Terms of Service

Effective date: 2026-11-10

These terms are the agreement between you and the operator of Lend a Mind. Please read them before you use the service. By signing in, you agree to them.

1. Who runs Lend a Mind

Lend a Mind (lendamind.com) is run by Huy Dao, an individual. There is no company behind it yet. In these terms, "Lend a Mind", "we", and "us" mean Huy Dao as the operator of the service. "You" means the person using it.

Contact: hello@lendamind.com.

Lend a Mind is in a private alpha: an early version shared with a small group of people. Features, limits, and these terms may change as we learn (see section 13).

2. Who can use it

You must be at least 18 years old to use Lend a Mind. You can use it from anywhere, as long as doing so is legal where you are.

If you use Lend a Mind on behalf of an organization, you confirm you're allowed to share the information you bring to a session. Your account is still a personal account in your name.

3. What Lend a Mind is

Lend a Mind connects people who have a Data or AI question ("clients") with experienced Data and AI practitioners ("pros") who give some of their time for free.

• Pros are independent. They are not our employees, contractors, agents, or representatives, and we don't direct how they run a session. They choose whether to take part, how much free time to offer each month, their session lengths, and their availability. They can stop at any time.
• Pros give their time pro bono, which means free. Pros aren't paid by us or by clients for free sessions, and they don't pay us.
• We provide the platform, not the advice. We help you find a pro and book a time. We don't take part in sessions, and we don't check, endorse, or take responsibility for what a pro says or writes.
• No guaranteed outcome. A session is a conversation that aims to help you see a clearer next step. We can't promise that it will, or that any pro will be available.
• Match suggestions. If you ask for a match, we may reply with up to three suggested pros. A suggestion is based on what you wrote. It isn't advice, an endorsement, a check of anyone's credentials, or a booking, and we can't promise a reply, a match, a time, or a free session. Times and free sessions are checked when you book.
• Not professional advice. What a pro says in a session, or writes in a summary they share, is general information based on their own experience. It isn't legal, financial, tax, security, medical, or other regulated professional advice, and a session doesn't create a professional-client relationship with us. Decisions you make after a session are yours.

Booking rules (session lengths, limits, cancelling, moving, missed sessions) are in the Cancellation and refund policy, which is part of these terms. How we review pro profiles is described in How profiles are reviewed.

4. Free sessions and payments

Every session on Lend a Mind today is free. We don't take payments, and nothing you do on the site creates a charge.

Pro profiles may show a planned hourly rate. That's for information only: paid sessions aren't available. If we introduce paid sessions, we'll publish their prices, payment terms, and refund rules, and update these terms, before anyone can book one.

Anything you arrange directly with a pro outside Lend a Mind, paid or not, is between you and the pro. We aren't a party to it.

5. Your account and signing in

• You sign in with a 6-digit code we email to you. There are no passwords. Keep access to your email account secure: anyone who can read your email can sign in as you.
• Give your real name and keep your details accurate. Your name is shown to the people you have sessions with and, if you're a pro, on your public profile.
• One person, one account. Don't create extra accounts to get around the free-session limits or a pause on your account.
• You're responsible for what happens in your account. If you think someone else has used it, tell us at hello@lendamind.com.

You can change your name and timezone in Settings. To change your email address, contact us.

6. Using Lend a Mind fairly

Please treat everyone with the respect you'd expect from a generous colleague. You agree not to:

• give false information, impersonate anyone, or misrepresent your experience or who you work for;
• harass, threaten, demean, or discriminate against anyone, or share anything unlawful, hateful, sexually explicit, or harmful;
• use a free session to sell, recruit, or pitch without the other person clearly agreeing first;
• record a session, or let anyone else listen in, without the other person's explicit consent (recording laws differ by place, and some require everyone's consent);
• share anything in a question, a match request, an action plan, a summary, or a session that you don't have the right to share, such as someone else's confidential information or personal data;
• collect other users' information, or contact them for purposes unrelated to their session;
• get around the free-session limits, a pause, or any other limit, for example by creating new accounts;
• interfere with the service: overload it, probe or break its security, scrape it, or access it by automated means other than the ways we provide.

To keep the service working for everyone, we limit how often some actions can be taken, such as requesting sign-in codes or downloading your data, and we may add limits to others, such as booking, changing sessions, or editing a profile. If you reach a limit, you'll be asked to try again later.

Pros also agree to: describe their experience honestly; keep their availability up to date, and keep any meeting link they've added working and up to date; join the sessions they're booked for or cancel with a reason; and use what a client shares (their question, context, and anything said in the session) only to prepare for, hold, and follow up on that session, including in their private notes and any summary they share with that client, and keep it confidential.

Clients should know: there is no confidentiality agreement between you and a pro unless you make one with them directly. Share only what you're comfortable sharing.

7. Video calls, meeting links, and third-party services

Sessions take place in a private video call on the session page, which we provide through Daily (daily.co), our video provider. Only the two people booked into a session can join its call, from 10 minutes before the start until 5 minutes after the scheduled end, when the call closes. We don't join calls, and calls aren't recorded or transcribed. You can send text messages in the call's chat while it's open; we don't store them. How Daily handles call information is explained in the Privacy Policy.

Some sessions, such as those booked before we added video calls, take place over the pro's own meeting link instead (for example Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams); the session page shows which applies. If a video call can't start, the session page may also show the pro's own meeting link as a backup, if they've added one. When you use a pro's own meeting link, that service's own terms and privacy policy apply, and we don't join or record those sessions either.

If a session is lost because a video call didn't work, the Cancellation and refund policy explains what happens.

8. Your content

"Your content" means what you put into Lend a Mind: your name, a pro's profile and availability, a client's question and context, match requests, action plans, a pro's private notes and summaries, cancellation reasons, and check-in answers.

• You keep ownership of your content.
• You give us permission to store, display, and send your content as needed to run Lend a Mind: for example, to show a pro's profile publicly, to give a client's question to the booked pro, to show a client the summary a pro chooses to share with them, and to use check-in answers as the Privacy Policy describes. This permission ends when your content is deleted, except for copies already sent to the other participant or kept as the Privacy Policy describes.
• If a pro shares a summary, the client can copy its suggested steps into their own action plan. Those copies stay in the client's plan after the pro stops sharing or deletes their account. When a pro stops sharing, the client stops seeing the summary the next time they load the page.
• You're responsible for your content and confirm you have the right to share it.

9. Reviewing profiles and removing content

A pro profile is listed only after we've reviewed and approved it. We can decline a profile, or remove (delist) a listed one, and we'll tell the pro the reason. Approval means only that we reviewed the profile as described in How profiles are reviewed. It isn't an endorsement or a guarantee of anyone's identity, qualifications, or advice.

We may remove or hide any content that we reasonably believe breaks these terms or the law.

10. Ending or pausing an account

• You can delete your account at any time in Settings. What happens to your sessions and information is explained in the Cancellation and refund policy and the Privacy Policy.
• We may pause free bookings (for example, after two confirmed missed sessions), delist a pro, or suspend or close an account if we reasonably believe someone has broken these terms, put others at risk, or exposed us to legal risk. Where it's safe and lawful, we'll tell you why, and you can reply to explain.
• Because this is a private alpha, we may change, pause, or end the service. If we end it, we'll try to give you reasonable notice and a chance to download your data.

Sections 3, 4 (last paragraph), 8, and 11 to 14 continue to apply after your account ends.

11. Disclaimers

Lend a Mind is a free, early-stage service provided "as is" and "as available". To the extent the law allows, we make no promises, express or implied, about the service, including that it will be available, error-free, or fit for a particular purpose, or about the accuracy of profiles or the quality, safety, or legality of anything a pro or client says or does.

Pros and clients are responsible for their own conduct, during and outside sessions.

12. Limits on our liability

To the extent the law allows:

• we aren't liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data, or business opportunities, arising from your use of Lend a Mind or from any session;
• we aren't liable for what pros, clients, or third-party services (such as meeting tools) say or do;
• our total liability to you for all claims about the service is limited to USD 100.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that can't be limited by law, such as liability for fraud or, where applicable, for death or personal injury caused by negligence. If you live in a place whose consumer laws give you rights that these terms can't take away, those rights still apply.

If you break these terms or the law, and someone brings a claim against us because of it, you agree to cover our reasonable costs of that claim, to the extent the law allows.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms, for example when we add features. We'll post the new version with a new effective date. If a change is important, we'll tell you by email or on the site before it takes effect. If you keep using Lend a Mind after a change takes effect, the new terms apply. If you don't agree, you can delete your account.

14. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Washington, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute about these terms or the service will be heard in the state or federal courts located in Washington State, unless the law where you live gives you the right to bring a claim in your local courts.

Before going to court, please email us at hello@lendamind.com so we can try to sort it out together.

15. Other things

• If part of these terms can't be enforced, the rest still applies.
• If we don't enforce a term right away, we can still enforce it later.
• You can't transfer your account or these terms to someone else. We may transfer them to a company that takes over running Lend a Mind, and we'll tell you if that happens.
• These terms, together with the Privacy Policy, the Cancellation and refund policy, and How profiles are reviewed, are the whole agreement between you and us about Lend a Mind.

Contact

Questions about these terms: hello@lendamind.com.