Privacy Policy

We take your privacy seriously.

Last Updated: July 31, 2020

Overview

Startups.com LLC ("Startups.com", "we", "us" or "our") is committed to protecting the privacy of personal information of individuals who visit Bizplan.com, Fundable.com, Launchrock.com, Startups.com, and Zirtual.com (the "Site") and use the services available thereon (the "Services"). Amendments to this Privacy Policy will be posted to the Site and will be effective when posted. Your continued use of the Services following the posting of any amendment to the Privacy Policy shall constitute your acceptance of such amendment. You should periodically review this Privacy Policy and check the "Last Updated" date at the top of the document to familiarize yourself with the most recent version of this Privacy Policy.

Consent and Information Collection and Use

When you join us as a user of our Services, we ask for personal information that will be used to activate your account, provide the Services to you, communicate with you about the status of your account, and for other purposes set out in this Privacy Policy. Your name, company name, address, telephone number, email address, credit card information and certain other information about you may be required by us to provide the Services or disclosed by you during your use of the Services. You may also be asked to create a private user ID and password, which will become part of your account information.

By providing personal information to us and by requesting us to provide you with the Services, you voluntarily consent to the collection, use and disclosure of such personal information as specified in this Privacy Policy. Without limiting the foregoing, we may on occasion ask you to consent when we collect, use, or disclose your personal information in specific circumstances. Sometimes your consent will be implied through your conduct with us if the purpose of the collection, and our expected use or disclosure of your information, is or should be obvious and you voluntarily provide the information. Please be assured, however, that all collection, use and disclosure of personal information will be in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

We may use your personal information and other information collected from you for the following purposes:

  • To provide the Services to you and to improve the quality of the Site and Services,
  • To provide you with newsletters, RSS feeds, or other communications or services which you have signed up for or otherwise agreed to receive,
  • To provide information to you so that you may use the Site and Services more effectively,
  • To create, manage and control your account information, and to verify access rights to Services and software,
  • To bill your account,
  • To communicate with you for the purpose of informing you of changes or additions to the Services, or of the availability of any Service we provide,
  • To assess service levels, monitor traffic patterns and gauge popularity of different service options,
  • To communicate with you about products or services that may be of interest to you, either from us or third parties
  • To enforce this Privacy Policy,
  • To respond to claims of any violation of our rights or those of any third parties,
  • To cooperate with legal, criminal or regulatory investigations or proceedings,
  • To respond to your requests for customer service, and
  • To protect the rights, property or personal safety of you, us, our users and the public; and as required or authorized by law.
  • We may occasionally communicate with you regarding our products, services, news and events. You have the option to not receive marketing emails from us. We provide an opt-out function within all email communications of this nature, or will cease to communicate with you for this purpose, if you contact us and tell us not to communicate this information to you. The only kind of these communications that you may not "opt-out" of are those required to communicate announcements related to the Services, including information specific to your account (such as confirmation emails), planned Services suspensions and outages. We will attempt to minimize this type of communication to you.

Children's Privacy

Our Site is not intended for children under thirteen (13) years of age. We do not knowingly provide the Site or the Services to, and will not knowingly collect personal information from, children under the age of 13 or anyone else under the age of consent. If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a child under the age of 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 13, please contact us through our support page.

Accessing and Deleting Your Information

When you use our Site, we make good faith efforts to provide you with access to your personal information and either to correct this data if it is inaccurate or to delete such data at your request if it is not otherwise required to be retained by law or for legitimate business purposes. You can access and edit your personal information at any time through the web interface provided as a part of the Services. If you would like to delete your personal information, please contact us. We ask individual users to identify themselves and the information requested to be deleted before processing all such requests, and we may decline to process requests that are unreasonably repetitive or systematic, require disproportionate technical effort, jeopardize the privacy of others, or would be extremely impractical (for instance, requests concerning information residing on backups), or for which access is not otherwise required. Please email us at support@startups.com with any questions, if you need assistance accessing or changing your personal information, or if you would like to have your personal information deleted. Please be aware that if you delete your personal information, you may not be able to continue to use the Site or the Services.

Authenticated users may request account cancellation and deletion by visiting https://www.startups.com/delete

Sharing Your Information

Except as permitted in this Privacy Policy, we do not and will not sell, rent, share or disclose your personal information without first receiving your permission.

We will only share your information with third parties in accordance with your instructions or as necessary to provide you with a specific Service or otherwise in accordance with applicable privacy laws. For example, if you indicate an interest in a certain launch by providing us with your email address, we will share your email address with that website owner, who may use it to contact you. In addition, we may disclose your personal and non-personal information to our agents, contractors and service providers who are engaged to perform functions on our behalf (such as processing of payments, provision of data storage, hosting of our website, marketing of our products and services, conducting audits, and performing web analytics). These third party contractors and service providers (i) shall be permitted to obtain only the personal information they need to provide the service, and (ii) must protect personal information to the same extent as Startups.com, including not using it for any improper purpose.

We may also disclose your personal information to third parties when we believe, in good faith and in our sole discretion, that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to (a) enforce or apply our Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (b) comply with legal or regulatory requirements or cooperate with a law enforcement or regulatory investigation, (c) protect the rights, property or safety of Startups.com, our users or other third parties, (d) prevent a crime or protect national security, or (e) detect, prevent or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues.

Information about our users, including personal information, may be disclosed as part of any merger, acquisition, or sale of Startups.com and/or its assets, as well as in the unlikely event of insolvency, bankruptcy, or receivership, in which case personal information would be transferred as one of the business assets of the company.

We may also disclose non-personally identifiable information on an aggregated, anonymous basis (see "Aggregated Data" section below) to our business partners, merchants, advertisers, investors, potential buyers and other third parties if we deem such disclosure, in our sole discretion, to have sound business reasons or justifications.

Aggregated Data

We may also use your personal information and information about your Site activity to generate Aggregated Data for internal use and for sharing with others on a selective basis. "Aggregated Data" means records which have been stripped of information potentially identifying Site users, and which have been manipulated or combined to provide generalized, anonymous information. Aggregated Data will not disclose you as the source or subject of the information.

Links

The Site may contain links to other sites and we are not responsible for the privacy or security practices or the content of such sites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of linked sites. Their privacy policies and practices differ from our policies and practices.

Cookies and Other Information-Gathering Technologies

We use cookies to track user activity. Cookies are small amounts of data that are transferred to your web browser by a web server and are stored on your computer's hard drive. We use cookies to track which page variant a visitor has seen, to track if a visitor has clicked on a page variant, to monitor traffic patterns and to gauge popularity of service options. We will use this information to deliver relevant content and services to you. This also allows us to make sure that visitors see the landing page they expect to see if they return to the same web URL, and it allows us to tell you how many people click on our users' launch pages.

If you do not wish to accept cookies, you can usually set your browser to decline them, and if you wish to delete or disable cookies previously placed on your computer, the "help" portion of the toolbar on most browsers will tell you how to do so. Please note, however, that if you choose to set your browser to decline, delete or disable cookies, you may not be able to access certain areas or features of our Site.

In addition to cookies, we or our service providers may use web beacons, pixels and similar technologies on our Site and in email messages or newsletters. These tiny electronic images can be used to assist us in determining how many users have visited certain pages or opened messages or newsletters. However, we do NOT use these images to collect personal information.

Your Postings

We may provide areas on our Site where you can post information about yourself, communicate with others, post reviews or upload content. Whenever you disclose personal information publicly (such as on publicly viewable web pages), that information becomes public and can be collected and used by others, including for the sending of unsolicited messages. We can't control who reads your posting or what others may do with information you voluntarily post, so we encourage you to use your discretion with respect to posting personal information. Also, such postings are governed by our Terms of Service, so be sure to review them before posting.

Your California Privacy Rights

A California resident who has provided personal information to a business with whom he/she has established a business relationship for personal, family, or household purposes ("California Customer") is entitled to request information about whether the business has disclosed personal information to any third parties for the third parties' direct marketing purposes. In general, if the business has made such a disclosure of personal information, upon receipt of a request by a California Customer, the business is required to provide a list of all third parties to whom personal information was disclosed in the preceding calendar year, as well as a list of the categories of personal information that were disclosed. California Customers may request this information from Startups.com by emailing us at support@startups.com. Please note that we are only required to respond to one request per customer each year, and we are not required to respond to requests made by means other than through this email address. Please also be aware that not all information sharing is covered by the California requirements and only information on covered sharing will be included in our response.

Visiting Our Site from Outside the United States

This Site is operated and hosted in the United States. If you are visiting the Site from outside the United States, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States where our servers are located and our central database is operated. The data protection and privacy laws of the United States may not be as comprehensive as those in your country. By using the Site and the services available on the Site, which are provided exclusively from the United States, You hereby consent to the transfer of your information to the United States and its collection, storage, sharing and use as described in this Privacy Policy. You further agree that all transactions relating to the Site and our Services shall be deemed to have occurred in the United States.

Security

We will strive to prevent unauthorized access to your personal information; however, no data transmission over the Internet, by wireless device or over the air is guaranteed to be 100% secure. We will continue to enhance security procedures as new technologies and procedures become available.

We strongly recommend that you do not disclose your password to anyone. If you forget your password, we will ask you for your ID and send you an email containing a link that will allow you to reset your password.

Please remember that you control what personal information you provide while using the Services. Ultimately, you are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your identification, passwords and/or any personal information in your possession for the use of the Services. Always be careful and responsible regarding your personal information. We are not responsible for, and cannot control, the use by others of any information which you provide to them, and you should use caution in selecting the personal information you provide to others through the Services. Similarly, we cannot assume any responsibility for the content of any personal information or other information which you receive from other users through the Services, and you release us from any and all liability in connection with the contents of any personal information or other information which you may receive using the Services. We cannot guarantee, or assume any responsibility for verifying, the accuracy of the personal information or other information provided by any third party. You release us from any and all liability in connection with the use of such personal information or other information of others.

If you have a question about this privacy policy, please contact us or write to us at:

Attn: Privacy Policy
Startups.com
1201 Dublin Road
Columbus, OH 43215

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