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Privacy Policy

 

1. About this policy

 

This privacy policy explains how the >>venture>> foundation ("we", "us") processes personal data in connection with our website venture.ch and the >>venture>> startup competition. It applies to visitors to our website, newsletter subscribers, participants in the competition and their team members, members of our alumni community, and anyone who contacts us. We are responsible for the processing described in this policy. Our contact details are in Section 11.

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We process personal data in accordance with the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) and, where it applies, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), for example for participants from Liechtenstein or other EEA countries.

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This policy covers personal data only, that is, information about identified or identifiable individuals. Startup plans and other information about your startup are mainly business information; how we keep them confidential is set out in Section 9.2 of our General Conditions. Where they contain personal data, for example about team members, this policy applies to that data.

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If you register a team, you provide us with personal data of your team members. Please make sure that they are aware of this policy.​​​

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2. Summary

 

  • Website: we use cookies and analytics tools, with your consent where required (Section 3).

  • Competition: we use the data in your participant account to run the competition, evaluate and mentor entries, present the competition and pay out prizes. We may share your contact details with our co-organisers and the institutions on our Advisory Board; this is a condition of taking part (Section 5.4).

  • Alumni: if you become part of our alumni community, we stay in touch with you, list you in the alumni directory and may share alumni lists with our co-organisers and the institutions on our Advisory Board, unless you object (Section 6).

  • Research: we use startup plans and other entry data for our own long-term research, share startup details and jury scores (but not full startup plans or names) with research institutions among our partners, and publish results only in aggregated form (Section 5.6).

  • Retention: we keep your participant account for 10 years after the last competition edition you entered, or longer while you are an alumni member. Startup plans, startup details and jury scores and comments stay in a restricted research archive, linked only to the startup, for up to 50 years. A short competition record is kept for as long as the foundation exists (Section 9).

  • Your rights: you can access your data, have it corrected or deleted, object to processing and withdraw consent (Section 10).​​

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3. Visiting our website​
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When you visit venture.ch, we and our analytics and advertising providers collect data about your visit: your IP address, approximate location, browser type and version, operating system, referral source, length of visit, pages viewed and navigation paths, and the timing and frequency of your visits. We use this data to run a secure website, to understand how it is used and to improve it, and to measure the success of our advertising and social media activities.

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For cookies and similar technologies that are not strictly necessary, we ask for your consent when you first visit our website, and this consent is the legal basis for their use. For strictly necessary cookies and for the secure operation of the website, the legal basis is our legitimate interest. Details of the cookies we use and how to block or delete them are set out in our Cookie Notice. You can change your cookie preferences at any time via the Cookie Settings on our website.

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Our analytics and advertising providers are Google Analytics, LinkedIn, and Meta (Facebook and Instagram). Insofar as they process this data for their own purposes, they do so as independent controllers under their own privacy policies (LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy; Meta: www.facebook.com/privacy/policy; Google: policies.google.com/privacy). Our website is hosted by Wix, which processes this data on our behalf (Section 8).

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4. Newsletter

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If you subscribe to our newsletter or other email notifications, we process your email address and the information you give us when subscribing (for example your name and language) to send you the newsletter and to see whether it is opened. We send newsletters using Mailchimp. The legal basis is your consent. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in each email or in your profile.

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5. Taking part in the competition

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5.1 Registration and your participant account

When you register for the competition, we set up a participant account for you on our competition platform (Award Force). Your participant account contains:

  • your registration and profile details: name, address, telephone number, email address, profile pictures, gender, age, education and employment details;

  • the details of your team members, if you register a team;

  • your entry: the online entry form, information about your startup or startup idea, your startup plan and any other documents you submit in later rounds; and

  • the evaluation of your entry: jurors’ scores and comments, and the round you reached.

We use this data to run the competition: to check your entitlement to participate (Sections 1.3, 2.1 and 2.4 of our General Conditions), to organize the rounds, mentoring and events, to communicate with you, and to keep our platform and records secure. The legal basis is the performance of our contract with you under the General Conditions.​​​

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5.2 Evaluation and mentoring

We give your entry and the information in your participant account to the jurors, mentors, experts at events, members of the Advisory Board and industry contacts involved in the competition, insofar as they need it to evaluate entries, mentor participants and run events. They are bound by a confidentiality declaration (Section 9.2 of our General Conditions). The legal basis is the performance of our contract with you.​​

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5.3 Publication

We only publish information about participants as provided in our General Conditions (Sections 7.1 and 8.2): for semi-finalists, the startup name or provisional project name, the short description from the online entry form, the startup website, the vertical, the team picture, logo and email address; videos about the top 3 teams of each vertical; and photos, videos and contributions from events and the award ceremony. The legal basis is the performance of our contract with you and our legitimate interest in presenting the 

competition. Information that we publish on our website or in other public channels is accessible worldwide via the internet, and we cannot control how others use it.​​

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5.4 Co-organisers and Advisory Board

We may give participants’ contact details (name, telephone numbers, email addresses), together with the startup name or provisional project name, the short description from the online entry form, the startup website and the vertical, to the co-organizing institutions of >>venture>> (ETH Zurich, McKinsey & Company, Knecht Holding, Innosuisse and EPFL) and the institutions represented on our Advisory Board as listed on venture.ch. They may use these data to inform participants about their own startup support offers and to contact them to explore collaborations or investments. They process these data as independent controllers under their own privacy policies. This disclosure is part of the conditions of participation that you accept when you enter the competition, which is free of charge (Section 9.3 of our General Conditions). The legal basis is the performance of our contract with you and our legitimate interest, and that of the institutions, in connecting participants with support offers, partners and investors. If you do not want your contact details to be shared, you cannot take part in the competition. You can ask an institution directly at any time to stop contacting you.

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5.5 Prizes

If you win a prize, we process the bank details you provide to pay out the prize money (Section 6.5 of our General Conditions) and keep them in our accounting records. The legal basis is the performance of our contract with you and our legal obligation to keep accounting records.

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5.6 Research

We use startup plans and other information from entries for our own research on trends in the startup ecosystem and the Swiss economy over the long term. For this purpose, we record information from startup plans (for example sector, business model, team size and funding needs) in a research dataset that contains no names or contact details. We keep the startup plans themselves, together with your answers to the screening questions, the startup details from the entry form (for example funds raised, revenue and number of employees) and the jury scores and comments, linked only to the startup or startup idea, in a research archive for up to 50 years (see Section 9). Only a small number of authorized staff can access the archive, for specific research projects, and we review every 10 years whether keeping the plans is still needed. We publish research results only in aggregated form that does not identify individual participants or startups. This use is part of the conditions of participation (Section 3.2 of our General Conditions). The legal basis is the performance of our contract with you and our legitimate interest in research.

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We may also share information about startups and startup ideas with public research institutions among our co-organisers and the institutions represented on our Advisory Board as listed on www.venture.ch for their research on the startup ecosystem. This information may include the name of the startup or startup idea, the short description of the startup or startup idea, its industry vertical, startup details from the entry form (for example funds raised, revenue and number of employees), the edition and round reached, and the jury scores. It does not include the answers to the screening questions, full startup plans, or the names and contact details of participants. The institutions must keep the information confidential, use it only for the agreed research project, not attempt to identify individuals, not pass it on, and delete it when the project ends. They may publish results only in aggregated form that does not identify individual participants or startups. This sharing is part of the conditions of participation (Section 3.2 of our General Conditions). The legal basis is the performance of our contract with you and our legitimate interest, and that of the institutions, in research.

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If you tick the research opt-in box in your registration profile, and it is still ticked at the submission deadline, we may also give your full data from the online entry form, your profile data and your startup plan to the Department of Management, Technology and Economics of ETH Zurich and the College of Management of Technology of EPFL for their research, on their request and without further notice to you. These departments keep the data confidential and publish only aggregated and anonymised results. The legal basis is your consent. Whether or not you opt in has no effect on your participation. You can withdraw your consent at any time by emailing office@venture.ch; this does not affect data disclosed before the withdrawal.

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6. Alumni community

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Semi-finalists, finalists and winners, including winners of the Audience Award and the Spotlight Award, become part of our alumni community after the competition edition they entered (Section 8.1 of our General Conditions). For alumni, we additionally process:

  • an alumni listing in the alumni directory on venture.ch (Section 8.2 of our General Conditions);

  • information about the development of your startup, for example funding rounds, awards, number of employees and media coverage, including from public sources; and

  • your participation in alumni activities and events.

We use this data to maintain the alumni community, follow the development of alumni startups, invite you to events and put you in contact with other startups and with the institutions on our Advisory Board. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in supporting our alumni and documenting the impact of the competition.

We may also share alumni lists with our co-organizers and the institutions on our Advisory Board as listed on venture.ch. The lists contain your name, your startup, its short description and sector, the competition edition, the round reached and your business contact details. The recipients may use these data only to contact alumni about support offers, collaborations or investments, and may not pass them on. They process these data as independent controllers under their own privacy policies. The legal basis is our legitimate interest, and that of the recipients, in connecting alumni with support offers, partners and investors. You can object at any time by emailing office@venture.ch.

You can leave the alumni community at any time by notifying us (Section 8.3 of our General Conditions).

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7. Contacting us

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If you contact us by email, telephone, contact form or otherwise, we process your message, your contact details and the information you give us (for example your company and place of residence) to answer your enquiry and keep a record of our communication. We manage contacts in our CRM system (HubSpot). The legal basis is our legitimate interest in communicating with you and administering our foundation; where your enquiry concerns your participation, it is the performance of our contract with you.

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8. Service providers and transfers abroad

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8.1 Service providers

We use the following service providers, which process personal data on our behalf under data processing agreements with us:

  • Award Force (awardforce.com): competition platform for participant accounts, entries and evaluations;

  • Google Workspace (workspace.google.com): communication, document storage and collaboration, including Google Gemini for Workspace;

  • Box (box.com): secure file storage and sharing related to the competition;

  • Anthropic (claude.ai): processing and analysing data;

  • Notion (notion.com): internal procedures and dashboards;

  • HubSpot (hubspot.com): contact management (CRM);

  • Mailchimp (mailchimp.com): newsletters and email notifications; and

  • Wix (wix.com): hosting and management of our website.

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We also give personal data to our insurers and professional advisers insofar as necessary for insurance, risk management, professional advice or legal claims, and to authorities or other parties where the law requires it or where it is necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims or to protect someone’s vital interests.

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8.2 Transfers abroad

Some of the recipients named in this policy store or process personal data outside Switzerland:

  • Anthropic, Box, Google (Google Workspace and Google Analytics), HubSpot, LinkedIn, Mailchimp, Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Notion: US-based companies with data centers in the US and, for some of them, in other countries;

  • Award Force: an Australian company; our data is hosted in the EU; and

  • Wix: an Israeli company with data centers in the US, Europe and Asia.

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Some of these countries, such as the EU/EEA states and Israel, are recogniszed by the Swiss Federal Council as providing an adequate level of data protection. For transfers to other countries, in particular the United States and Australia, we rely on the Swiss-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified under it, and otherwise on standard contractual clauses recognized by the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner, together with additional safeguards where necessary. You can request a copy of these safeguards using the contact details in Section 11.

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9. How long we keep your data
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We may keep data longer where the law requires it or where we need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims. Instead of deleting data, we may anonymize it. The research dataset (Section 5.6) contains no names or contact details and is kept without time limit.

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10. Your rights

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Under data protection law, you have the right to:

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  • ask whether we process your personal data and receive a copy of it (access);

  • have inaccurate or incomplete data corrected;

  • have your data deleted, or its processing restricted, where we no longer need it or process it unlawfully;

  • object to processing based on our legitimate interests, in particular to alumni lists (Section 6);

  • receive data you have given us in a structured, machine-readable format (data portability); and

  • withdraw your consent at any time, without affecting processing that took place before the withdrawal.

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These rights have limits. For example, we may keep data that we need to establish, exercise or defend legal claims, or that we must keep by law. We may also continue to keep the data in our research archive and use it for research (Section 5.6) and keep the competition record (Section 9) if you object or ask us to delete your data, because we need them to document the competition, check entitlement to participate in later editions and carry out our research. To exercise your rights, email lisa.rabolini@venture.ch.

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If you consider that our processing of your personal data infringes data protection law, you can complain to a supervisory authority. In Switzerland, this is the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC, www.edoeb.admin.ch). You may also complain in the EU/EEA state of your habitual residence, your place of work or the place of the alleged infringement.

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11. Contact and data protection officer
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The controller is the >>venture>> foundation, registered in Switzerland under number CHE-132.172.568. Our registered address is c/o Knecht Holding AG, Schwimmbadstrasse 1, 5210 Windisch, and our office is at >>venture>> office, Pfingstweidstrasse 3, 8005 Zürich. You can contact us by post to our office address, by telephone on +41 (0) 43 366 99 22 or by email at office@venture.ch.

Our data protection officer is Lisa Rabolini, lisa.rabolini@venture.ch.

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11. Changes to this policy

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We may update this policy from time to time by publishing a new version on our website. We will inform participants and alumni of significant changes by email.

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