Terms of Service

01Who we are

The Leaderboard and its Marketplace (together, the “Service”) are operated by SASU OPTINOC, a French simplified joint-stock company with a single shareholder and share capital of €1,000, registered under SIREN number 850 573 932.

• Contact: hello@theleaderboard.co

02Two products, one account

The Service has two products with their own rules:

• The Leaderboard is where you launch a product and get ranked. Launching and a permanent listing are free. An optional paid service, a fixed rank in the Top 5, buys visibility for one day.
• The Marketplace is where founders list a startup for sale with verified revenue and buyers contact them. Listing is free and we take no commission. An optional paid service, Sponsoring, buys visibility for one or more weeks.

The same account signs you in to both. Sections 6 and 7 cover the Leaderboard, sections 8 to 11 the Marketplace, and the other sections apply to both. If a rule is specific to one product, it says so.

03Acceptance of these Terms

By browsing, launching a product, creating an account, listing a startup or buying a paid service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

If you act for a company, you confirm that you are authorised to bind it.

04Who can use the Service

The Service is built for businesses and entrepreneurs (B2B). It is not aimed at consumers. Browsing is open to everyone. To create an account, buy a paid service, or buy or sell a startup, you must be at least 18 years old, able to enter into a binding contract, and act for business purposes as an entrepreneur, freelancer, sole trader or company.

We may close an account and cancel pending purchases if we learn these conditions were not met.

05Accounts

An account is optional on the Leaderboard and required on the Marketplace and to book a Top 5 rank. You sign in with your email address and a one-time link we email you; there is no password. The link is valid for 15 minutes and works once and a session stays active for up to 30 days unless you sign out.

You are responsible for everything done through your account and for keeping your mailbox secure. Give us accurate information and tell us if you think your account has been misused.

You can ask us to delete your account at any time at hello@theleaderboard.co. Some records may be kept where the law or an open dispute requires it, as explained in the Privacy Policy.

06Leaderboard: launching and listings

Launching a product on the Leaderboard is free, and the listing is permanent. You must submit a valid public URL and accurate information about a product you own, operate or are authorised to promote. We may retrieve public metadata such as the name, description, category, logo and favicon so you can review it.

Account and guest launches. You can launch with an account, and optionally verify that you control the domain by adding a DNS TXT record we give you. You can also launch as a guest without an account. A guest launch appears on the Leaderboard only: it cannot book a Top 5 rank and cannot use the Marketplace.

Links. Links from the Leaderboard to your site are regular dofollow links. When a visitor follows a link we add attribution parameters (ref and utm_*) to the address, unless you already set them, so you can see the clicks we send.

You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to display your listing content only to run and promote the Service.

No votes, no bidding. Free launches are ordered by the rules shown on the How it works page. Votes and bids do not exist and cannot change the order.

07Leaderboard: the Top 5 (paid)

A rank in the Top 5 is an optional, fixed-price placement. Your product appears at the rank you choose (#1 to #5) for one full UTC day, from 00:00 to 24:00, either in the general leaderboard (“All products”) or in your product’s own category. The prices are the same in both, and the two leaderboards are independent. The rank is fixed for the whole day and does not rotate. It is not an auction, a subscription or a guarantee of results. There are no free days: every booked day is paid.

• Each rank is sold to one app per day in each leaderboard, and an app holds one rank per day in each leaderboard (it may hold one in All products and one in its category on the same day).
• A product can only book a rank in All products or in its own category.
• An app can book as many days as it wants, including consecutive days, with one rank per day in each leaderboard.
• You can book up to 30 days ahead.
• When you start a purchase we hold the rank while you pay, for up to 30 minutes. A hold is not a confirmation: the rank is confirmed only when Stripe confirms the payment. If the hold expires, the rank is released and may no longer be available.
• Booked apps carry a “Boosted” label so the paid placement is clear to visitors.
• Ranks that nobody booked are filled by free launches. Ranks #6 and below are always free.

The rules on the How it works page are part of these Terms.

08Marketplace: listing a startup

Listing a startup on the Marketplace is free, and we take 0% commission on any sale. Only apps with verified revenue appear on the Marketplace. You can list publicly or anonymously. An anonymous listing hides your identity until you choose to reveal it in a conversation. You can mark a listing as sold, change its asking price or take it off sale at any time.

Sellers. You are responsible for the accuracy and legality of everything you publish, including revenue claims, and for having the right to sell what you offer. You confirm that you own or control the app, the domain and every payment or revenue account you connect, and that you may share their data with us. Do not post private information, other people’s data or content you have no right to use.

Buyers. Information on a listing comes from the seller. Only the revenue figures and domain control we verify are checked by us, and only as described below. You must do your own due diligence before any purchase.

Anonymous listings. A seller’s identity is revealed only by the seller, inside a conversation. We do not disclose it otherwise, except where the law requires it.

Removal. We may remove a listing, take it off sale or revoke its verification, without a refund of any amount paid for a placement, if a revenue connection is disconnected or stops working, if the data looks manipulated or misleading, if a domain dispute is substantiated, or if the listing breaks these Terms.

09Marketplace: revenue and domain verification

Revenue. To show verified revenue you connect a payment provider with read-only access: Stripe, Dodo Payments, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy or Polar. We use that access only to read subscription revenue for roughly the last 12 months and to turn it into monthly recurring revenue figures. You can disconnect at any time from your account, and you should revoke the access at the provider as well.

Figures are refreshed when you request it and, for a public listing, automatically when someone views it and the last refresh is more than 10 minutes old. If a refresh fails, the listing keeps its last verified numbers.

Domain. To prove you control a website you add a DNS TXT record we give you. The first account to verify a domain is treated as controlling the listing for it, and other pending claims for that domain go back to pending. An unverified claim never blocks a verified one. If someone else verified a domain that is rightfully yours, contact us and we will review it.

Limits. Verification means data was read from the connected provider and the DNS record was seen. It is not an audit, a valuation or a statement about the quality or legality of a business. We give no guarantee about revenue figures beyond this method. Our figures can differ from a provider’s dashboard because of timing, currencies, taxes, refunds, discounts and how each provider reports subscriptions. We may correct or remove data, or take a listing down, if it appears inaccurate, misleading or manipulated.

10Marketplace: deals between users

Buyers and sellers contact each other through direct messages (or through the contact form of a listing) and make their own arrangements. We are not a party to any sale. We are not a broker, agent, intermediary or escrow provider, we do not hold funds, and we do not review, negotiate, guarantee or enforce any deal. We do not offer escrow at this time. If we add it later, it will have its own terms.

Anything you do with another user is at your own risk. Do your own due diligence on the business, its assets, finances, legal ownership, taxes and contracts, and take professional legal, tax and financial advice. Nothing on the Service is financial, investment, legal or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy or sell anything.

Do not use messages to spam, harass, mislead or pressure people. You can save listings, and we may email you when a saved listing lowers its price or when you receive a message.

11Marketplace: Sponsoring (paid)

Sponsoring places a startup in the sponsor areas of the Marketplace for whole weeks. It is a single purchase and does not renew automatically.

At most 10 campaigns run at the same time. If all places are taken, your campaign is scheduled for the next free window and the dates are shown to you before you pay. If two payments compete for the last place, a campaign may be moved to the next free window. A launch offer may give the first 20 apps one free week, once per app, while places remain.

Sponsored links are marked rel="sponsored". We count impressions and clicks, and these counts are only an indication: they are not a guarantee of any volume. Sponsoring never changes the order of unsponsored listings.

Content rules. Sponsored content must be accurate and must not promote adult content, gambling, illegal goods or services, scams, violence or hate, or make misleading claims. We may reject, edit or remove a campaign that breaks these rules; where we do so for such a breach, no refund is due.

12Payments, taxes and refunds

Paid services are one-time payments processed by Stripe, who may require card verification and apply their own terms. We do not receive or store your full card number. All prices are in US dollars (USD) and are shown before you pay. Listing, launching, contacting other users and selling are free.

Taxes. We do not ask for or collect VAT numbers or tax IDs. You are responsible for any taxes that apply to your purchase or your business, and for your own tax reporting.

No refunds. Top 5 ranks and Sponsoring are marketing services. All payments are final and non-refundable, including before the booked day or sponsored week starts, and whatever the traffic, clicks or results obtained.

Our fault. If a booked rank or a campaign was not shown because of a failure on our side, we reschedule it to the next available day or week at no cost. Duplicate charges caused by a payment error are investigated and corrected.

13Acceptable use and content rules

You may not submit or promote illegal content, malware, phishing, deceptive offers, impersonation, infringing material, harassment, fraudulent financial schemes or products designed to harm people or systems. You may not fake or inflate revenue, connect accounts you do not control, manipulate visits or clicks, bypass booking limits, scrape the Service at a harmful rate, probe private systems, or otherwise degrade the Service for others.

We may correct categories, remove misleading data, suspend a listing, hide a conversation, reject a purchase or block access when reasonably needed to enforce these Terms, protect users, comply with the law or keep the Service reliable. Enforcement against a breach does not create a right to a refund.

14Intellectual property

You keep all rights to the content you submit. You grant us the licence needed to display it on the Service, as described above. The Service itself, including its design, text and software, belongs to us and our licensors, and you may not copy or reuse it beyond normal use. Do not submit content you have no right to use.

15Third-party services and links

The Service relies on and links to third parties, including payment providers, destination websites and the apps you list. We do not control them and are not responsible for their content, availability or actions. Your use of a provider is governed by that provider’s own terms.

16Availability and changes

The Service is provided “as available”. Maintenance, third-party outages, security incidents or events beyond our control may interrupt it. We may improve or change features, categories, ranking presentation and providers. Material changes to paid-service rules or prices are shown before they apply to a new purchase.

17Disclaimers and liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service is provided without warranties of any kind. We do not guarantee traffic, clicks, customers, revenue, sales or any other business result from a listing, a Top 5 rank or Sponsoring. We are not liable for:

• any transaction, negotiation or dispute between buyers and sellers, or any loss from a deal;
• the accuracy of information provided by sellers, beyond what is verified as described above;
• traffic, clicks, sales, customers or acquisition outcomes of a paid service;
• outages of a payment provider’s API or differences between our figures and a provider’s metrics;
• third-party websites and services reached through links.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law. Otherwise, our total liability to you is capped at the amount you paid us for the service concerned in the 12 months before the claim.

18Your responsibility for what you publish

You agree to compensate us for third-party claims and reasonable costs arising from: listing information and revenue claims you publish; the content of your launch or sponsor card; your use of someone else’s domain or revenue account without authorisation; or deals you negotiate with other users.

19Suspension and termination

You can stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or close an account, or remove content, if you break these Terms or the law, or put other users or the Service at risk. Sections that by their nature should continue, such as payments, liability and governing law, continue after termination.

20Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by French law. Please contact us first so we can try to settle the matter informally.

Disputes are brought before the courts of the place of our registered office, in France.

21Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as the Service develops. The “last updated” date changes when a revision is published. Material changes apply going forward, and continuing to use the Service after they take effect means you accept them, where the law allows.

22Contact

Questions, corrections, domain disputes or account deletion requests: hello@theleaderboard.co. See also how we handle personal data in our Privacy Policy.