Openseed Website’s Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

If you live in the European Union, the company that is responsible for your information under this Privacy Policy (the “data controller”) is Openseed Venture Capita Ltd

2. Information We Collect

We only collect information that you have expressly given us consent to collect. We also, using data minimisation principles collect only what we need to give you a great experience on the Openseed Website platform. We need basic contact details like your name, email, phone number as well as information on the founding team and the corresponding startup. These help us understand whether or not we want to progress discussions. We also collect metadata generated as you use the website, for example access logs, IP and location. If you want additional info, we go into more detail below.

3. Information You Give Us

You choose to give us certain information when using the Openseed Website. This includes:

• When you submit an application for funding as a founder, you provide us some basic details necessary for us to evaluate the startup and contact you should we be interested in proceeding discussions such as name, email, phone number, details on your startup location, stage, team etc. We also collect some information on the team gender composition, and ethnic minority to allow us track the diversity of applications we receive as we want to be as inclusive as possible

• When you share information on your startup you also share additional basic information on the founding team. By choosing to provide this information, you consent to our processing of that information of your startup and its founders and that you have the rights to provide us with such information

• When you fill out your contact information, you consent to us contacting you on the information provided either via email, phone number, or social media channels

• When you participate in surveys or focus groups, you give us your insights into our products and services, responses to our questions and testimonials.

• Finally, we may also share your startup information with other people as part of the operations of evaluating whether or not to progress discussions

4. Information We Receive From Others

In addition to the information you provide us directly, we receive information about you from others, including:

• Other Users

  Other users may provide information about you as submit information via our website. For instance, we may collect information about you or your startup if you’re affiliated with a startup that applies to Openseed with your information

• Social Media

  As part of your application you may choose to include your social media URLS e.g., Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This does not grant us any access, but only allows us to review founder, and startup information via these platforms

• Other Partners

  We may receive information about you from our partners, for instance where Openseed Website’s ads are published on a partner’s websites and platforms (in which case they may pass along details on a campaign’s success).

5. Third Party Information

Openseed websites may include links to third-party advertisers, affiliates, websites, plug-ins and applications. If you click on those links or enable those connections, it may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements, notices or policies. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the privacy policies or notices on third-party websites. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites. It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

6. How We Use That Information

We use your information to provide quality services to you. We may also use the information to provide you with information that might be of interest to you as a founder. We also share that information with other users on the platform. We also use your information To ensure legal compliance, for example, comply with local legal requirement, Enforce our rights, for example our Terms of Service, Assist law enforcement in investigations

To process your information as described above, we rely on the following legal bases:

• Provide our service to you: Most of the time, the reason we process your information is to evaluate whether or not to progress discussions. For instance, when you share your startup and founder information with us, we use that information to evaluate and analyze whether or not you’re a fit for a potential investment, and if we want to progress discussions

• Legitimate interests: We may use your information where we have legitimate interests to do so. For instance, we founder experiences, track record, startup market, product, traction and projected milestones. We process this information for administrative, and other legal purposes.

• Consent: From time to time, we may ask for your consent to use your information for certain specific reasons. You may withdraw your consent at any time by sending a message to privacy@openseedvc.com requesting that your account be deleted.

7. How We Share Information

Since our goal is to evaluate your startup information to decide whether or not to progress discussions for a potential investment by an affiliated entity, we also share your information with service providers and partners who assist us in operating the services, with your affiliated organization and in some cases, legal authorities. Read on for more details about how your information is shared with others.

• With other affiliated entities

  You share information with our partners when you voluntarily disclose information on the service (including your startup information) with affiliated entities to Openseed. Please be careful with your information and make sure that the content you share is information that you’re comfortable being publically viewable since neither you nor we can control what others do with your information once you share it.

• With our service providers and partners

  We use third parties to help us operate and improve our services. These third parties assist us with various tasks, including data hosting and maintenance, funds, subject matter experts, analytics, customer care, marketing, advertising, payment processing and security operations.We may also share information with partners who distribute and assist us in advertising our services. For instance, we may share limited information on you in hashed, non-human readable form to advertising partners. We follow a strong vetting process prior to engaging any service provider or working with any partner. All of our service providers and partners must agree to strict confidentiality obligations.

• For corporate transactions

  We may transfer your information if we are involved, whether in whole or in part, in a merger, sale, acquisition, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, bankruptcy or other change of ownership or control.

• When required by law

  We may disclose your information if reasonably necessary: (i) to comply with a legal process, such as a court order, subpoena or search warrant, government / law enforcement investigation or other legal requirements; (ii) to assist in the prevention or detection of crime (subject in each case to applicable law); or (iii) to protect the safety of any person.

• To enforce legal rights

  We may also share information: (i) if disclosure would mitigate our liability in an actual or threatened lawsuit; (ii) as necessary to protect our legal rights and legal rights of our users, business partners or other interested parties; (iii) to enforce our agreements with you; and (iv) to investigate, prevent, or take other action regarding illegal activity, suspected fraud or other wrongdoing.

• With your consent or at your request

  We may ask for your consent to share your information with third parties. In any such case, we will make it clear why we want to share the information. We may use and share non-personal information (meaning information that, by itself, does not identify who you are such as device information, general demographics, general behavioral data, geolocation in de-identified form), as well as personal information in hashed, non-human readable form, under any of the above circumstances. We may also share this information with other third parties (notably advertisers) to develop and deliver targeted advertising on our services and on websites or applications of third parties, and to analyze and report on advertising you see. We may combine this information with additional non-personal information or personal information in hashed, non-human readable form collected from other sources.

8. Your Rights

We want you to be in control of your information, so we have provided you with the following tools;

• Request Update

  You can update your information with us by sending in a new entry, we will use the most recent entry for your affiliated startup in our evaluations

• Request Deletion

  You can delete your account by sending an email to privacy@openseedvc.com. For your protection and the protection of all of our users, we may ask you to provide proof of identity before we can answer the above requests

We want you to be aware of your privacy rights. Here are a few key points to remember:

• Reviewing your information

  Applicable privacy laws may give you the right to review the personal information we keep about you (depending on the jurisdiction, this may be called right of access, right of portability or variations of those terms). You can request a copy of your personal information by putting in such a request by sending an email to privacy@openseedvc.com 

• Deleting Your Information

  You can always request to delete your information. For your protection and the protection of all of our users, we may ask you to provide proof of identity before we can answer the above requests.

Keep in mind, we may reject requests for certain reasons, including if the request is unlawful or if it may infringe on trade secrets or intellectual property or the privacy of another user. If you wish to receive information relating to another user, such as a copy of any messages you received from him or her through our service, the other user will have to contact our Privacy Officer to provide their written consent before the information is released.

Also, we may not be able to accommodate certain requests to object to the processing of personal information, notably where such requests would not allow us to provide our service to you anymore. For instance, we cannot provide our service if we do not have your name, email, startup information.

Accountability

In certain countries, including in the European Union, you have a right to lodge a complaint with the appropriate data protection authority if you have concerns about how we process your personal information. The data protection authority you can lodge a complaint with notably may be that of your habitual residence, where you work or where we are established.

9. How We Protect Your Information

We work hard to protect you from unauthorized access to or alteration, disclosure or destruction of your personal information. As with all technology companies, although we take steps to secure your information, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information will always remain secure.

We monitor our systems for possible vulnerabilities and attacks and regularly review our information collection, storage and processing practices to update our physical, technical and organizational security measures.

We may suspend your use of all or part of the services without notice if we suspect or detect any breach of security. If you believe that your account or information is no longer secure, please notify us immediately privacy@openseedvc.com

10. How Long We Retain Your Information

We keep your personal information only as long as we need it for legitimate business purposes and as permitted by applicable law. To protect the safety and security of our users on and off our services, we implement a safety retention window of a year following account deletion. During this period, account information will be retained.

In practice, we aim to delete or anonymize your information upon deletion of your account (following the safety retention window) or after five years of continuous inactivity, unless:

1. we must keep it to comply with applicable law (for instance, some “traffic data” is kept for one year to comply with statutory data retention obligations);

2. we must keep it to evidence our compliance with applicable law (for instance, records of consents to our Terms, Privacy Policy and other similar consents are kept for five years);

3. there is an outstanding issue, claim or dispute requiring us to keep the relevant information until it is resolved; or

4. the information must be kept for our legitimate business interests, such as fraud prevention and enhancing users' safety and security.

Keep in mind that even though our systems are designed to carry out data deletion processes according to the above guidelines, we cannot promise that all data will be deleted within a specific time frame due to technical constraints.

11. Privacy Policy Changes

We are always looking for new and innovative ways to help you build your professional network, this policy may change over time. We will notify you before any material changes take effect so that you have time to review the changes.

Contact Us

 If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to contact us on privacy@openseedvc.com