Shahab here again. I hope this issue has been covered to everyone's satisfaction. I just want to leave any new readers with this link to our terms of use one more time. http://www.cofounderslab.com/terms-of-use

As you see we explicitly mention bosiDNA (this is the only partner in the whole agreement) and that you're agreeing to their terms of use too. If any member of HN or CoFoundersLab community feels we've done anything wrong please send an email to info at cofounderslab. We're happy to consider changes needed to ensure we're running our operations fairly.

This incident provides a good lesson for anyone here on HN. Mentioning a future action, communication, or practice that could be perceived as negative in your TOS isn't enough. Sure, it is done all the time by many organizations. That doesn't mean it is the best way to do it. People just don't read the TOS in most cases. Companies shouldn't be surprised if they hear something about someone being upset or confused by something hidden in a TOS.

P.S. CoFoundersLab looks cool. Thanks for having the initiative to start it Shahab.

Got an email from BosiDNA but had no idea where it was from. Now I know.

I got a spam phone call too, which may or may not have been from cofounderslab selling my data.

They didn't share it. They sold it. Big difference.

Shahab here, co-founder at CoFoundersLab. I'd like to respond to the allegations being made on this string.

Regarding Orangethirty's statement, I don't know how you could claim that we sold any data. We absolutely do not sell any data. You should be more careful with your claims online, like many other startups we work really hard to do things by the book and build a strong reputation. Unless you have facts to back your claims up these sort of actions are very damaging to startup brands in their young lives.

Regarding Intellegacy's statement, CoFoundersLab does not have a call center, furthermore we don't even collect your phone number. Unless you are a Pro Member, at which point we collect a phone number for the credit card transaction. We do not use phone numbers for any other purpose. If you are not a Pro Member please mention that on this string, as it would be pretty cut-and-dry that we had nothing to do with the phone call you received since we don't have your phone number.

Regarding pain_perdu's allegations that we're doing anything wrong, I'd like to start with the following. You received a legitimate request from another member on CoFoundersLab to take an assessment. This member was presumably considering you as a co-founder and wanted to see how you matched up from a personality type assessment/entrepreneur archetype is what we refer that as. You then started the assessment but did not complete the assessment. At this point we did store your email on the BosiDNA system.

BOSIdna is a partner of CoFoundersLab. When you sign up for CoFoundersLab's FREE SERVICE you agreed to the following terms IF you take the assessment; "By completing the archetype assessment, you agree to the Terms of Service of BOSI Inc. Find BOSI Inc.'s Terms of Service here: http://www.bosidna.com/tos. We rely on bosiDNA to conduct the assessment so you're also agreeing to their terms of use. So CoFoundersLab did not sell any information to bosiDNA, we have purchased a license from bosiDNA, we feel this is a valuable service and we provide it as an integrated experience for our members at no charge. bosiDNA has never paid CoFoundersLab for any service, and certainly not for our data. Therefore CoFoundersLab has not done anything wrong.

Having said all that, while bosiDNA reserves the right to email you; we do have an agreement that our members should not be contacted by bosiDNA directly without permission. There was a campaign that was sent out to a very small group of people inadvertently who were also CoFoundersLab members. I've confirmed with their CEO that issue has been resolved. This was an isolated case and will not happen again.

For those reading this, I want to further explain the email that was sent from bosiDNA was an invitation to join a free webinar. It went out to people who partially completed the bosi assessment to educate people about a free assessment.

It's a real slap in the face that CoFoundersLab provides a free service, made more than 25k introductions, all to help entrepreneurs launch new startups, and to be treated with such disdain is a real disappointment. I'd like to refer anyone reading this to http://buzz.cofounderslab.com/Successful_Matches/ to have a look at some of the successul entrepreneurs we're helping and assure you, we do not sell data to anybody, and that our mission and values are just, and we hope to make a huge impact on the entrepreneurs who are seeking great co-founders.

- Shahab

Hi Shahab, thanks for replying to my concerns.

My intention was not to "slap you in the face"...but I REALLY don't like spam (unsolicited e-mail for which I have not opted-in). I don't feel that the fact your service is free gives you a license to share e-mail addresses without permission. As I pointed out in my original post, the statement "We promise not to share your email with anyone else." is extremely explicit.

Now where I have a problem with your explanation of this incident is the following statement:

"When you sign up for CoFoundersLab's FREE SERVICE you agreed to the following terms IF you take the assessment; "By completing the archetype assessment, you agree to the Terms of Service of BOSI Inc. Find BOSI Inc.'s Terms of Service here: http://www.bosidna.com/tos.

I just tried going through the same process from a new dummy account and when I clicked "My Archetype You have not yet taken this assessment - Take Assessment" it then takes me to a link still on your site that says

"What's your entrepreneurial archetype? Take a minute to complete this 10-question assessment to discover your innate entrepreneurial skill set and how you might match up with a potential co-founder."

Upon clicking that link, the BOSI system pops up and that is as far as I ever went on my accounts. There was no indication that my initiating this process I would be having any interaction with a third-party, let-alone being displayed a warning like the one you described. The phrasing you quoted was not displayed to me (I just tested it now) at any point.

This is just not email best-practices.

This is spam.

When good websites (and I wholeheartedly agree you provide a great service to the community) start leaking their e-mail lists to third-parties without the permission of the users, this is where a lot of spam comes from.

And just to set the record straight from bosiDNA.com's perspective...

I'm Joe, the founder/CEO of bosiDNA.com.

pain_perdu you are walking on extremely thin ice making the libelous claim that my company is a spammer. Within minutes of you contact my company about the email you received, my staff responded and within the same business day provided you the information you requested. We also apologized for the mistake in including you in an email invitation to our free webinar.

You receiving that single (ONE) email from us was a mistake. We took responsibility for it and apologized. Yet you went ahead and posted this ridiculous claim on a platform like Hacker News. Your intent is 100% malicious. It is designed to hurt CoFoundersLab and bosiDNA.com. Why? Because you received one stupid email? Come on man. It was a mistake.

Had you received multiple emails and no response when you contacted us, I can understand taking the time to make this post. At that point, you would be well intentioned to make the claim that my company is a "spammer".

I think you've crossed a line of human decency by taking our apology for a manual glitch while uploading an email list and turned it into some sort of "knight in shining armor" act to protect the world from "spammers" like my company.

Do some homework on my company - and the amazing impact we are having on entrepreneurship around the world. Read articles all over the world about us and then you and other readers of this post decide if we need to spam anyone...for anything...ever.

Let's all be productive and do things to help others - rather than try and tear things down.

intellegacy - I looked you up and see that you also took the BOSI assessment. You received the same email pain_perdu did. Please accept my apology. That was a mistake on our part internally when sending out the invitation. We have not emailed CofoundersLab users in the past. This was a goof on our part. Hope you enjoyed the process of taking the assessment - and your results. I hope we added value to your entrepreneurial journey - and will always be here to serve in any way we can.

And one last thing pain_perdu - we don't "sell coaching services". We're one of the most successful non-tech Accelerators in the US. Won several awards for economic impact and job creation in just the last 12 months. Haven't won an award for spamming yet though. But maybe someday...

Seriously, this is not a much deserved response. This does not put bosiDNA in good light.

Why should he do any homework on your stupid company? Why was he even pulled into this thing?

It was your complete mistake and you should expect to feel the brunt (that may mean such posts) even after you have apologized. Sorry does not mean that you are exempt from the brunt. Please stop saying sorry if you cannot take the blame for your mistakes.

First of all, taking someone's email id from another service (which says that they will never share), and then sending them email about free webinar? I mean every aspect of this practice (even when ignoring the fact that the email went by mistake) looks like spam to me.

Still, the most disgusting part is: why should he do any homework? Its his time and he can choose to do what he wants with it.

Hi bosifounder, thank you for taking the time to create a hackernews account in response to this conversation, welcome to the community.

I think you made some interesting points in what you wrote but at the same time I feel you're missing the broader problem here.

I feel that CoFoundersLab betrayed my confidence by sharing my personal and confidential information with your company without my permission. They told me when I signed up that "We promise not to share your email with anyone else." And then without any appreciable warning or forenotice their system transmitted my personal data to your server when i clicked the "take assessment" link in my internal CoFoundersLab Profile.

Can you please explain why you feel this is an acceptable practice? I would further like to quote for you the relevant section of CoFoundersLab's Privacy Policy which states:

"The Personal Information collected by CoFoundersLab is kept completely private and confidential and is not shared with third parties, unless you submit a lead form from the Resources section of the website; in which base the contact information you provide will shared with the third-party who fulfills the specified product or service. CoFoundersLab shall make no effort to validate any information provided by you."

http://www.cofounderslab.com/privacy-policy

I absolutely did not "submit a lead from the resources section of the website" and therefore I do not understand why you or CoFoundersLab felt the sharing of my personal data was OK.

pain_perdu we're early in our partnership with CoFoundersLab and I take responsibility for the broader problem you've identified. Shahab and I will work with our tech teams to ensure that only users who complete the process get stored in the system. Had you completed the process and seen the results like thousands of other users, you may have felt differently about the process.

I totally get why you'd be frustrated not having engaged with our full process and then received communication from us. You had no idea who we were. But just know that users who do complete the process and get their results are happy with us, like the BOSI process inside CoFoundersLab and understand that we store their assessment results in case they ever need to be retrieved later. An email address and userID is all we store in order to be able to retrieve results in the future.

As with anything, you've helped us identify an opportunity for improvement. But hopefully next time you run into something like this, you'll deal directly with each company and give them ample opportunity to resolve the issue to your satisfaction - and if they don't, I'll be cheering you on as you go after them publicly.