Ask HN: Is an auto-generated privacy policy OK for an MVP?

[0tello]

We are launching a betta of our mvp product soon, and we need some legal stuff to be done: privacy policy, terms of service and etc. We do not want to waste time & money on lawyers at the current stage, so we found www.iubenda.com where we can autogenerate a privacy policy. Any experience with them? Any pros and cons (pls beyond obvious) of using such services? Do you know any other services like this?

[smt88]

I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to give you legal advice. Generally speaking, it's very low-risk to use a boilerplate privacy policy for an MVP.

Ideally, instead of using a service like you mentioned, you should copy and edit the privacy policy of a service that is as similar to yours as possible.

Once you make your first dollar or get your first ~10,000 users, it'll definitely be time to hire a lawyer.

Some important questions though:

1. How sensitive is your data? Is it PII (personally-identifying information)? That includes full names, addresses, phone numbers, and a complicated list of other things.

2. Are you in Europe?

3. Have you formed a limited-liability entity? In the US, that would be an LLC.

[0tello]

Thank you for your reply. We indeed thought about using those materials, but not sure if it is punishable. 1. Yes, the data is sensitive: full names, emails, and phone numbers and etc. 2. We are targeting US market 3. We have a C-Corp in the US