (contract), because we have a legitimate interest in running and improving a business network and keeping it safe, because you consented (for example, to share your interest with a startup), or because the law requires it. You can object to processing based on legitimate interests and withdraw consent at any time. You can also complain to your local data protection authority. SMRTN is run from the United States, and your information is processed there; where the law requires it, we rely on approved safeguards such as the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses.

10. Security

We encrypt data in transit, restrict each member to their own data at the database level, give our systems only the access they need, keep email contents out of our logs, and verify who sent each forwarded email. No system is perfectly secure, so we can’t guarantee absolute security. If we learn of a breach that affects your information, we’ll tell you as the law requires.

11. Children

SMRTN is for professionals and isn’t intended for anyone under 18. We don’t knowingly collect information from children; if you believe we have, contact us and we’ll delete it.

12. Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we’ll update the effective date above. If a change materially affects how we use information we already hold, we’ll tell members by email before it takes effect.

13. Contact

AWSM LABS LLC, the company behind SMRTN. Privacy requests and questions: privacy@awsmlabs.ai. Anything else: smrtn@awsmlabs.ai.