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.

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.

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).

Draft for the more detailed conditions of the pledges here:

- https://github.com/jamesisaac/pledges/blob/master/pledges.md

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.

I've created an example of how this could be presented on my product's landing page: https://nachapp.com (scroll to "Our values")

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.