Terms of Service.

By creating an account, subscribing to the newsletter, submitting a Founder Story, or simply reading articles while signed in, you confirm you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by these Terms and the Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please don’t use the service.

You must be at least 16 years old (and the age of majority in your jurisdiction if higher) to create an account. You are responsible for the activity under your account, for keeping your sign-in credentials safe, and for the accuracy of the information you provide. We use Auth.js with Google OAuth for sign-in; you may delete your account at any time from your profile.

“User Content” means anything you submit to The Stack — comments, follows, profile information, replies, and Founder Story drafts. You retain full ownership of your User Content. By posting it, you grant The Stack a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, display, reproduce, distribute, and (where the format requires) lightly edit it for the purpose of operating and promoting the service. This licence ends when you delete the content, except for copies kept in routine backups or where law requires retention.

You promise that your User Content is yours to share, doesn’t infringe anyone else’s rights, and isn’t illegal, misleading, defamatory, or harmful.

Founder Story submissions are paid placements with editorial standards — pay-to-pitch, never pay-to-publish. The submission fee secures editorial review and (for accepted stories) the production slot. Acceptance is at the editor’s discretion.

• Payment processor. All payments are processed by Stripe under their consumer terms. Card data never touches our servers.
• Refunds. If we decline your story before editorial work begins, you receive a full refund within 10 business days. Once an editor has begun work, the fee is non-refundable; we will deliver the editorial review even if the story is ultimately not published.
• Editorial control. We may edit submissions for clarity, accuracy, length, and house style. You retain final approval on the published version. We may decline to publish for any reason consistent with our editorial standards.
• Disclosure. All paid Founder Stories are transparently labelled as such on the site.
• Taxes. Prices are shown exclusive of any applicable taxes; Stripe handles VAT/sales tax where required.

You agree not to:

• Post content that is illegal, hateful, harassing, defamatory, sexually explicit, or that incites violence.
• Impersonate a person or organisation you don’t represent.
• Scrape, crawl, or use automated agents on the site at a rate that degrades service for other readers (we love bots that respect robots.txt and rate limits).
• Train commercial AI models on our editorial content without a written licence.
• Probe, scan, or attempt to breach security or authentication systems.
• Resell access, scrape paid content, or circumvent any technical limit.
• Use the comments section for spam, affiliate links, or promotional copy.

The Stack Stories editorial content, the “The Stack” and “The Stack Stories” names, logos, layout, design system, and code are owned by us and protected by copyright and trademark law. You may share excerpts with attribution and a link back, quote up to 200 words for review and commentary, and use our RSS feed for personal reading. You may not republish full articles, scrape archives, or pass our content off as your own.

The Stack publishes journalism and opinion — not financial, legal, medical, or tax advice. Consult a qualified professional before making decisions based on what you read here. The service is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranty of any kind, express or implied, to the maximum extent permitted by law.

To the fullest extent allowed by law, The Stack Stories and its team will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, or goodwill. Our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the service is capped at the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) USD 100. Some jurisdictions don’t allow these limitations, in which case they apply only to the extent permitted.

You can delete your account at any time. We can suspend or terminate your access if you breach these Terms or if running your account becomes a legal or security risk. Sections that by their nature should survive termination — User Content licence as it relates to copies in backups, IP, disclaimers, liability, and governing law — survive.

We may update these Terms as the platform evolves. Material changes will be announced in the newsletter and on this page at least 14 days before they take effect. Continued use after the effective date means you accept the new Terms. The “Last updated” date at the top is the source of truth.

Questions about these Terms? hello@thestackstories.com
Legal notices: legal@thestackstories.com

See also our Privacy Policy.