Founder Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Venture EQ Pty Ltd is responsible for the personal information described in this Policy. Our provisional address is 10 Eagle Street, Brisbane QLD 4000, Australia. Questions, requests and complaints may be sent to privacy@ventureeq.com.

2. Information we collect

• Mandatory account information: first name, last name, month and year of birth, verified email address, login and account-security information.
• Optional profile and company information: gender (including a "Prefer not to say" option), company name and company stage.
• OAuth profile information: photograph, professional headline, current employer, job title, location and public profile URL where supplied by Google or LinkedIn.
• Assessment information: incomplete and completed answers, completion dates, scores, dimensions, archetypes, reports, reliability information and retake history.
• AI information: locally generated insights, prompt inputs based on answers, scores and archetypes, and feedback.
• Report conversations: the questions you type when you chat with Venture EQ about your own report, and the replies given. These are stored against your account so a conversation is still there when you return to it. You may delete a conversation at any time from the report page, and conversations are deleted when your account is anonymised. They are never shared with an investor or organisation, and they are not used to train any model.
• Sharing information: investor invitations, consent records, investor access grants and revocations.
• Marketing information: preferences, partner disclosures, referrals and unsubscribe records.
• Technical information: IP address, browser, device, session, security, audit, cookie and Google Analytics information where permitted.
• Support and legal information: correspondence, complaints, investigations and records required for legal or security purposes.

3. How we collect information

We collect information directly from you, automatically through the platform, from Google or LinkedIn when you choose OAuth, from an investor who sends an invitation, and from service or security systems used to operate Venture EQ.

4. Why we use information

• Create, verify, secure and administer accounts and enforce the 18+ rule.
• Save assessments, calculate scores and archetypes, generate reports and provide retakes and timelines.
• Generate the written narrative within your report, and answer questions you ask about your own report, within an Australian region.
• Apply the founder-initiated and investor-invited sharing rules.
• Provide support, investigate technical faults, prevent fraud and protect the platform.
• Send essential service, security and legal communications.
• Send marketing and disclose permitted profile/contact information to selected partners where the marketing choice remains active.
• Conduct internal analytics, benchmarking, research, model and prompt improvement and product development.
• Create, license and commercialise aggregated or properly de-identified information.
• Comply with law, resolve disputes and protect legal rights.

5. Assessment sharing

Venture EQ does not make your profile, scores or reports available to any investor or organisation without your consent. There is no directory, no browsing and no search on the platform, and access exists only where you have granted it.

Founder-initiated assessments are private unless you use the platform to share your complete available profile, optional company information, scores and reports with a named investor. You may revoke that access.

For an investor-invited assessment, you must accept automatic sharing before beginning. Every assessment completed under that invitation is shared with the inviting investor. That access is not revocable while both accounts remain active, but ends when your account is deleted.

A shared report includes the AI-generated narrative within it — there is one report, and you and the investor read exactly the same document. Investors never receive your individual answers or your report conversations. Reports are view-only within Venture EQ.

6. Marketing and partners

The signup page contains a separate preselected marketing option that you may untick without affecting registration. If it remains selected, Venture EQ may send marketing and partner offers and may provide your name, email, professional profile and optional company information to selected founder-service partners.

Partners may include investors, banks and finance providers, accountants, lawyers, insurers, software providers, accelerators, incubators and recruiters. Venture EQ may receive commissions, referral fees or other benefits.

We do not provide partners with assessment answers, scores, reports or AI insights for marketing. Partner contracts must restrict use to the disclosed offer, require security and unsubscribe facilities, and prohibit resale or onward disclosure.

You may withdraw at any time. Withdrawal stops future marketing and future disclosures but cannot retrieve information already supplied. Essential communications continue.

7. AI processing

Scores, archetypes and dimension results are calculated by a fixed rules engine. The written narrative around them is generated by a large language model running in Google Cloud Vertex AI within an Australian region.

Individual answers, scores and archetypes are processed there to produce that narrative and to answer questions you ask about your own report. The data is not used to train Google’s models, and it does not leave the Australian region.

We may retain AI outputs and use assessment data and feedback to improve our prompts and insight-generation process.

8. De-identified and aggregated information

Venture EQ may create, use, license and commercialise aggregated or properly de-identified information that no longer identifies and is not reasonably capable of identifying any founder.

Removing a name or replacing it with a founder number is not necessarily sufficient. We assess the information and its release environment, remove or generalise other identifying features, apply access controls where appropriate and prohibit re-identification.

Venture EQ does not commercialise named or reasonably identifiable assessment answers, scores or reports under this permission.

9. Who may receive information

• Named investors authorised under the sharing rules.
• Marketing partners where the marketing preference remains active, limited to contact/profile/company information.
• Authorised Venture EQ staff and contractors subject to confidentiality, privacy, security and role-based access obligations.
• Google and LinkedIn for OAuth authentication and profile import.
• Google Analytics where analytics cookies are accepted.
• Hosting, communications, security, legal and professional service providers acting for Venture EQ.
• Regulators, courts, law enforcement and others where reasonably required by law, fraud or security investigation, safety or protection of legal rights.
• A buyer or successor in a sale, merger, restructuring or business transfer, subject to equivalent protections.

10. Australian hosting and overseas processing

Venture EQ’s application database, assessment records and AI processing are located in Australia. The platform and its database run in Google Cloud’s Sydney region, and the language model that generates report narratives runs in the same region through Google Cloud Vertex AI.

Google, LinkedIn and other external providers may process limited authentication, profile, analytics or technical information overseas under their own services.

Where required, Venture EQ will take reasonable steps and use appropriate contractual or other safeguards for overseas processing.

11. Cookies and analytics

Venture EQ uses essential cookies for login, security and core functions. Google Analytics is used only where permitted by the visitor’s cookie choice. Visitors may reject analytics and still use essential functions.

Google Analytics will use the shortest event-level retention period available in its configuration. The cookie notice provides current details and controls.

12. Storage and retention

• Incomplete assessments are stored while an account remains active so they can be resumed.
• When an account is deleted, unfinished assessment answers are permanently deleted.
• Completed profile and assessment history, including earlier answers, scores, reports, archetypes and AI insights, is retained in a restricted identifiable internal record for as long as Venture EQ operates for recordkeeping, restoration, analytics, benchmarking, research and improvement, subject to applicable law.
• Investor access and founder access end when deletion is completed.
• Marketing withdrawal records are retained so Venture EQ can honour the preference.
• Security, legal and complaint records are retained as reasonably necessary.
• If Venture EQ ceases trading and information is not transferred to a successor, identifiable founder data will be securely deleted as part of an orderly shutdown.

13. Security

Venture EQ uses reasonable technical and organisational safeguards, including restricted access, confidentiality obligations, encryption and security monitoring where appropriate. No system is completely secure.

Venture EQ may reset credentials, revoke sessions or lock accounts in response to risk. Affected individuals will be notified of qualifying data breaches as required by law.

14. Your choices and rights

• Review, edit or remove imported profile information and update optional gender and company information.
• Revoke founder-initiated investor access.
• Withdraw from an investor invitation before completing an assessment.
• Withdraw marketing consent and unsubscribe without logging in.
• Reject non-essential analytics cookies.
• Request access to or correction of personal information by contacting Venture EQ.
• Request account deletion, subject to the retention position described above and any mandatory rights under applicable law.
• Complain about Venture EQ’s handling of personal information.

15. International founders

Venture EQ is based in Queensland and does not initially target overseas markets, but permits overseas founders to register if they independently find the platform. Depending on location, additional mandatory privacy rights may apply. Venture EQ will respond to valid rights requests as required by applicable law.

16. Complaints

Send privacy questions, requests or complaints to privacy@ventureeq.com. Include enough information for us to understand and verify the request. We aim to acknowledge complaints promptly and provide a substantive response within 30 days where practicable. You may also contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner or another regulator with jurisdiction.

17. Changes to this Policy

Venture EQ may update this Policy prospectively. We will publish the revised effective date, notify founders of material changes and seek fresh consent where legally required.