Hi HN,

I'm Divy, former CTO at Branch and previously led engineering teams at Credit Karma and NexHealth. Over the past decade in fintech and healthtech, I've watched too many founders get blindsided by privacy compliance.

The Problem: 80% of startups are unaware of privacy laws affecting their business. The choice between expensive attorneys ($5,000+) and risky generic templates is getting worse as regulations expand. Generic privacy policies fail because they make promises your business can't keep – I've seen this tank funding rounds and trigger regulatory investigations.

My Personal Pain: At Branch, we spent weeks and over $5K just to get basic privacy compliance docs. Our attorneys charged hundreds per hour to essentially fill out forms about our data practices. The kicker? The policy didn't even cover our specific use cases properly, and we had to redo everything when new regulations kicked in.

The Solution: PrivacyForge.ai generates legally compliant privacy documentation using AI trained on current regulations. Instead of generic templates, it creates documents based on your actual business practices – what data you collect, how you process it, where you store it, and which jurisdictions apply to you.

Technical Approach: We built this on Google Cloud with Vertex AI, using Claude Sonnet and Gemini 2.5 for document generation. The system maintains separate knowledge bases for GDPR, CCPA, CPRA, PIPEDA, COPPA, and CalOPPA. Each document gets validated against jurisdiction-specific requirements before delivery. We're continuously expanding the regulations we support.

Different from existing tools: Most privacy generators use static templates with basic fill-in-the-blanks. We analyze your specific data flows and generate custom language. No per-site pricing that kills agencies – just one-time payments with included updates when regulations change. Current status: We're live with paying customers who've saved thousands in legal fees. Generated documents have passed compliance reviews at companies going through Series A due diligence.

Try it at privacyforge.ai – would love feedback from the HN community, especially if you're dealing with privacy compliance headaches at your company.

What privacy compliance nightmares have you faced? Always curious to hear war stories from fellow builders.

> it creates documents based on your actual business practices – what data you collect, how you process it, where you store it, and which jurisdictions apply to you

How is this information collected? In my experience, writing the document is not the hard part of this process.

> At Branch, we spent weeks and over $5K just to get basic privacy compliance docs. Our attorneys charged hundreds per hour to essentially fill out forms about our data practices. The kicker? The policy didn't even cover our specific use cases properly, and we had to redo everything when new regulations kicked in.

So your company wasted a bunch of money working with people who got the wrong thing? Should I read this as incompetence from your company, your attorneys, or both?

> compliant privacy documentation using AI trained on current regulations

Given the above, why should I trust that your group, of all people, are the people who know privacy regulations enough to build this correctly? Or that I can actually trust you with my own company's data? Or that your knowledge banks are correct and up-to-date?

So we learn nothing from the danger of having AI write legal documents: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45335774

If your company can't afford to pay the right people to write proper legal documentation than I would have zero trust that your application is properly secured in the first place.

I like the idea as someone working in a regulated environment. We just paid ~$10k to a counsel to help craft our documents, but they are highly bespoke to our needs.

That being said, I don't know how much I'd trust the results without having a human legal review in the loop. Perhaps that could be an up-charge/add-on: partner with a few firm/counsel that has deep experience different niche regulated areas (e.g. FDA), and then say e.g. for an add'l $500, get a stamp of approval on the document from a counsel who is well-versed in the space.

"We analyze your specific data flows" - exactly how do you do this?

There is need for this.

Pricing - is this monthly fee? I can't tell. (and I don't do monthly fees as a 99% rule)

If this were my project I would have a $79 get your broad checkbox done, one time fee. Extra addons available and update notifications of your choosing, once a year? once a month? I would select twice a year and give you kudos for noticing Maryland has new laws starting next week, Virginia add new regs in July and..

I don't think anyone is excited to "Start Your Compliance Journey Today" -

get compliant in under 10 minutes with a doc that is pre-formatted for your workflow

/ website builder to paste in the builder you use without Word formatting fluff screwing with WP / etc -

I would partner with: isn't there a couple of places that have on demand lawyers for each state like an upwork kind of select by price and availability?

If any of your customers also need to be Hipaa compliant I would like to be included in a receipt email they get ;)

I think many people don't know GDPR, CCPA, CPRA, COPPA, CalOPPA, and PIPEDA. from letters of various gov's and such.

maybe a block with 'doing business in Europe - we got your GDPR and blah required policy covered' another block with 'have a website or app in the USA - you have to have a privacy policy by fed law.. any forms or logins? lets up get your Coppa and other policies covered.

Get visitors from Cal, Tx, Va or XX YY? add these state specific and sign up for notifications of new rules for states that you do business in.

Don't want to deal with Cal, or X Y or Z laws? get our 'block visitors from this and that State' website script for free with an email.

Like the 'how it works' section, make the first two clickable or add buttons to get started / see plans.

More thoughts but short on time this afternoon.

Developer plan? I know people who maintain 20 websites - I might spend $200 to get a custom page for each one, if it was more I'd want an affiliate system that did not depend on cookies where I can send clients to get a new one each year.