Terms and privacy.

The Best Match, established in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Chamber of Commerce number 88896536, VAT number NL004666874B80, registered at Wagenstraat 4, 1017 CZ Amsterdam.

"You" means the founder or the company signing the engagement letter. Where a company signs, the founder named in it is the person the work is done with, and both are bound by these terms.

Contact runs through kristina@thebestmatchcapital.com.

The work runs in four parts. Which parts apply, and what each costs, is set out in the engagement letter. These terms sit underneath that letter, and where the two disagree the letter wins.

Intake. A set of questions answered by voice, followed by a call of about forty-five minutes. Free. It ends either with a reason not to proceed or with the R.E.A.D. as the next step.

The R.E.A.D. A fixed-fee diagnostic covering the raise, the evidence, the founder's own architecture, and where those three diverge. Delivered once, as a written finding and a conversation.

Roadmap to Raise. A monthly retainer that runs until the three roadshow conditions are met, or until The Best Match says the raise should wait.

Roadshow to Raise. A monthly retainer covering warm introductions, outreach in waves, investor briefs and the read after each call.

Fees and terms of payment. [The fee for each part, whether it is fixed or monthly, when it is invoiced and the payment term.]

A success fee. The Client shall pay the Consultant a success fee equal to 4% of all cash investment proceeds actually received by the Client during the Engagement and during the Tail Period defined below, except from investors on the Pre-Existing Investor List.

For the avoidance of doubt, the success fee applies to qualifying capital raised during this period regardless of who first sourced or introduced the investor. The Consultant's fee reflects the fundraising-readiness, positioning, and preparation work that enables the Client to convert investor relationships into closed capital, not solely the introduction of investors.

Tail Period. The success fee shall remain payable on any qualifying investment received by the Client within 12 months after termination of this Agreement, where the raise was in progress during the Engagement or arises from work performed during it.

Pre-Existing Investor List. Within 5 business days of signing, the Client shall provide the Consultant with a written list of investors from whom the Client has already received a signed term sheet, or with whom the Client is in documented advanced or active discussion, as of the commencement date.

No success fee shall be payable on capital received from an investor on the Pre-Existing Investor List, unless the Consultant subsequently plays a material role in advancing, restructuring, or closing that investment, separately agreed in writing. Any investor not on that list whose investment closes during the Engagement or Tail Period is a qualifying raise.

Notification and verification. The Client shall notify the Consultant in writing within 5 business days of receiving any qualifying investment. Upon reasonable written request, the Client shall confirm the identity and investment amount of qualifying investors, solely to administer this fee. This applies during the Engagement and the Tail Period.

[This clause still needs specific attention from counsel: a fee calculated as a percentage of capital raised can bring a practice within the scope of financial-services regulation in several jurisdictions, and the way it is worded matters more than the number in it.]

Notice. Either side may end a retainer with 14 days in writing. Work already delivered is payable. A fixed fee already invoiced is not refunded once the work behind it has been done.

Acceptance. These terms take effect when you sign the offer. Signing the offer is acceptance of the offer and of these terms behind it. Nothing beyond the free intake begins before that signature. Electronic signature is sufficient.

A raise cannot be guaranteed and no engagement is structured as though it could be. What is stood behind is the read, the work, and the introductions made in Kristina's own name.

Legal advice, tax advice and accountancy fall outside the engagement. Where a specialist is needed for the financial model, the legal work or the design, they are brought in separately and you contract with them or are told the basis on which they are engaged.

The inner work in the programme is aimed at the raise. It is not therapy and it is not a substitute for it. If something surfaces that belongs elsewhere, you will be told so.

Nobody on a target list is paid to introduce you, and no fee is taken for making an introduction.

The tools are provided as they are, on the terms in the annex at the end of this page.

The engagement depends on your answers and your material. Where either is late or incomplete, the timeline moves and the fee does not.

Accuracy. The numbers, the deck, the model and the data room you supply are yours and are represented as accurate. The R.E.A.D. reads them against each other and reports contradictions, and that is a review rather than an audit.

Response time. Answers within a working day, because investor interest cools over a week of silence.

Your own calls. The investor conversations stay yours. Preparation, lists, briefs and follow-up come off your plate.

What you share stays with the practice. Decks, models, data rooms, recordings and anything said in a session are used for your engagement and for nothing else.

Where a specialist partner is brought in, they are bound by the same duty in writing before they see anything.

The duty runs in both directions and it does not end when the engagement does. It falls away only for information that was already public, that you make public, or that has to be disclosed by law.

The Best Match may name you as a client, and quote you, only with your written permission.

The intake questions are answered by voice and are recorded. Sessions may be recorded. The reason is that the roadshow condition is a comparison between how you spoke in week one and how you speak now, and that comparison needs the two recordings to exist.

Recordings are used for your engagement. Nothing recorded is published, quoted or shown to anyone outside it without your written permission, given for that specific use.

You can ask for a recording to be deleted at any time, and it is deleted. Where a recording has already been used to produce a written finding, the finding stays and the recording goes.

Podcast guests. A recorded conversation for The Human Side of Building is made to be published. A guest sees the edited version before it goes out and can have anything removed. Consent covers the episode, the transcript and the written piece, and a guest can withdraw it up to publication.

Research. Where an interview is used in published research, it is used anonymised or attributed with permission, and that is agreed in advance and separately from this engagement.

Part of the work runs through software built by SuperStories BV: the Growth Intel boards, [the voice intake and transcription], [VoiceReflect]. When you or The Best Match put your material into these tools, SuperStories processes it on The Best Match's instructions and for your engagement only, as a processor under a written agreement. SuperStories is named among the suppliers in the privacy statement.

The boards run on an underlying AI provider, [provider]. That provider is a sub-processor. [It processes data outside the EEA, on the basis of [transfer basis]. Counsel to confirm.]

Your material is not used to train any AI model. [Confirm the provider setting that guarantees this.]

What one client puts into a board never reaches another client's board or its output. Each engagement's data stays inside that engagement.

A board is a tool that assists a person. It makes no decision about you by itself. The read at the end is a person's judgement.

A read on a founder commissioned by an investor is a separate engagement. It is never taken on while working with that same founder on a raise, and it is never taken on afterwards using anything learned during the raise.

Where two founders in the same engagement window are raising into the same narrow segment, you are told before the second is accepted, and either of you may object.

The frameworks, the method and the boards belong to The Best Match and SuperStories. They are used for your engagement and stay theirs.

The work made for you is yours. Your pitch deck, your model, your data room, the investor briefs and the written R.E.A.D. finding are yours once they are paid for, and you may use them however you like, including in a later raise without The Best Match.

The software is the exception. The boards and the other tools are licensed to you for the length of the engagement. They are not yours to keep, copy, resell or rebuild, and access ends when the engagement ends. What a board helped you produce is yours. The board is not.

[Counsel to draft.] The intent to express: The Best Match is liable for damage caused by its own intent or gross negligence. Liability is otherwise limited to the fees paid over the [period] preceding the event. Indirect loss, lost profit, a round that does not close and a valuation that disappoints are excluded.

[Counsel to advise on whether professional indemnity cover is required or advisable at this scale, and on whether the limitation above survives Dutch reasonableness review.]

Dutch law applies. Disputes go to the competent court in Amsterdam.

Before that, both sides talk. A dispute is raised in writing and there is a conversation within fourteen days.

The Best Match is the controller of the personal data described below, within the meaning of the GDPR. Contact for any privacy question is kristina@thebestmatchcapital.com.

The contact form. Your name, company, email, the stage you are at, what you are raising, and anything you add. Nothing else, and nothing is inferred.

The intake. Voice recordings of your answers, and the transcripts made from them.

The engagement. Your deck, your model, your data room, correspondence, session notes and session recordings.

Data you put in about other people. The work involves people who are not you: investors, advisors and others named in your material or on a target list. Where their personal data is entered into the work or the tools, it is their name, contact, role, portfolio and what is known about them that is relevant to the raise. For investors and advisors The Best Match approaches on your behalf, the basis is its legitimate interest in making a relevant introduction, weighed against theirs, and they can object at any time. Where you supply personal data about a third party, you confirm you are allowed to share it, and any consent that person is owed is yours to obtain, not the practice's.

The letter. An email address, and whether an email was opened, if that is measured. [Confirm once the newsletter tool is chosen.]

The website. Nothing. No cookies, no analytics, no tracking pixels, no advertising tags.

Contact form and intake data are processed to answer you and to decide whether the work fits, which is the step before a contract at your own request.

Engagement material is processed to perform the contract.

The letter is sent on your consent, given by subscribing, and withdrawn by unsubscribing.

Recordings used for anything beyond your own engagement need your separate written consent, and that consent can be withdrawn.

No decision about you is made by automated means. The tools used in the practice assist a person, and the read at the end of it is a person's judgement.

The practice uses a small number of suppliers who process data on its instructions and are bound by a processor agreement: SuperStories BV (the Growth Intel boards and the other tools), [the AI provider behind the boards], [hosting], [the voice intake and transcription], [email], [the newsletter tool], [accounting].

Specialist partners brought into an engagement see only what they need and are bound by the confidentiality clause above.

Nothing is sold, and nothing is shared for advertising.

The site loads its typefaces from Google Fonts, which means a visitor's IP address reaches Google when a page opens. [Self-hosting the fonts removes this and is on the list; until it is done, this belongs here.]

[Counsel to confirm whether any supplier, the AI provider included, processes data outside the EEA, and on what transfer basis.]

An enquiry that goes nowhere. Deleted after 12 months.

Intake recordings and transcripts. Kept for the engagement, then 12 months, because the comparison between week one and now is the reason they exist.

Engagement material. Kept for 12 months after the engagement ends.

Invoices. Seven years, which Dutch tax law requires.

Newsletter address. Until you unsubscribe, and then removed rather than suppressed.

You can ask to see what is held, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to have it handed to you in a portable form, and to object to processing. Ask at kristina@thebestmatchcapital.com and you get an answer within a month.

Withdrawing consent is always possible and does not affect what was lawful before it.

If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens.

A data breach that is likely to be a risk to you is reported to the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens within 72 hours, and to you without undue delay.

This version is dated [date]. A change that materially affects an engagement is sent to clients rather than left here to be noticed.

Referred to from section 03 and section 07. Counsel to align the last line with the liability clause in section 10.

The boards and tools are provided as they are. They are useful and they are not perfect. No promise is made that a board is free of error, or that an output is right for a given decision.

What a board produces is information, not advice. It decides nothing for you. Every decision you take with it is yours.

You decide what goes into a board. What you put in is yours to put in, and any consent owed to the people named in it is yours to obtain.

You are responsible for using the tools within your own obligations: confidentiality, any non-compete, the rights of others, and the law that applies to you.

Neither The Best Match nor SuperStories is liable for what you do with a board, or for a decision you take on its output. [Counsel to align with section 10.]