Privacy Policy

SameStart (“we”, “us”) helps new mums meet a small group of local mums for an in-person daytime coffee. This notice explains what personal data we collect, why, and your rights. The data controller is SameStart Ltd (company number 17327364), contact hello@samestart.com.

• Account: your first name and email address.
• About you & your matching: your stage (pregnant / baby here), due month or your baby's birth month, the area you want to meet in, how far you'll travel, your home or work postcode (we turn it into map coordinates and journey times to pick a convenient area and venue, never shared with your group), and what you're looking for. Optionally: whether it's your first baby, your industry, hobbies, country, and the kinds of meetups you fancy.
• Payments: if you become a member, payment is handled by Stripe. We do not store your card details, only a Stripe customer/subscription reference and your membership status.
• Activity: bookings, attendance, messages you send in group chat and DMs, the feedback you give after a meetup, and the impressions tablemates share about their time with you.
• Usage analytics: how the site is used (e.g. which onboarding step people reach, and the site that referred you). This is anonymous and cookieless by default; if you accept cookies it is linked across your visits so we can measure our advertising.
• Advertising: if you accept cookies, we use Meta and Google advertising cookies to measure which ads bring people to SameStart and to reach similar people. Choose essential only and we set no advertising cookies and send nothing to Meta; Google may still receive cookieless, aggregate counts that can't identify you (Google Consent Mode), and analytics stays anonymous.

• To provide the service, create your account, match you into a table, run bookings and chat (lawful basis: performance of a contract).
• Service emails, sign-in codes, booking confirmations, venue reveals (contract).
• Telling you when we open near you, if you ask to be notified about an area, or we add your home area to the waitlist (lawful basis: your consent; you can unsubscribe at any time).
• Safety & moderation, reviewing reports and keeping tables safe (lawful basis: our legitimate interests).
• Improving the product, anonymous, aggregated analytics (legitimate interests).
• Advertising & measurement, if you accept, measuring our ads and reaching similar people via Meta and Google (lawful basis: your consent; choose essential only, or change your mind any time).

We don't sell your data. We use a small number of trusted processors who act on our instructions:

• Supabase, database & sign-in (hosted in London (eu-west-2)).
• Stripe, payments.
• Resend, sending email.
• Vercel, running the website.
• PostHog (EU), anonymous usage analytics.
• Sentry (EU), error monitoring, so we can spot and fix faults.
• postcodes.io, turning your postcode into map coordinates.
• Transport for London, estimating journey times from your home coordinates to the areas we run tables in.
• Meta, advertising measurement & audiences (only with your consent).
• Google, advertising measurement & audiences (cookies and anything identifying only with your consent, see Advertising above).

We use a few essential cookies to keep you signed in and to remember your cookie choice (no consent needed). Our usage analytics run cookieless and anonymously by default. For advertising cookies (Meta, Google) and persistent analytics we ask first: a banner lets you accept or keep to essential cookies only, and you can change your choice any time by clearing this site's storage in your browser.

We keep your data while your account is active. When you delete your account (Profile → Login & Security), we cancel any membership and irreversibly anonymise your personal details. Some records may be kept where the law requires (e.g. payment records) or to keep members safe (e.g. reports made to us).

Under UK data protection law you can ask to access, correct, delete, restrict, port, or object to our use of your data, and withdraw consent at any time. You can delete your account in the app, or email hello@samestart.com for anything else. If you're unhappy with how we've handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).

SameStart is for adults (18+). Babies and young children attend meetups with their own parent or carer, who remains responsible for them. The service is not directed at children and we don't knowingly create accounts for under-18s.

Questions about this notice? Email hello@samestart.com.