Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

VCWorld ("VCWorld", "we", "us") provides VC investment intelligence, public-source summaries, matching tools, outreach tools, newsletters, and paid subscription features. For personal data that we decide to collect and use, the data controller is the VCWorld operator. You can contact us at privacy@vcworld.online.

This policy is intended to explain our practices under privacy laws including the GDPR where it applies. It covers visitors, account users, newsletter subscribers, paying subscribers, people who contact us, and individuals whose professional information appears in public VC or startup sources that we summarize.

2. Personal Data We Process

• Account data, such as name, email address, profile image, sign-in provider, and account status.
• Subscription data, such as Stripe customer and subscription identifiers. Payment card details are handled by Stripe.
• Newsletter data, such as email address, language preference, unsubscribe token, send status, and unsubscribe status.
• Inquiry and rights-request data, such as the message, requested action, affected URL, and contact details you provide.
• Product data you submit, such as saved matching preferences, outreach drafts, and imported contact details.
• Device, log, and security data, such as IP address, user agent, request logs, errors, authentication events, and abuse-prevention signals.
• Consent and preference data, such as locale and analytics cookie choices.
• Public business information, such as VC firm and funded-company names, public role titles, source links, funding announcements, company-level contact forms, generic business emails, corporate phone numbers, company LinkedIn pages, and professional LinkedIn or X profile links published from an official company page.

3. Sources of Data

We collect personal data from:

• You, when you create an account, subscribe, pay, contact us, or use interactive tools.
• Authentication, billing, infrastructure, email, and analytics providers used to operate the service.
• Public VC firm websites, RSS feeds, press releases, public publisher pages, public company pages, and other publicly available business sources.
• AI model providers, where enabled, for summarization, classification, matching, and drafting features.

4. Purposes and Legal Bases

Where the GDPR applies, we rely on the following legal bases depending on the context:

• Contract: to create accounts, authenticate users, provide subscription features, process billing, and deliver requested tools.
• Consent: to send newsletters where consent is required and to load optional analytics cookies or similar technologies.
• Legitimate interests: to operate, secure, improve, and measure the service; prevent abuse; maintain public-source VC directories; generate short summaries and investment signals; and respond to business inquiries, unless overridden by individual rights.
• Legal obligation: to keep payment, tax, accounting, security, compliance, and rights-request records where required.

5. Public Source Information

VCWorld also processes public business information about VC firms, public articles, funding announcements, and public source links. We use this information to generate short summaries, signal categories, and source-first directory pages. We avoid republishing full articles or source materials and link users back to the original source where practical. We do not claim affiliation with listed firms, publishers, or data providers unless we expressly state that affiliation.

For funded-company lead tools, we limit automated collection to company-level channels published on an official site. We do not guess email addresses or intentionally collect private mobile numbers or named direct email addresses for this feature. We may record a public professional LinkedIn or X profile URL when the official company site identifies it as belonging to a founder or executive, but we do not scrape the profile contents or infer unlinked profiles. Each record includes its source and verification date, and no-sales notices are used to suppress the contact where detected.

If a listing includes personal data about you, you may request access, correction, removal, restriction, or objection by sending the VCWorld URL, the affected source, and the requested action to privacy@vcworld.online.

6. Cookies, Local Storage, and Analytics

We use strictly necessary cookies or browser storage for sign-in, security, locale selection, session continuity, and saving your privacy preference. These are needed to provide the service you request.

Optional analytics, including Google Analytics, is loaded only after you choose to allow analytics. You can reject optional cookies or reopen the privacy settings button to change your choice. If you withdraw consent, we stop loading analytics and attempt to remove analytics cookies from your browser.

7. How We Share Data

We do not sell personal data. We share personal data only as needed for the service, including with:

• Cloudflare and hosting or infrastructure providers for delivery, security, logs, and storage.
• Google for OAuth sign-in when you choose Google authentication.
• Stripe for payment processing, billing, tax, fraud, and subscription management.
• Email delivery providers for newsletters, transactional emails, and contact handling.
• Analytics providers only after you consent to optional analytics.
• AI model providers where a feature requires summarization, classification, matching, or drafting.
• Professional advisers, authorities, or counterparties where necessary to comply with law, enforce terms, protect rights, or handle a dispute.

8. International Transfers

VCWorld, our infrastructure, and our service providers may process data in Japan, the United States, the European Economic Area, and other countries. Where required, we rely on appropriate transfer mechanisms such as adequacy decisions, standard contractual clauses, data processing terms, or equivalent safeguards offered by the relevant provider.

9. Retention

We retain personal data only as long as needed for the purposes described in this policy, unless a longer period is required or permitted by law.

• Account data is retained while the account is active and for a reasonable period after closure for security, dispute, and compliance purposes.
• Billing and transaction records are retained as required for tax, accounting, chargeback, and legal obligations.
• Newsletter data is retained until you unsubscribe or we delete inactive records, while retaining minimal suppression records where necessary.
• Security and server logs are kept for operational and security periods appropriate to the risk.
• Public-source summaries and directory records are updated, corrected, or removed when stale, inaccurate, no longer needed, or subject to a valid request.
• Contact and rights-request records are retained as needed to document the request and our response.

10. Your Rights

Depending on your location, including where the GDPR applies, you may have the right to request access, correction, deletion, restriction, portability, objection to processing based on legitimate interests, and withdrawal of consent. You may also object to direct marketing at any time.

We will respond to GDPR rights requests without undue delay and generally within one month, unless an extension is permitted by law. We may need information to verify your identity and locate the relevant record. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a competent supervisory authority.

11. Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures designed to protect personal data, including access controls, secure authentication, provider security controls, and operational monitoring. No internet service can guarantee absolute security.

12. Automated Processing and AI

VCWorld may use automated systems and AI providers to classify public sources, generate summaries, draft outreach text, and produce matching suggestions. These outputs are informational and do not make legal or similarly significant decisions about individuals. Users should review AI-generated outputs before relying on them.

13. Children

VCWorld is intended for business users and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children.

14. Changes

We may update this policy as the service, providers, or legal requirements change. The latest version will be posted on this page with the updated date.

15. Contact

For questions about this Privacy Policy or for privacy, removal, or correction requests, contact privacy@vcworld.online or use the contact page.