I'm sure we're all familiar with the regular posts that pop up here about startups shutting down on their users, often with very little notice.<p>As a potential user, this often makes me uncomfortable investing a lot of time into products I come across. It's difficult to tell the difference between a sustainable business model with clear vision and values, vs the typical "hypergrowth" startup which a year from now will probably have either shut down, completely pivoted, or been acquired.<p>An idea I had which could help alleviate this problem: a set of standardised "pledges" which startups can commit to, which outline some mututally agreeable obligations between the service and the end user.<p>This could of course cover many areas, but the ones that I think would make a good start are: Long-term service (X years minimum of guaranteed service), Personal data integrity (no selling data to 3rd parties), No data lock-in, Transparent subscription pricing, and Privacy-first (user data always private unless opting-in).<p>Draft for the more detailed conditions of the pledges here:<p>- https://github.com/jamesisaac/pledges/blob/master/pledges.md<p>Advantage for users: easy to recognise at a glance that the company is following agreeable standards (don't have to scrutinise marketing copy / terms of use / privacy policy). Advantage for providers: clear focus on values could be a USP over competitors.<p>I've created an example of how this could be presented on my product's landing page: https://nachapp.com (scroll to "Our values")<p>So, is anyone here interested in this? I think it would work best as a group/community effort where the pledges are finalised by consensus. So, if you're either a user who'd like to help define what constitutes a good product, or a founder who'd potentially be interested in committing to these pledges, it would be great if you could drop me an email (contact details in profile) so I can coordinate the effort and keep everyone updated.