Privacy Policy

KoffeeChat is a career platform. Talents explore careers and companies, book coffee chats with shepherds (professionals a step or two ahead of them), and build growth plans. Organisations use KoffeeChat to present their company and team.

In this policy, “KoffeeChat”, “we” and “us” mean the team that runs koffeechat.com and app.koffeechat.com. Questions about your data go to hello@koffeechat.com.

Your account. Your name and email address, and your password if you sign up with email. Passwords are stored by our authentication provider in hashed form; we never see them. If you continue with Google, we receive your name, email address and profile photo from Google.

Your profile and onboarding answers. What you tell us when you set up your account or edit your profile: for example where you are in your career, the sectors you like, your education, your next step, how you prefer to work, your city and country, and (if you gave one) a dream role. Shepherds also add their company, role, experience, education, bio, photo and availability.

Your approximate location. After you sign in, we may suggest a city and country for your profile, based on where your connection comes from (as our hosting provider, Cloudflare, sees it) or your device’s time zone. We don’t keep that guess: it’s saved to your profile only if you choose to add it.

What you add. A CV you upload, your LinkedIn profile link, growth plans and career ladders you create, and feedback you give on suggestions.

Coffee chats. The shepherd you book, the time and time zone, your topic and message, and anything you choose to include with the request (your CV, growth plan, career ladder or LinkedIn). Shepherds can keep private notes about their chats; only the shepherd who wrote a note can read it.

Audio calls. If you join a coffee chat’s audio call on KoffeeChat, we keep when each of you joined and left, and how long the call lasted. A call is not recorded unless you both choose to record it.

Call recordings, if you both agree. Either person in a call can ask to record it, and recording starts only once the other person agrees. Each of your browsers then records only its own microphone, only while you are both in the call, and either of you can stop at any time. We keep the audio, a record of each of your choices (who asked, who agreed, who stopped, when, and the wording you saw) and, if the shepherd has AI summaries switched on, a transcript, a summary, key takeaways and next steps. Saying no changes nothing else about your call.

Ratings and reviews. Star ratings, the feedback chips you pick and any comment you write after a coffee chat, and reviews you write about companies.

Organisation accounts. Your organisation’s details, and team information your admins add or upload, such as names, work email addresses and roles for an org chart or invitations.

Payments. If you subscribe to a paid plan, our payment providers (Stripe or Paystack) process your payment. We receive your plan and payment status, not your full card details.

Activity. KoffeePoints you earn and spend, companies you unlock, company and job pages you view, and notifications we send you. Our hosting and database providers also keep standard technical logs, such as IP address, browser type and request times, to run and secure the service.

How you use KoffeeChat. We record the main things people do, in our own database: for example booking, accepting or completing a coffee chat, sharing a shepherd page, uploading a CV, viewing companies, generating a growth plan, sending a message, and reading or writing reviews. Each record says what happened and when, the kind of page it happened on (not the full web address), your approximate country (as Cloudflare sees it) and whether you were on a phone, tablet or computer. When you arrive from another website, we keep that site’s domain only (such as linkedin.com), never the page. We never record your IP address here, what you type into a search (only how many results it found) or what your messages say. We also record what running a feature for your account costs us, such as AI usage and emails sent. Only the KoffeeChat team sees these records, to understand what works and what the service costs. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, we record none of your visits, views, searches or shares; actions already stored as part of the service, such as a booking or a message, are still counted.

• To run your account and the features you use: discovery, booking, growth plans.
• To schedule coffee chats and send the related emails and in-app notifications to you and the other person.
• To personalise what you see, for example companies, career paths and shepherds that fit your profile.
• To process subscriptions and keep your KoffeePoints balance correct.
• To keep KoffeeChat safe, prevent abuse and enforce our Terms.
• To understand what works and improve the product.
• To contact you about your account or important changes.
• To record a call when you both agree, so you can both play it back and download it, and to write its transcript, summary and next steps for the two of you (and email you the summary). We use recordings for nothing else: not to train AI, not for analytics, and our team doesn’t listen to them or read them.

Some features use AI provided by OpenAI. To build a growth plan or career ladder we send the relevant parts of your profile and onboarding answers. To write a Kofi summary of what people say about someone, we send the ratings, chips and comments from their released reviews, without names or account details. Kofi is told never to quote or identify a reviewer.

Call summaries. When you both agree to record a call and the shepherd has AI summaries switched on, we send each person’s recorded audio to OpenAI to turn it into a transcript, then send the transcript with your two names to write a summary, key takeaways and next steps. It is told to use only what was said and to leave out sensitive details such as health or religion. With AI summaries off, nothing from the call goes to OpenAI.

OpenAI processes this data on our behalf. Under OpenAI’s API terms, data sent through its API is not used to train its models by default. AI output can be wrong, so treat it as a starting point rather than advice.

• Shepherd profiles are public, so talents can find and book them.
• Talent profiles are visible to shepherds by default once you’ve finished setting up your account, so they can find you and invite you to a coffee chat. Only approved shepherds see them. They see your name, your photo, your headline or current role, city and country, career stage, the sectors (and dream role, if you gave one) you told us about, the companies you follow or unlocked, and roughly when you were last active, plus your About, education (including your university) and experience as your public profile shows them. To hide your profile, switch off “Show my profile to shepherds” in Settings → Privacy & visibility. You can also hide just your photo, and you can change either at any time.
• Your public profile link (app.koffeechat.com/talent/…) can be opened by anyone you share it with, without an account. It is on once you’ve finished setting up (off if you’ve hidden your profile from shepherds, until you turn it on yourself), and you can switch it off or change it on your Profile at any time. Visitors see your name, headline, career stage and banner, and the parts you choose under “What visitors see”: by default your photo, About, dream role, education, the companies you follow or saved, your industries and your ratings from shepherds; your location, experience, CV, LinkedIn, growth plan and career ladder only if you switch them on. Anything you hide is never sent to the page. A CV you show opens through a link that expires after a few minutes. The page asks search engines not to list it, and the link you start with ends in random characters so it is hard to guess; if you change it to just your name, anyone who knows your name could find it. When you change your link or delete your account, the old link is kept unused for 90 days so nobody else can take it over (always your first link, plus the 2 other old links you used the longest, when you change it more often).
• A shepherd you book always sees your name, your photo and whatever you include in that request, even if your profile is hidden.
• Organisations you engage with, for example by following them or applying for a job, can see your profile.
• Your CV, LinkedIn, growth plan and career ladder stay private unless you share them: with the shepherd of a coffee chat you include them in, or with shepherds in the network if you switch each one on in Settings → Privacy & visibility. None of them is shared by default. A CV opens through a link that expires after a few minutes.
• Coffee-chat ratings are anonymous. A rating is shared only together with ratings from at least three different people. People see an average, the most common chips and Kofi’s summary, never who wrote what. Your written comments are never shown to the person you rated.
• Company reviews are public and anonymous by default. They appear one to three days after you post them, so they can’t be matched to when you visited.
• Organisations see how many times their pages and jobs were viewed, not who viewed them.
• Call recordings, transcripts and summaries can be opened in KoffeeChat only by the two people in the call, through links that expire after a few minutes. Our team doesn’t open them. We also email each of you the summary, key takeaways and your own next steps, never the transcript or the audio.
• Beta testers is optional. If you join, the comments you post on the backlog can be read by anyone signed in to KoffeeChat, with your first name, the first letter of your last name and your photo (your initials if you’ve hidden your photo; “A beta tester” with no photo if your profile is hidden from shepherds; what you post while it’s hidden stays that way if you show it again). Ideas you suggest stay between you and our team until we publish them; a published idea shows your first name and last initial (not if your profile was hidden from shepherds when we published it, or is hidden now), with a summary our team writes. Nobody sees how you voted, only the totals, and a notice about a reply never quotes it. When you delete your account, your membership, votes and unpublished ideas are deleted and your comments are emptied; an idea we’ve published stays on the board without your name.
• Invites (Refer & earn): when you join with someone’s invite link, we record who invited you and keep a one-way, keyed fingerprint of your email address (not the address, and it can’t be turned back into it). We keep the record and the fingerprint after you, or the person who invited you, delete the account, so the same address can’t be invited again. The person who invited you sees your first name, the initial of your last name, your photo unless you’ve hidden it, and when you joined, never your email. Anyone opening an invite link sees the first name of the person who shared it, and their photo if they share it.
• Our team can access data when needed to run the service, help you or handle a report of abuse.

If you choose to answer our questions about a company you work at, used to work at or interviewed with, we keep your answers: the perks you get, how you rate the benefits, whether you’d tell a friend to apply, how an interview went and your monthly take-home as a range, with where you’re based, the currency you’re paid in and your level. Every question is optional. We store the options you pick, never an exact salary or anything you type.

• Only totals are shown, never your answers, your name or when you answered. Perks and recommendations show once at least 3 people have answered, interviews and pay once at least 5 have, and your own answer never counts in what you’re shown.
• Pay is only ever shown as ranges, never tied to your name, and only to people who shared their own pay in the last 12 months (deleting your answers removes that access). Where a company has too few answers, ranges combine people in similar roles in the same country.
• Interview totals are never shown to the company’s own team on KoffeeChat.
• Totals are shown only to people signed in to KoffeeChat. Your answer joins them together with at least two other people’s answers to the same question about the same company, so it may wait until others share too. It then goes in at the start of one of the next 3 days, so a change can’t be pinned on one person or matched to when you answered.
• To choose which questions to ask and when, we use the companies and role on your profile, your country, the topics of your coffee chats and roles you applied for on KoffeeChat. We reward answering with KoffeePoints whatever you say.
• Answers count in totals for 24 months and are deleted after 36 months. You can delete your answers about a company at any time with Delete my answers on its page, and they’re deleted with your account.

We rely on your consent for this: you choose whether to answer, and you can withdraw it by deleting your answers. Exchange rates for converting pay come from ExchangeRate-API; no personal data is sent to it.

We use trusted providers to run KoffeeChat. They process data only to provide their service to us:

• Supabase, through Lovable Cloud: database, sign-in and file storage.
• Lovable and Cloudflare: hosting.
• Google: “Continue with Google” sign-in and web fonts.
• Resend: email delivery, including the summary of a call you both agreed to record.
• LiveKit: audio for in-app calls. Your voice passes through LiveKit to reach the other person, and LiveKit never records it. LiveKit receives your account ID and name, not your email. To connect the call it also necessarily processes your device’s IP address and network details. Recordings you both agree to are made in your own browsers and stored by Supabase.
• OpenAI: the AI features described above, including transcripts and summaries of calls you both agreed to record (when the shepherd has AI summaries on).
• Stripe and Paystack: payments.
• OpenStreetMap: maps, and placing shepherds’ cities on the map.
• Logo services (Clearbit, Google and DuckDuckGo), which your browser contacts to show company logos.

We do not sell your personal data, and we don’t use advertising or third-party analytics trackers. We may share data if the law requires it, or to protect people’s safety.

We use only what the app needs to work: your browser’s storage keeps you signed in and remembers preferences, such as your personal or work view, and unsent drafts. While a tab is open, it also keeps a random id so a visit by someone who isn’t signed in is counted once; the id is deleted when you close the tab and never follows you from one visit, or one website, to the next. We don’t keep it once you’re signed in, so what you browsed before signing in is never linked to your account. We don’t use advertising cookies.

We keep your data for as long as you have an account. When you delete your account, we delete your profile and profile photo, your bookings and the notes on them, your ratings and reviews, and your uploaded CV files.

Detailed records of how you use KoffeeChat are kept for 180 days (90 days for visitors without an account); after that we keep only daily counts, per account for up to 25 months and as totals across everyone. When you delete your account, your records and counts are deleted with it. Records of what features cost us are kept for 25 months, without your name once your account is gone.

Call recordings follow a fixed schedule. The audio is deleted 30 days after the call; until then you can both play it back and download it (both voices together in one file). The transcript, summary, key takeaways and next steps are deleted 12 months after the call. Either of you can delete all of it sooner, for both of you, from the call’s summary page. We keep the record of your recording choices for 6 months after the last of it is deleted, as proof that you both agreed. When you delete your account, the recordings and summaries of every call you were part of are deleted, for both people.

We may keep limited records longer where the law requires it, for example payment records, or to resolve disputes and prevent abuse. Backups are overwritten on a rolling basis.

• You can update your profile, remove your CV or LinkedIn, and hide your profile from shepherds at any time in Settings.
• Talents can delete their account in Settings. Anyone can ask us to delete their account by emailing us.
• In a call, you can say no to recording, or stop a recording at any time. Afterwards either of you can delete the recording, transcript and summary for both of you on the call’s summary page, where you can also read the summary and transcript and, while the audio is kept, play back and download the recording.
• Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export or delete your data, to object to or restrict how we use it, and to complain to your data protection authority. Examples are the UK and EU GDPR, and Nigeria’s and Kenya’s data protection laws.

To use any of these rights, email hello@koffeechat.com. We may need to confirm it’s you before acting.

Data travels over encrypted connections. Access rules in our database limit each person to what they are allowed to see, and CVs sit in private storage. No system is perfectly secure. If you think your account has been compromised, contact us straight away.

Our providers may store and process data outside your country, including in the United States and the European Union. Where the law requires it, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as standard contractual clauses.

KoffeeChat is not meant for anyone under 16. If you believe a child has given us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

We will update this page when our practices change and revise the date at the top. If a change is significant, we will tell you in the app or by email.

Email hello@koffeechat.com with any question about this policy or your data. See also our Terms of Service.