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Launch
Transparency & Integrity

Guidelines, Ranking Rules & Sponsorship

Startupbricks Directory is designed to be the fairest, most founder-friendly launchpad on the internet. Here is how our weekly cycles, voting integrity, and advertising model work.

1. The 7-Day Weekly Cycle

Unlike 24-hour platforms where launches vanish into obscurity overnight, Startupbricks Directory runs on a Monday 00:00 UTC to Sunday 23:59 UTC cycle.

  • 7 Days of Frontpage Visibility: Every approved startup competes for seven full days on the active leaderboard.
  • Permanent Weekly Archives: Every ISO week has a permanent archive page, preserving winner podium rankings indefinitely.
  • Top 3 Winner Badges: The top 3 products earn gold, silver, and bronze verified badges and a featured spotlight.

2. Upvoting Integrity

We take leaderboard fairness seriously. Algorithmic ranking cannot be bought.

  • Sybil Prevention: Upvotes are tracked using privacy-preserving cryptographic hashes of client network signatures to prevent bot voting.
  • Zero Pay-to-Rank: Sponsored ads and featured listings are distinctly labeled and never manipulate organic leaderboard vote counts.

3. 100% Free Directory Policy

Free for All Builders

Startupbricks Directory is 100% free for all builders, startups, and open-source creators. There are no paywalls, no submission fees, and no paid ranking manipulation.

  • Free Submissions Forever: Every legitimate startup receives a full 7-day cohort feature on our weekly leaderboard at zero cost.
  • Permanent Dofollow Backlinks: High-authority search equity links to help increase your Google PageRank without paying monthly directory retainers.
  • AEO & AI Search Readiness: Automatic inclusion in /directory/llms.txt for instant citation by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude.

4. Conflict of Interest Disclosure

Startupbricks is both an AEO & Brand Visibility agency (providing AI citation engineering, technical SEO, and high-converting web engineering) and the creator of this directory.

To maintain absolute trust with our community, search engines, and AI citation models:

  • Agency clients do not receive artificial upvotes or algorithmic leaderboard boosts.
  • All commercial placements are explicitly tagged as Sponsored or Promoted.
  • Free audits offered to listed founders are completely optional with zero listing strings attached.

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