Garage Technology Ventures has created this Privacy Policy to explain our information-gathering and dissemination practices. Your use of our site confirms your acknowledgement and acceptance of the terms of this Privacy Policy. We reserve the right to change this Privacy Policy to comply with applicable laws, to improve your Garage Technology Ventures experience, or to reflect any general change in our policy. Any changes will be posted to this document so that you will always know what information we gather and how we use it. You are encouraged to print or download a copy of this document for your permanent records.

We can be reached by email at garageservice@garage.com, by postal mail at Garage Technology Ventures, 101 First Street, Suite 210, Los Altos, CA 94022, or by telephone at 1-650-397-1359 . Please let us know of any possible violation of these policies.

What information does Garage Technology Ventures collect?

Personally Identifiable Information

We only obtain and retain personally identifiable information that you give to us and certain related transactional information which we collect based on your use of any password-protected areas of our site. For example, you might supply your email address by signing up for one or more of our free mailing lists, by applying to become a member, or by contacting us. You also may supply personally identifiable information, including your name, email address, and location by submitting questions or comments to our various public forums.

Only members who have passwords are entitled to access the Companies, Investors, and Job Opportunities areas of our site. Persons who apply to become members of Garage Technology Ventures (entrepreneurs, startup companies, and investors) and users of Job Opportunities provide detailed personally identifiable information to us in connection with their applications. We may collect information concerning the transaction activities of such users when they access a password-protected area of our site. This transaction information includes information about the portions of our site such users visit and information about what data they access.

Non-Personally Identifiable Information

When you visit the public parts of our site, we do not collect data about who you are or any other personally identifiable information except as described above. We do, however, collect certain non-personally identifiable information about you based upon your activity on our site. We may collect machine data such as processor type, processor speed, operating system type, browser type, audio devices, modem devices, and video cards. This information may include the Web site’s Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”) that you just came from, which URL you next go to, what browser you are using, and your Internet Protocol (“IP”) address.

Cookies

Cookies are small data files that are sent from our servers to your computer during a browsing session. In order to make our site more responsive to the needs of our visitors, we may use cookies to assign your Internet browser a unique random number, a sort of anonymous user ID that is stored in a file on your computer. By using a cookie, we are able to automatically identify your browser and track your use of our site. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies by default, but contain an option for you to turn off the acceptance of cookies if you prefer. You can also delete cookie files from your computer after they have been stored.

Children’s Information

In compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and fair information practices, children under the age of 13 are not allowed to sign up for our mailing lists or the members-only portions of our site. Garage Technology Ventures does not intentionally collect any personally identifiable information from children.

How does Garage Technology Ventures use the information we collect?

Personally Identifiable Information

If you sign up for one of our mailing lists, we use your email address to send you email either through our subscription-based mailing lists or to communicate with you about your application for membership and the services we provide.

Other than information you supply on our forums and as described in the next three paragraphs, we do not sell, rent, loan, or otherwise share personally identifiable information, including email lists, to third parties. You need not take any action to prevent such disclosure.

We will, at the direction of entrepreneurs and other members seeking investor interest, share their information, including name, address, and selected business information with members who have expressed an interest in making investments.

We may share all of the kinds of nonpublic personal information we collect with:

  • Third Parties
    • In connection with, or as may be necessary to service or process a product or service requested or authorized by you, to effect, administer, or enforce a transaction requested or authorized by you, or to maintain or service your account.
    • Service providers, including those providing marketing services (such as mailing, events management, marketing analysis, and similar services), compliance services, accounting, institutional brokerage services, transaction processing, and systems support.
    • Third parties may include financial providers, such as other broker-dealers, and nonfinancial providers, such as data processing companies, compliance support organizations, and marketing organizations.
  • Affiliates
    • We may provide all of the nonpublic personal information we collect about you to our affiliates to enable them or enhance our ability to offer you new or additional products or services, improve the quality of the products and services we currently offer to you, and to aid us and them in the assessment of our existing products and services and the development of new products or services.
    • Affiliates may include financial providers, such as providers of general business support and services to startup companies, and affiliated sales and support organizations including providers of systems support and services, and compliance services.

We may be required by law, court order, governmental agency, or law enforcement authority to disclose your personally identifiable information. We may also disclose your information to law enforcement authorities investigating suspected illegal activity.

We do not combine personally identifiable information with any of the non-personally identifiable information gathered on the public portion of our site.

Non-Personally Identifiable Information

We compile and analyze non-personally identifiable information on an aggregated basis. For example, we may know that ninety people visited this Privacy Policy yesterday or how long the average visitor spent at our site last month, but because we do not know their names or addresses they are anonymous to us. We may also use this information to conduct internal research on our visitors’ demographics, interests, and behavior to better understand and serve our visitors.

How do I remove my name from mailing lists or change my information?

Too change or remove any personally identifiable information you have submitted to us, please contact us at garageservice@garage.com.

What levels of security does Garage Technology Ventures have?

The public portions of our site are not encrypted or password-protected. We do use industry-standard security measures to protect the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under our control. However, due to the inherent dangers of the Internet, we cannot guarantee the protection of such information against interception, misappropriation, misuse, or alteration.

The password-protected areas of Companies, Investors, and Job Opportunities are only available to members. These areas of our site are password-protected.