> your information_

A private community should feel private.

Here’s how Founders Who Ship uses your information.

Who runs FWS

Founders Who Ship (FWS) is a brand of PMAXX LTD, not a separate company. PMAXX LTD runs FWS and is the data controller for the processing of personal information it determines.

PMAXX LTD is registered in England and Wales, company number 17297711. Registered office: 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, United Kingdom, WC2H 9JQ.

View company details on Companies House.

Your intro and projects

Your name, headline, intro, links, selected tags and the projects you list are visible to approved members. The directory and the Projects page are not public. For the public showcase, you can choose to show individual projects there, and each one is off until you turn it on. For a project you show, anyone (including search engines) can see its name, description, link, logo and tags, plus your name and headline as “Built by …”. Your contact details, profile and everything else stay members-only. You can turn it off for any project on your profile, and it disappears straight away. You can edit your intro and add, edit or remove projects at any time from your profile. Intros stay visible to members while you’re a member. When you join through the site, your name, headline and a link to your profile may be shared in the FWS WhatsApp community’s daily update.

Your contact details

Your email is used for sign-in, membership updates and the newsletter. It is not shared with other members. Your WhatsApp number stays private unless you choose to display it to approved members. The community admin can access contact details to review membership and profile claims.

Existing members

Selected introductions from the WhatsApp group may be added to the private directory. Other chat messages are not retained. You claim your profile with the WhatsApp number you use in the group. The community admin can undo a claim that wasn’t yours.

The newsletter

The newsletter is separate from membership. Members, and anyone with an account on the site, get the Friday newsletter by default and can unsubscribe anytime. Anyone else can subscribe and confirms by email first. Subscribing doesn’t make you a member. We keep your email, the topics you pick, how you joined the list and when. If your email matches a member’s sign-in email, we link the two so members can get a members-only section; it changes nothing about your membership. Every issue has a one-click unsubscribe and a link to change topics. Unsubscribing stops only the newsletter: sign-in codes, membership decisions, intros, event emails and the weekly founders email still arrive. Sign-ups that are never confirmed are deleted after 30 days. After you unsubscribe we keep your email and the dates, only so we don’t add you again; your topics are deleted. Leaving FWS doesn’t unsubscribe you, and unsubscribing doesn’t affect your membership.

We may feature your first name, headline and project in the FWS newsletter and community posts. You can switch this off anytime on your Me page.

Keeping the community running

We use hosting, database, email and security services to operate the site. Admin decisions are recorded so membership changes can be reviewed. Sign-in uses essential session cookies. If you arrive through an invite link, we store that link’s code in a cookie for up to 30 days so we can tell which link brought you; it doesn’t identify you.

FWS records the days members use the site and which sections they visit to see what’s useful, alongside aggregate cookieless page analytics; we use no third-party tracking cookies.

Events on Luma and payments

FWS uses Luma for event registration. When you register for an FWS-hosted event through Luma, Luma shares your registration information with us so we can manage that event. If paid tickets are offered through Luma, Stripe processes the payment. Luma’s privacy policy and Stripe’s privacy policy explain how they use information through their services. For an event run by another organiser, check that organiser’s event information and privacy notice.

How long we keep it

We keep your profile and contact details while you’re a member. If you leave, or ask us to delete your account, we remove your intro and projects from the site straight away and delete your profile and contact details within 30 days. Applications we decline are kept for 12 months so you can reapply, then deleted. Records of admin decisions are kept for 12 months.

Leaving and deleting your account

Use Leave FWS on your profile, or message Zayn in the WhatsApp community, and say if you’d also like your account deleted.

Last updated: 12 October 2026