1 Hour Startup Terms of use

Short, narrow, and honest about what it leaves out

1 Hour Startup · last updated 10 September 2026

Who "we" is, and what is missing here

1 Hour Startup is built and operated by one individual, not a company. There is no incorporated entity behind it yet, so this page does not name one — naming a company that does not exist would be the first false statement in a document whose only value is that it is true. The operator is reachable, and answers, at support@1hourstartup.online. That address is the contact of record for everything on this page.

If a legal entity is formed later, this page will name it, and the change will be dated at the top.

What the product is

1 Hour Startup is a game. You answer questions about an imagined company and it simulates what happens to it. Its numbers, outcomes, investor decisions and valuations are the output of a simulation written to be entertaining and instructive; they are not a forecast, a valuation, or an opinion about any real business.

Nothing the game produces is business, legal, tax, financial or investment advice. If you are about to make a real decision with real money, this is not the thing to make it on.

The specification you generate is yours

At the end of a run the game compiles your answers into a product build specification. That document is yours. Copy it, save it, paste it into a build tool, hand it to a developer, build and sell what comes out of it. We ask for nothing in return and claim no share of anything you make from it.

This is not a generosity clause; it is a description of how the app is built. The specification is assembled on your device out of text you typed and choices you made, it is written to the app's private storage, and it is never uploaded — the privacy policy sets out exactly what does and does not leave your phone. We never receive a copy, so there is nothing here for us to claim.

The game's own wording — the fixed section headings and connecting sentences it writes around your answers, along with the app itself, its art and its text — remains ours. You are free to use those parts as an ordinary part of your specification. What you may not do is lift the game's content out and republish it as your own product.

Your account, and ending it

The app creates an anonymous account the first time you open it. There is no sign-up, no email address and no password, so there is nothing here about keeping credentials safe — you do not have any.

You can end it at any time from Settings → Delete my data, which erases the account and everything attached to it. There is a 14-day grace period during which you can cancel from the same screen. Deleting the app removes everything held on your phone. You do not need to ask us, and we do not ask you why.

The leaderboard and your display name

Finished runs can appear on a public leaderboard with a display name beside them. That name is rolled from a fixed word list inside the app — there is no text box, by design, so nothing you type is ever published anywhere. You can re-roll it in Settings as often as you like.

Acceptable use

The rules are the short list of things that would actually hurt somebody:

• Do not attack, overload or attempt to break into the service, its database, or the accounts of other players.
• Do not submit forged or automated scores, or otherwise manipulate the leaderboard.
• Do not reverse the app into a copy of itself, or redistribute its content as your own product. Taking it apart to understand how it works is fine — and if you find something broken, please tell us.
• Do not use the app to do something illegal where you are.

If an account is being used to do one of those things we may remove its leaderboard entries or end its access. There is nothing else attached to an account to take away.

Money, and the links out

The app is free. There are no ads, no in-app purchases and no subscription. The way it earns anything is that some of the build tools it recommends at the end of a run take part in affiliate or referral programs, and the game labels those links on the card, next to the link, before you tap. The ranking is computed from fit and never reads the commission data — the affiliate disclosure explains the mechanism and the test that proves it.

Those tools are independent products we do not own or operate. Once you tap through, you are their customer under their terms, not ours.

The app is provided as it is

1 Hour Startup is offered free, with no warranty of any kind. It is written and maintained by one person, so it will have bugs, the service can be unavailable, and a future version may change or remove something you liked. We do our best, we test the parts that matter, and we fix what gets reported — but we cannot promise the app is error-free or always available, and you should not rely on it for anything that matters.

Keep your own copy of anything you care about. The specification can be copied out or saved as a PDF the moment it exists; do that, rather than trusting it will still be in the app later.

Nothing here is meant to take away rights the consumer law where you live gives you. Where a sentence above conflicts with a right you have by law, the law wins.

What this document deliberately does not contain

Standard terms of use carry a binding-arbitration clause, a choice of governing law and courts, and a cap on damages. This one carries none of them, and that is a decision rather than an oversight. Those clauses only mean something when a named legal entity stands behind them, and drafting them without one — or copying them out of a template — would produce text that reads official and binds nothing. This whole product is built on not inventing things. It would be a strange place to start.

If those terms become necessary, they will be written properly, by someone qualified, and dated here.

If you got the app from an app store

Where the app is distributed through an app store, that store's own terms cover your download and your device, alongside this page. The store is a distributor; it does not operate the game and is not responsible for it.

Changes to these terms

If this page changes, the date at the top changes with it, and anything that materially affects you will be said in plain words rather than buried. Continuing to use the app after a change means the current version applies.

Contact

Anything at all, including a disagreement with something on this page: support@1hourstartup.online. It is one person, so a reply takes a day or two, but every message is read.