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Focal is the trading name of Startup Stage Limited, a company registered in England and Wales with ICO registration number ZB316916, whose registered address is at 18a/20 King Street, Maidenhead, Berkshire, United Kingdom, SL6 1EF. We are a platform that facilitates pre-seed to Series A start-ups to apply to pitch at a remote or in-person demo day in front of the world's most esteemed investors.

This privacy policy explains how we protect and handle the personal data you provide to us. By using our Website and applying to pitch at the Focal demo day through the Typeform application form, you understand that we may use your personal data as outlined in this privacy policy.​

If you have any questions about this policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact us at hq@gofocal.vc.

This policy was last updated on 07 August 2023.

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How do you use my data?

  • When you apply to pitch at The Stage demo day we collect your personal data when you provide us with information through the application form to apply to pitch at The Stage at a remote or in-person demo day in front of limited partners of VC funds  and the world's most esteemed VC funds ("Investors"). When you apply, we may process information uploaded by you such as your name and contact information, including email address, company details and any other information concerning your application. We collect this information based on our legitimate interest and use it to provide you with information about the outcome of your application, information relevant to your application such as information about our sponsors, organisers and Investors that we partner with. Full list of our sponsors and investors is published on our website.
  • Please note that in order to assess your application to pitch at The Stage demo day and facilitate your participation, we are required to share your information with third parties such as our sponsors and Investors. Third parties such as sponsors and Investors may contact you directly using the data provided in the Typeform application in order to get further information about your application or to provide you information relevant to the same.
  • When you sign up to receive our news updates or attend a demo day. We will collect your name and email address to provide you with our news updates in line with any preferences you have told us about. When we send you our news updates because you have opted-in to receive them, we rely on your consent to contact you.
  • You can unsubscribe from our updates at any time by responding to any email you receive from us to tell us you wish to unsubscribe or by emailing hq@gofocal.vc.
  • When you contact us either by phone, email, via our 'contact us' page or via social media, we will usually collect your name, social media handle and contact details, because it’s in our legitimate interest to make sure we can properly respond to your query.
  • When you use our website and consent to our use of cookies we will collect information about how you use our website. We use this information to improve our website and to better understand how people use it. More detail on the information we collect and how we do this is set out in our Cookie Policy below.
  • When you attend one of our events or a third-party event (including virtual events via video conferencing providers including Hopin and Zoom), we will usually collect your name, address, email address and phone number. We collect this information because it’s in our legitimate interests to facilitate your participation, inform you about future events,  manage our newsletter subscription and know who’s attending our events.
  • Where you enter a competition we are running. We will collect your name, email address and any other personal data that forms a part of the competition entry (this may differ depending on the competition). We do this under our legitimate interest to run our competitions effectively and to communicate the outcome of any competition to you.
  • When you apply for a job with us we may collect your name, contact details, recruitment information (e.g. right to work documentation and references), test results (inc. psychometric), qualifications, accreditations and any additional information we may receive from our recruitment partners.
  • We will use your personal information to assess your suitability for our available roles. We do this to perform our contract obligations or to take steps at your request, before entering into a contract. Where we process your right to work documentation, we will do so to comply with our legal obligations.
  • If our business is sold. We process your personal information for this purpose because we have a legitimate interest to ensure our business can be continued by the buyer. If you object to our use of your personal information in this way, the buyer of our business may not be able to provide services to you.

Who do you share my data with?

  • Business partners, supporters, and Investors for the performance of the contract we enter into with them or you or based on our legitimate interest to facilitate your participation in the pitch on the demo day at The Stage.
  • Promotional events and marketing organisations, we do not sell data for marketing purposes, but may share your data with an event organiser or collaboration brand including where we run workshops with co-presenters and offer a promotion alongside a partner brand. We will always tell you before (usually on the event registration form) and you will be given the chance to opt-out before we do this.
  • Regulators/ Authorities/ Enforcement Agencies if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of our clients or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection.
  • Prospective buyers of our business under our legitimate interest to ensure our business can be continued by the buyer.

Where do you store my data?

We store your data on third party servers which are based both in the UK and outside of the UK.

When working with third parties we may need to transfer your personal data outside of the UK and / or EU.

Whenever we transfer your personal information outside of the UK and the EU, we ensure it receives additional protection as required by law. To keep this policy as short and easy to understand as possible, we haven’t set out the specific circumstances when each of these protection measures are used. You can contact us at hq@thestage.ventures for more detail on this.‍

How long do you keep my data for?

We will only retain your personal information for as long as we need it unless we are required to keep it for longer to comply with our legal, accounting or regulatory requirements.

We delete your account information 6 years after your last application with us.

In some circumstances we may carefully anonymise your personal data so that it can no longer be associated with you, and we may use this anonymised information indefinitely without notifying you. We use this anonymised information to improve the way we work.
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What are my rights under data protection law?

You have various other rights under applicable data protection laws, including the right to:

  • access your personal data (also known as a “subject access request”);
  • correct incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you;
  • ask us to erase the personal data we hold about you;
  • ask us to restrict our handling of your personal data;
  • ask us to transfer your personal data to a third party;
  • object to how we are using your personal data; and
  • withdraw your consent to us handling your personal data.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with us or the Information Commissioner's Office, the supervisory authority for data protection issues in England and Wales. If you are based in the EU you can find your relevant supervisory authority here.
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Please keep in mind that privacy law is complicated, and these rights will not always be available to you all of the time.‍

Your data rights under the CCPA

This section of the applies solely to visitors, users and others who are residents of the State of California.

You can exercise your rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) by sending an email to hq@thestage.ventures, indicating the type of right you would like to exercise and that you are making the request under the CCPA.

In order to process your deletion and / or access request, we are required by law to collect certain information about you to verify your identity. If, however, we cannot verify your identity from the information already maintained by us, we may request additional information from you, which shall only be used for the purposes of verifying your identity under the CCPA, and for security or fraud-prevention purposes.

You may use an authorised agent to submit a request to us on your behalf if they have written permission signed by you. However, we may require that you verify your identity directly with us and confirm that you have provided the authorised agent permission to act on your behalf.

We shall not discriminate against you because you have exercised your rights under the CCPA.

(a) You have the right to be informed. This includes information about:

  • the categories and the specific personal information that we may collect
  • the purposes for collecting that personal information
  • the categories of third parties to whom we may disclose that personal information
  • whether we disclose personal information for business purposes or for commercial purposes that would be considered a “sale” under the CCPA

This information is provided in this policy.

(b) You have the right to access information we hold about you. You may request to access a copy of the personal information we have collected about you during the 12 months preceding the request.​

Upon receipt of a valid and verifiable request from you, we shall disclose to you:

  • both the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you
  • the categories of sources from which the personal information is collected
  • the business or commercial purpose for collecting that personal information
  • the categories of third parties which whom we share that information

(c) You have the right to receive the above twice per year. If we provide the information electronically, it will be in a in a portable and, to the extent technically feasible, readily useable format that allows you to transmit the information to another entity without hindrance from us.

(d) You have the right to have your personal information deleted. You may request that we delete any personal information that we have collected from you unless retention of that information is permitted under applicable law.

(e) You have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information. We do not sell your personal information to third parties.​

Children and young people

Our website is not aimed at children. We do not intentionally target, or otherwise process information from individuals who are under the age of 18.

If you are aged under 18, please ask for permission from your parent or guardian before giving us your information or using our websites.

If you are a parent or guardian of a child under 18, please contact us if you are aware that your child has used our websites or otherwise provided their information to us without your consent. We shall delete or otherwise cease processing your child's personal information within a reasonable time.

In accordance with industry best practice guidelines, we may retain your information for a reasonable amount of time to make sure that we do not contact you in the future.

Cookie Policy

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also helps us make improvements.

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or in your device's storage. Cookies help Startup Stage Limited provide you with a good experience when you browse the Website and allow us to improve it. We only use (and store) non-essential cookies if you provide your consent.

We use the following cookies on our website:

Cookie _ga_ZC3279DZ9E

Purpose: statistics and basic analytical tools for search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing purposes

Duration: 2 years

More information: Non-essential

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Cookie _ga

Purpose: statistics and basic analytical tools for search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing purposes

Duration: 2 years

More information: Non-essential

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You are able to accept or decline our use of optional cookies through the cookie banner which should open when you visit our Website.

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You can block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our website.