Last updated 19 October 2026

Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Hivin collects, uses, shares and protects your personal data when you use our cofounder-matching platform, website and related services. We process personal data in line with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Estonian data protection law.

1. Who we are

Hivin, based in Tallinn, Estonia, is the controller of your personal data. You can contact us about anything in this policy at hello@hivin.ai.

2. The data we collect

We collect the following categories of personal data:

  • Account data: your name, email address and a securely hashed version of your password. We never store your password in plain text.
  • Builder profile data: the roles, stages and regions you choose, the descriptive information you add about yourself, your questionnaire answers, the Anima profile generated from them, and related progress data such as maturity level and streaks.
  • Connections and messages: the connection requests you send and receive, and the messages you exchange with other builders.
  • Ritual and Growing data: your responses to Rituals you take part in with your connections, and your responses and cards used in Growing, together with the reflections generated from them.
  • Waitlist data: your first name, last name, email address, country, entrepreneurship stage and sectors when you join the waitlist, and, if you join through a referral link, the referral token and the link between you and the builder who referred you.
  • Contact data: your name, email address and message when you use our contact form.
  • Technical data: your IP address and browser user agent, recorded in server logs and used for security and rate limiting.

3. How and why we use your data

We use your personal data on the following legal bases:

  • To provide the service (performance of a contract): creating and running your account, building your Anima profile, matching you with other builders, showing your profile to them, delivering connection requests and messages, running Rituals and generating Growing reflections, and sending you transactional emails such as account verification and other account and security notices.
  • For security and improvement (legitimate interests): protecting the service against abuse, spam and fraud, enforcing rate limits, keeping logs, troubleshooting, and understanding how Hivin is used so we can improve it. We balance these interests against your rights and do not use your data in ways you would not reasonably expect.
  • With your consent: sending waitlist and marketing emails where consent is required. You can withdraw your consent at any time by using the unsubscribe link in the email or by contacting us; this does not affect processing carried out before you withdrew it.
  • To meet legal obligations: where we must keep or disclose data under applicable law.

4. Matching and visibility to other builders

Hivin exists to connect builders, so parts of your builder profile and Anima are shown to other builders as matches. Messages you send are visible to their recipients. Please only share information in your profile and messages that you are comfortable with other builders seeing.

5. AI processing

We use OpenAI to generate Growing "Reflet" reflections from your own answers and cards. Only the information needed to produce your reflection is sent, and it is processed on our behalf under a data processing agreement. This is the only AI processing we carry out on your data. Reflections do not produce legal or similarly significant effects on you, and we do not use your data to make automated decisions of that kind.

6. Who we share your data with

We do not sell your personal data. We share it only with service providers (processors) that help us run Hivin, under contracts that require them to protect your data and use it only on our instructions:

  • Resend: transactional email delivery and managing our mailing lists (audiences/segments) for waitlist updates, which hold your first name, last name and email address.
  • Cloudflare Turnstile: anti-spam protection on public forms.
  • OpenAI: generation of Growing reflections, as described above.
  • Our hosting and infrastructure provider: storage of data and running the service.

We also offer an optional invite link to our community on Discord. If you choose to follow it, Discord processes your data under its own privacy policy.

We may also disclose data where required by law, to protect the rights and safety of our builders or the public, or as part of a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, in which case this policy will continue to apply to your data.

7. International transfers

Some of our processors are located, or process data, outside the European Economic Area. Where this happens, we rely on an adequacy decision of the European Commission or put in place the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, together with additional safeguards where needed, to protect your data.

8. How long we keep your data

We keep your account, profile, connection and message data for as long as your account exists, and for a reasonable period after you delete it so that we can complete the deletion, resolve disputes and meet legal obligations. Waitlist and contact form submissions are kept for as long as needed to respond to you or until you ask us to remove them. Technical logs are kept for a short period and then deleted.

9. Cookies

We use the following cookies:

  • Session cookie: keeps you signed in while you use Hivin.
  • CSRF cookie: protects our forms against cross-site request forgery.
  • Referral cookie (referral_token): set for 30 days when you arrive through a referral link, so that if you join the waitlist we can attribute your signup to the builder who referred you.
  • Remember-me cookie: set only when you tick "Remember me" when signing in, so you stay signed in across browser sessions.

We do not use advertising or third-party tracking cookies. For more detail, see our Cookie Policy.

10. Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to:

  • access the personal data we hold about you;
  • have inaccurate data corrected (rectification);
  • have your data erased;
  • restrict how we process your data;
  • receive your data in a portable format (data portability);
  • object to processing based on our legitimate interests; and
  • withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on consent.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at hello@hivin.ai. We may need to verify your identity before acting on your request, and we will respond within the time limits set by law.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. In Estonia this is the Estonian Data Protection Inspectorate (Andmekaitse Inspektsioon). You may also contact the authority in the EU country where you live or work.

11. Security

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data, including encrypted connections, hashed passwords, access controls and rate limiting. No system is completely secure, but we work to protect your data and will notify you and the relevant authority of a personal data breach where the law requires it.

12. Children

Hivin is not intended for anyone under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 16. If you believe a child has given us their data, contact us and we will delete it.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the date at the top of this page. If a change is material, we will make reasonable efforts to let you know.

Related

Read our Terms of Service for the rules that govern your use of Hivin, or go back to the Hivin home page.