Privacy Policy

This policy explains what MEANS (Mu Sigma Alpha Nu Delta) collects, why, who we share it with, and the choices you have. We keep it plain.

1. Who we are

MEANS (Mu Sigma Alpha Nu Delta) operates wemeansbusiness.com. For privacy purposes, MEANS is the controller of your information. Contact us any time at info@wemeansbusiness.com.

2. What we collect

Information you give us

• Mailing list. Your name and email address when you join our list.
• The Brotherhood Call. When you sign up on our free call page for the Zoom link: your email address, your first name if you give it, the campaign tags in the link you followed (for example, that you came from Instagram), and the name of the website that sent you to the page, if your browser tells us. Signing up adds you to our mailing list, unless you have unsubscribed before; that choice stays. If the page offers a weekly email reminder and you tick it, we keep that choice too; we send the reminder only to people who ticked it.
• On the Brotherhood Call. The call is held on the Zoom account MEANS uses for it, which can record the call to Zoom’s cloud with a transcript; the recording and transcript are kept on that Zoom account. When the call’s transcript is ready, our server reads it from Zoom and sends it to Anthropic, with the first names of the MEANS team, to draft business notes and action items for the team; the server does not store the transcript. Drafted notes wait for an organizer’s review; only the notes an organizer saves are kept, and only the MEANS team sees them. Anything personal shared on the call is left out of the notes.
• Membership. Your name and email address, your tier (Founding Member or Founding Circle), and your billing period (monthly or annual).
• Account. Your password, which we store only as a scrypt hash. We cannot read it, and we never store your password in plain text.
• Profile. Your city and role if you add them, and your answer to “What are you building?” if you give one. Your city and role are shown to other members (see What other members see); your answer is kept with your account and is not shown to other members.
• Member Content. Posts, replies and comments you write, business ideas you submit and the links you add to them, links you share, the posts you like, the ideas and members you follow, the circles you join, the call topics you suggest or vote for, whether you plan to attend a call, and the library resources and posts you save.
• Files you upload. Attachments you add to your ideas, and the images you make in Studio. Documents in a venture’s data room are added by the MEANS team.
• Invites. When you invite someone to MEANS: the name and email address you enter, and the venture you chose, if any. We email that person the invite and keep it, with whether they opened it, joined, pledged or paid, so you can follow it or withdraw it.
• Ventures and the MEANS Wallet. If you use Ventures: the ventures you show interest in or commit to, your pledges and payments, money you add to or withdraw from your Wallet, refunds and distributions paid into it, the song stakes you reserve, and, if you ask us to verify your accredited-investor status, that request and what the MEANS team records. Someone who joins as a backer through an invite gets an account for Ventures without a paid membership.
• Messages. Private messages you send to other members in the portal.
• Help requests. When you ask the MEANS team for help in the portal: what you need, how soon, how to reach you, any note you add, and whether you asked to stay anonymous.
• Your Health page. If you use it: your age, daily check-ins, blood pressure readings and screening dates. Only you can see them through the site. They are not shown to other members or to the MEANS team. None of it is written to our activity log. While your membership is active, you can delete all of it at any time from that page with Delete all my health data; our activity log then keeps one entry saying that a member deleted their health data, and when, with no name and none of the data. If your membership has ended, email us and we will delete it.
• Correspondence. Messages you send us by email.

Information from PayPal and Stripe

When you subscribe, your payment processor handles the payment and sends us a limited record. From PayPal: your PayPal subscription ID, the name and email on the PayPal account, the subscription amount, and the date you paid. From Stripe (card payments): your Stripe customer and subscription IDs, the name and email you entered at checkout, the plan, and the status of your payments, including failed payments, refunds and disputes. We use this to activate and manage your membership. If you use the MEANS Wallet or pledge to a venture, Stripe also handles money you add by card or US bank account, and sends us the amount, the date and the status of each payment. To receive payouts, you set up a payout account on Stripe’s own form (Stripe Connect): Stripe collects your identity and bank details and tells us your Stripe account ID, the last four digits of your payout bank account, whether payouts are ready and what Stripe still needs from you.

Information collected automatically

• Cookies. Two cookies that together keep you signed in, and a third that remembers this browser has signed in to your account before. When you add funds to your Wallet, Stripe’s payment form sets its own fraud-prevention cookies (details in Cookies).
• Storage in your browser. On the Brotherhood Call page, your browser keeps your email, your first name, the Zoom link and its meeting ID, so the link is there when you come back; “Not you?” on that page clears it. The site can also remember choices on your device, such as light or dark mode and which menu groups you have closed. This stays on your device and is not sent to us. The library resources and posts you save are kept with your account on our servers; if an older version of the portal kept a saved list in this browser, it is moved to your account the next time you open the library or the feed.
• Activity in the portal. Our activity log records actions you take in the member portal, with the time: for example the posts, replies and ideas you add, change or delete, the library and idea files you open or download, the members you follow, the circles you join or leave, the call topics you suggest or vote for, and changes to your account and email settings. The MEANS team uses it to run and secure the site and to answer your questions; it is not shown to other members.
• Server logs. Our hosting provider records standard technical data such as IP address, browser type, pages requested, and timestamps. These are used for security and troubleshooting.

We do not use advertising networks, analytics platforms, tracking pixels, session recording, or third-party marketing trackers on this site.

3. How we use your information

• To provide your membership and run the member portal;
• To create and secure your account, and to sign you in;
• To process membership payments and keep billing records through PayPal or Stripe;
• To send you transactional email: a welcome message, membership confirmation, receipts, service notices, and password or account help;
• To send you MEANS news and updates if you asked to hear from us. You can opt out at any time with the unsubscribe link in any of those emails, or under Email updates in your account settings;
• To display your posts and business ideas to other logged-in members;
• If you use them, to run Ventures, the MEANS Wallet, pledges, payouts and the invites you send;
• To respond to your questions and provide support;
• To protect the Site and our members against fraud, abuse, and security incidents;
• To comply with our legal and tax obligations.

If you are in a jurisdiction that requires a legal basis for processing (such as the UK or EU), we rely on: performance of a contract (delivering your membership), legitimate interests (securing and improving the Site, and communicating with members), consent (marketing email, which you can withdraw), and legal obligation (tax and accounting records).

4. Cookies

We set three cookies, all essential. The first two work as a pair to keep you signed in; the third protects your sign-in.

All three are HttpOnly (not readable by scripts in your browser), set with SameSite=Lax, and sent only over HTTPS in production. The session cookie contains a reference to your sign-in, not your name, email, or password. Logging out ends the sign-in, and changing your password signs out your other devices. The third cookie stays after you log out, so this browser is still recognised; clearing your cookies removes it.

Stripe’s cookies. When you open Add funds in the MEANS Wallet, including to pay a pledge, the portal loads Stripe’s payment form (Stripe.js) from js.stripe.com, and Stripe sets two cookies of its own to prevent fraud: __stripe_mid (1 year) and __stripe_sid (30 minutes). Stripe.js is not loaded anywhere else on the site. Setting up payouts loads Stripe’s payout form (Connect.js) from Stripe too. Stripe’s use of these cookies is governed by the Stripe Privacy Policy.

Besides Stripe’s fraud-prevention cookies, no advertising, analytics, or tracking cookies are set on this site. You can clear cookies in your browser at any time; doing so signs you out.

Videos and links. The member library and feed do not embed video players from other sites: a YouTube or other video link opens on that site, under its own privacy policy. When you open the member library or the feed, thumbnails for YouTube links load from YouTube’s image server (i.ytimg.com), which receives your IP address and browser details as it would for any image. Other resource thumbnails may load from the website the resource comes from.

PayPal checkout. The home page loads PayPal’s checkout script from paypal.com only after you choose “Pay with PayPal”. Visitors who do not choose PayPal never contact PayPal. Card checkout opens Stripe’s own page.

5. Who we share information with

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We share it only with service providers who help us operate MEANS:

We may also disclose information if we are required to by law, subpoena, or valid legal process; to enforce our Terms; to protect the rights, safety, or property of MEANS, our members, or the public; or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or transfer of our operations (we would notify you first).

6. What other members can see

• Posts and replies you write in the member feed, and business ideas you submit, are visible to every signed-in member, along with the name shown on your account, unless you choose to share an idea with the review committee only.
• Your name, and the city and role you add to your profile, are shown to other members in the list of brothers and at the top of a private conversation with you. Your answer to “What are you building?” is not shown to other members.
• If a member invited you, they see whether you opened the invite, joined, pledged or paid, and the amount.
• Private messages are seen only by the members in that conversation. A call topic or help request you mark anonymous does not show your name to other members.
• Do not post anything you want to keep private or confidential. See the confidentiality section of our Terms.
• Your email address, billing details, and password hash are not shown to other members.
• The MEANS team, a small group that joins by invitation only, can see member records (name, email, status, tier, billing period, join date) and member-submitted content as each person’s role allows, and an administrator can set a member’s password on request. Help requests go to the team members who answer them. Your Health page is not shown to the team.

7. How long we keep information

• Member and mailing-list records: while your membership or subscription is active, and afterward only as long as we need them for legitimate business, tax, or legal purposes.
• Member Content: until you or an administrator deletes it. Deleting your account removes your posts, replies, comments, ideas, likes, follows and your Health page. Private messages you sent stay in the other members’ conversations, and help requests and call topics you made stay with the team, all without your name. Our activity log keeps that an action happened and when, and the payment references we keep with billing records: your name, your email, the words of your posts, the titles of your ideas and the call topics you suggested are removed from it.
• Billing records: retained as required by tax and accounting law, typically several years. If your account has pledges or Wallet history, those money records are kept, so the account cannot be deleted from the account page; email us and we will help.
• Server logs: retained for a short period by our hosting provider for security and troubleshooting.
• Routine encrypted backups may hold copies for a limited time after deletion.

8. How we protect your information

• The entire site is served over HTTPS.
• Passwords are stored as scrypt hashes with a unique random salt, never in plain text and never recoverable by us.
• Our cookies are signed and HttpOnly, which protects them from scripts in the browser.
• Payment card data never reaches our servers.
• Team access is by invitation only, and each person’s role limits what they can see and change.
• Our database connection is encrypted in transit.

No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. If a breach affects your personal information, we will notify you and any regulator as required by law.

9. Your rights and choices

Whoever and wherever you are, you can ask us to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you;
• Correct anything inaccurate (you can also email us to update your name or email);
• Delete your account and personal information;
• Export a copy of your information in a portable format;
• Opt out of marketing email.

Email info@wemeansbusiness.com from your membership email address and we will respond within 30 days. We will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights.

California residents

Under the CCPA/CPRA you have the rights above, plus the right to know the categories of personal information we collect, the purposes for collecting it, and the categories of third parties we disclose it to, all of which are described in this policy. We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we do not knowingly process the personal information of anyone under 16.

UK and EU residents

You also have the right to object to or restrict processing, to withdraw consent at any time, and to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

10. Email preferences

We send three kinds of email:

• Transactional: welcome and membership confirmations, receipts, security and account notices. These are part of your membership, and we cannot exclude you from them while your account is active.
• Member activity: optional, and on unless you turn it off. Idea activity (comments and stage changes on ideas you submit or follow), Venture updates (news from the ventures you back) and the Weekly digest (every Monday: new ideas, posts and library picks). Turn each one off with its own switch under Email updates in your account settings.
• Updates and news: optional. Use the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of any such email, turn off MEANS updates by email under Email updates in your account settings, or email us, and we will remove you from the list. Unsubscribing, or turning off MEANS updates by email, also stops the member activity emails.

11. Children

MEANS is intended for adults. The Site is not directed to children, and membership requires you to be at least 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has given us information, email us and we will delete it.

12. International users

MEANS operates in the United States, and our service providers store and process information in the United States and other countries. If you use the Site from outside the U.S., you understand that your information will be transferred to and processed in the U.S., where data protection laws may differ from those in your country.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as MEANS grows or as our tools change. We will update the “Last updated” date above, and for material changes we will notify members by email or through the member portal.

14. Contact us

Questions, requests, or privacy concerns:

MEANS (Mu Sigma Alpha Nu Delta)
Email: info@wemeansbusiness.com
Web: wemeansbusiness.com