LightMeans — Terms of Use v1.0

1. About LightMeans and these Terms

LightMeans is an early-stage service that helps founders examine assumptions behind a business idea and identify what should be tested, changed or stopped before more time and money are committed.

These Terms govern participation in Founder Pilot 001 and use of LightMeans during that pilot. Before submitting an idea, you will be asked to accept these Terms and will be given access to the Privacy Notice for the pilot.

For Founder Pilot 001, LightMeans is operated by Eirik Kaasa Eliassen in Norway. The pilot is an early test of the service before any broader public or commercial launch.

2. What LightMeans provides

LightMeans receives information you provide about a business idea and uses its analytical method, including AI-assisted processing and, where applicable, External Evidence based on public web sources, to produce a private analytical report.

The report is intended to help identify assumptions, risks and what needs to be learned or proved next. It may include a decision or checkpoint, a main risk, a next requirement, supporting reasoning and selected external evidence. The next requirement is not necessarily a test; depending on the analysis it may instead be a verification, reframing or bounded build step.

LightMeans does not undertake to develop, finance, invest in, validate or implement the submitted idea. Participation in the pilot does not create an advisory, partnership, agency, employment, investment or fiduciary relationship between you and LightMeans.

3. Experimental service

Founder Pilot 001 is a limited test of an early-stage product. The service may contain errors, omissions, interruptions or inaccurate conclusions, and a report may occasionally fail or need to be retried. LightMeans may change, suspend or end pilot features where reasonably necessary for testing, security, privacy or technical reasons.

4. Your idea remains yours

You retain whatever rights you have in the idea, information and material you submit. LightMeans does not claim ownership of your business idea merely because you submit it for analysis.

LightMeans processes the submitted information only for the purposes described in the Privacy Notice, including providing the requested analysis and report, administering and securing the pilot, and handling privacy or support requests.

LightMeans will not sell your submitted idea, publish it, make it available to other LightMeans users, or treat submission as permission to build a LightMeans business from your idea.

5. What you may submit

You should submit only information that you are entitled to provide and that is reasonably necessary for analysis of the business idea.

Do not submit sensitive personal data or information that requires special protection, including health information, financial account or payment-card details, government identifiers, biometric data, passwords, confidential personal information about other people, or other special-category or sensitive personal data.

Do not submit material that unlawfully infringes another person's rights, breaches a duty of confidentiality, or is unlawful to possess, disclose or process.

If your idea depends on confidential information belonging to an employer, client, partner or another third party, describe the relevant assumption without disclosing that confidential information.

6. AI and External Evidence

LightMeans uses AI as part of its analysis. AI-generated material may be incomplete, inaccurate or misleading and should not be treated as established fact merely because it appears in a LightMeans report.

Some analyses may use External Evidence to check selected claims against publicly available web information. External Evidence is selective rather than exhaustive. It may miss relevant sources, rely on information that later changes, or contain errors introduced by the source, search process or AI interpretation.

The use of AI and External Evidence is described further in the Privacy Notice, including the involvement of service providers and the processing of information outside Norway or the EEA where applicable.

7. No professional advice or guarantee of outcome

LightMeans is an analytical aid for early-stage business thinking. It does not provide legal, financial, investment, tax, accounting, medical or other regulated professional advice.

A LightMeans report does not guarantee that an idea will succeed or fail, that a market exists, that customers will pay, that a proposed test will produce a particular result, or that the report has identified every material risk or opportunity.

You remain responsible for deciding what to do with the analysis and for obtaining appropriate professional advice or independent verification where a decision requires it.

8. Private links and account security

Pilot reports and processing-status pages may be accessible through private links containing unguessable tokens. Anyone who obtains such a link may potentially be able to access the page until the link is invalidated or the associated information is erased.

You should therefore treat report, status, invitation and signed pilot links as private and avoid forwarding or publishing them. If you believe a private link has been exposed, contact LightMeans at privacy@lightmeans.com.

9. Pilot invitations and access

Founder Pilot 001 is private. Access may require a valid invitation or other signed pilot link. Invitations are intended for the recipient and may be single-use.

LightMeans may limit the number of pilot participants or access to experimental features such as External Evidence. Participation in one part of the pilot does not guarantee access to every experimental feature.

10. Feedback

LightMeans may invite you to provide feedback about the usefulness, clarity and value of the service. Providing feedback is voluntary.

LightMeans may use non-identifying feedback to evaluate and improve the service. Identifiable or free-text feedback is handled as described in the Privacy Notice and the applicable deletion procedure.

Nothing in this section transfers ownership of your underlying business idea to LightMeans.

11. Privacy and deletion

Personal data and submitted information are handled as described in the LightMeans Privacy Notice for Founder Pilot 001.

For Pilot 001, LightMeans intends to erase or anonymise identifiable founder submissions in the active application database no later than 90 days after the pilot has ended, subject to the limited exceptions described in the Privacy Notice. You may request deletion earlier by contacting privacy@lightmeans.com.

Deletion from the active application database may not immediately remove copies from provider backups, technical logs, already delivered email or other systems that LightMeans cannot selectively erase. The Privacy Notice describes these limitations in more detail.

12. Availability and changes

LightMeans does not promise continuous or uninterrupted availability during the pilot. Maintenance, provider outages, experimental changes, security measures or technical failures may temporarily affect the service.

LightMeans may change these Terms when the pilot or service changes. Material changes applicable to active pilot participants should be communicated or made available before they govern materially different use of submitted information or the service.

13. Responsibility and limitation of liability

You are responsible for your own business decisions and for how you use a LightMeans report.

To the extent permitted by applicable law, LightMeans is not responsible for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of opportunity, business interruption or decisions made in reliance on an analysis that is incomplete, inaccurate or outdated.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability where such exclusion or limitation is not permitted by applicable law. These Terms also do not limit rights that cannot legally be waived or restricted.

Founder Pilot 001 is currently provided as a free experimental pilot. The terms for any future paid or public service will be reviewed separately.

14. Misuse and suspension

You may not use LightMeans to interfere with the service, attempt unauthorised access, bypass pilot access controls, probe private links belonging to others, introduce malicious code, automate abusive traffic, or use the service in violation of applicable law.

LightMeans may restrict or suspend access where reasonably necessary to protect participants, the service, its providers or the integrity of the pilot.

15. Intellectual property in LightMeans

These Terms do not transfer ownership of the LightMeans service, software, analytical method, prompts, report design, branding or other LightMeans materials to you.

Your ownership of your submitted idea is separate from LightMeans' rights in the service and its underlying method and implementation.

16. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by Norwegian law, subject to any mandatory rights or rules that apply regardless of this choice.

If a disagreement arises, the parties should first try to resolve it by contacting hello@lightmeans.com. Nothing in this section prevents a participant from exercising mandatory rights or contacting a competent authority where applicable.

17. Contact

General questions: hello@lightmeans.com

Privacy and deletion requests: privacy@lightmeans.com