Data Retention Policy
Last Updated: July 2026
1. General principle
We retain information for as long as reasonably necessary to provide the service, maintain system and financial-record integrity, resolve disputes, prevent fraud and abuse, and comply with legal, tax, accounting, and regulatory obligations. Retention differs by product and by data category, described below.
2. Financial OS - cap table, ledger, and compliance records
The Financial OS is built on an append-only share ledger: every ownership change (issuance, transfer, ESOP grant, funding round, cancellation) is recorded permanently and never physically deleted or rewritten. A mistaken entry is corrected by voiding it - marking it invalid with a recorded reason, while the original entry, the correction, and the identity of who made it remain visible forever. This is what makes your cap table reconstructable and auditable at any point in its history.
- Ledger entries, audit logs, ESOP grant history: retained permanently, including after a company or account is deleted, for financial-record integrity and dispute resolution.
- Founder/investor/mentor verification records (name, work email, LinkedIn, company, CIN): retained for as long as the associated account exists, as the compliance basis for platform access.
- Subscription and billing records: retained as required for tax and accounting compliance, independent of account status.
3. Founder Circle - profile and social data
Founder Circle takes an account-deletion request through a 30-day grace period (cancellable at any time via the link emailed to you), after which permanent deletion runs. What happens to each category of data at that point:
| Category | On permanent deletion |
|---|---|
| Profile, settings, sessions | Deleted permanently |
| Connections, follows, bookmarks, notifications | Deleted permanently |
| Goals, milestones, sprints, RSVPs | Deleted permanently |
| Messages, posts, comments | Conversation/content kept; your name is replaced with "Deleted User" |
| Hosted events, authored resources & articles | Kept for other members; author replaced with "Deleted User" |
| Platform audit/moderation logs | Never deleted; your identity is anonymized if you held an admin/moderator role |
| Deletion/export request record itself | Never deleted - the audit trail of the request survives permanently |
Content is anonymized rather than deleted only where deleting it outright would also destroy other members' conversations or discussions - the same approach used by most social platforms for this exact situation.
4. Company ownership - deletion may be blocked
If you are the sole owner of a company in the Financial OS, or the creator of an active company listing in Founder Circle's directory, account deletion is blocked until you transfer ownership or archive the company - this prevents an entire company's cap table or listing from becoming silently orphaned.
5. Backups
Routine infrastructure backups may retain deleted data for a limited operational window after deletion, purely for disaster-recovery purposes. Backups are not used to restore deleted user data on request and are cycled out on our hosting provider's standard retention schedule.
6. Your export and deletion rights
You can export a complete copy of your own data at any time from Settings, and request account deletion (subject to the grace period and ownership-transfer rules above) at any time. See our Privacy Policy for the full rights described there.
7. Contact
Questions about how long a specific category of your data is kept: support@capmatter.com.