Visibility & Retraction

Company Updates carry confidential founder information. Who gets to see each one is gated strictly on whether the viewer has funded an investment in the underlying deal. This page covers the access rules and the two ways an update can be taken off investor surfaces.

The Visibility Bands

Every update has one of three visibility bands. The band is set at extraction time based on the source email's confidentiality markers and the founder's intent:

A few important consequences of the rule:

• Committing to a deal is not enough. Investors who started an investment but never funded it cannot see updates for that deal.
• Following a deal is not enough. A follow does not grant access to any update body.
• Membership in a deal community is not enough. The check is specifically against a funded investment.
• Cancelled or refunded investments do not count. Only investments currently in the funded state grant access.

This is intentional -- the floor for seeing a founder update is "skin in the game." Anything softer would risk leaking confidential founder material to people who haven't paid for the privilege.

When the Investor Sees Each Status

The update's lifecycle status interacts with visibility:

Admins (super admins and managers) bypass these rules for support work. Everything they look at is logged.

Retract vs Hide -- the Investor-Facing Difference

Both actions take an update off the regular investor surface, but the experience is very different:

Retract

Use when the founder asks us to remove a specific update -- typically because they shared something confidential by accident, named the wrong customer, or want to correct a number.

Investors who could see the original see a redacted notice explaining the update was retracted, with the reason the admin entered. This is the right behavior because:

• Some investors will have already read the original and screenshotted it
• Pretending nothing happened would erode trust
• The reason gives investors context -- "Founder requested removal of confidential customer name" is clearer than the update silently vanishing

Retraction is always paired with an audit entry. The original body and KPIs stay on the record (for portfolio history and forensic traceability) but are not rendered to investors.

Hide

Use when the update should never have been on the platform in the first place -- a duplicate, a non-update email that slipped through intake, or a test message.

Investors see nothing. The update is silently absent. This is the right behavior because:

• The investor was never meant to see the row in the first place
• A redacted notice for a duplicate or test would be confusing

Hiding is also audit-logged. Like retraction, it's reversible by re-extracting from the source if the hide was a mistake.

How to Take an Update Off Investor Surfaces

Both actions are buttons on the right pane of the Review Queue:

1. Find the update in the list (filter by deal or period if needed)
2. Click Hide (silent) or Retract (with redacted notice)
3. For Retract, enter a reason that investors will see in the notice -- be brief and factual ("Founder requested removal", "Republishing with corrected numbers")
4. For Hide, the reason is optional and is recorded only in the audit trail

The action takes effect immediately. The Casey AI assistant is also re-synced so it stops surfacing the retracted or hidden update in answers.

What Investors See on Their Side

A funded investor browsing a deal they backed sees:

• The latest Published updates for that deal, newest first
• Retracted updates rendered as a redacted notice in place of the body, with the reason
• Nothing at all for Extracting or Hidden by admin rows

An investor who has not funded the deal sees nothing at all, regardless of status -- they aren't entitled to know an update even exists.

Audit Trail

Every visibility-changing action writes to the audit trail with:

• The admin who took the action
• The timestamp
• The action (retracted, hidden, re-extracted)
• The reason (when the admin provided one)
• The deal the update belongs to

To investigate any access question -- "did this investor see that update?", "why did this update disappear?", "who hid this?" -- start in the audit trail for the relevant Company Update or deal. See Understanding the Audit Trail for the general approach.