Privacy Policy

As of October 2021

Creative Destruction Lab (“CDL”, “we”, or “us”) values and respects your privacy.

This privacy policy describes our personal information practices when you use our community portal, visit our website at creativedestructionlab.com (the “Website”), or otherwise contact or interact with us, including as participants in the CDL Program (as defined below) or investors and other partners.  CDL is a seed-stage program for massively scalable, science- and technology-based ventures that employs an objectives-focused mentoring process with the goal of maximizing equity-value creation (the “Program”).

Table of Contents

• Collection And Use Of Personal Information
• Sharing Of Personal Information
• Information About Our Website
• Interest-Based Advertising
• Safeguards And Retention
• Your Choices
• Access To Information
• Updates To The Privacy Policy
• Contact Us

Collection and Use of Personal Information

We collect and use personal information for the purposes identified below.

• Applying to the CDL Program: If you apply to one of CDL’s streams, we will collect personal information, such as your first and last name, date of birth, gender, phone number, email address, country, postal code, citizenship, and other information relating to your venture, education, and why you are applying for the Program. We use this information for the purposes of processing and responding to your application, including assessing the suitability of your venture for acceptance into the Program. If you provide us with personal information about any other individual (such as your co-founder(s) or partner(s)), you confirm that you have obtained the consent of such individual(s) prior to providing any personal information to us.

• Participating in the CDL Program: If you are accepted and enrolled into the Program as a Venture or have agreed to participate as a Mentor, Partner, Guest, Student, investor or any other stakeholder, we will collect and use information about your participation in the Program in order to administer your participation. We also use the information collected from stakeholders for internal research and analysis in order to identify, evaluate and better understand factors that contribute to a successful venture and to improve the CDL program, and we may share this information for academic research purposes. 

• CDL Portal: We provide CDL stakeholders (including ventures, mentors, partners and students) with access to a portal that can be used to obtain information about CDL stakeholders, communicate and share information with CDL stakeholders, and input comments during and after group meetings and discussions. Each user group is required to create a profile page through the Portal. As part of the profile creation, CDL will collect the user’s name, email, professional title, long-form biography, LinkedIn Profile and Twitter ID (if applicable), as well as whether the user would like to be contacted by the CDL community  Through the Portal, mentors, partners, ventures and students are able to access information about and connect with the members of the CDL Community, including current and past ventures, current and alumni students.

• Register for CDL Sessions: If you register for any event or session organized and hosted by us (e.g. CDL’s annual Super Session showcasing its graduating early-stage technology companies), we will collect your first and last name, email address, organization name, and title in order to facilitate your registration.

• Subscribe to our Email Updates: If you subscribe for our email updates, we collect your email address. In addition, when you sign up for the Portal we will send you the CDL Family Newsletter which includes news and updates from the larger CDL community. If you no longer wish to receive any of these communications, you can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the “unsubscribe” link included at the bottom of the emails. Alternatively, you can opt out of receiving our email updates by contacting us at the contact information under “Contact Us” below. Please note that you may continue to receive certain informational, transactional or account-related communications from us.
• We may also use services provided by third-party platforms (such as social networking and other websites) to serve targeted advertisements on such platforms to you or others, and we may provide a hashed version of your email address or other information to the platform provider for such purposes. To opt out of the use of your information for such purposes, please contact us at amarpreet.kaur@creativedestructionlab.com.

• Surveys: From time to time, we may offer you an opportunity to participate in one of our surveys. The information obtained is used to help us understand our participants and to enhance our Program and as otherwise described at the time of the survey.

• Careers: If you apply for a job with the CDL, you may provide us with certain personal information about yourself, such as information contained in a resume, cover letter, or similar employment-related materials. We use this information for the purpose of processing and responding to your application for current and future career opportunities.

• Contact Us: When you contact us with a comment, question or complaint through email, telephone, the contact us form on our Website, you may be asked for information that identifies you, such as your name, address and a telephone number, along with additional information we need to help us promptly answer your question or respond to your comment.  We may retain this information to assist you in the future and to improve our customer service and service offerings.

Sharing of Personal Information

We do not sell, rent or disclose your personal information to third parties without your consent, except as described below or as required or permitted by applicable law.

• CDL Stakeholders: If you are a current or graduate venture in the Program, we may share your contact information and information about your venture with CDL stakeholders such as mentors and partners. CDL stakeholders will use this information to communicate with you, view open financing rounds as it relates to your venture, create ongoing engagements and endorsements, and develop relationships that may benefit you and/or your venture.

• Academic Researchers: We may share de-identified data about participants, investors and other third parties contributing to the CDL Program with academic researchers for social science and entrepreneurship research purposes. This information may include data collected from founders and their employees such as contact information, education history, work experience, and financial information about the venture, and any other information provided to us in connection with the Program. 

• Service Providers: Your personal information may be transferred (or otherwise made available) to third parties that provide services on our behalf. We use service providers to provide services such as administering our surveys, hosting the Website, providing advertising services, and sending our marketing communications. Our service providers are only provided with the information they need to perform their designated functions and are not authorized to use or disclose personal information for their own marketing or other purposes. Our service providers may be located in the U.S., Canada or other foreign jurisdictions.

• Legal and Compliance: We and our Canadian, U.S. and other foreign service providers may disclose your personal information in response to a search warrant or other legally valid inquiry or order, or to another organization for the purposes of investigating a breach of an agreement or contravention of law or detecting, suppressing or preventing fraud, or as otherwise may be required or permitted by applicable Canadian, U.S. or other law or legal process, which may include lawful access by U.S. or foreign courts, law enforcement or other government authorities. Your personal information may also be disclosed where necessary for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims and to investigate or prevent actual or suspected loss or harm to persons or property.

• Sale of Business: We may transfer any information we have about you as an asset in connection with a proposed or completed merger, acquisition or sale (including transfers made as part of insolvency or bankruptcy proceedings) involving all or part of CDL or as part of a corporate reorganization or other change in corporate control.

Information About Our Website

• Visiting our Website:  In general, you can visit our Website without telling us who you are or submitting any personal information. However, we collect the IP (Internet protocol) addresses of all visitors to our Website and other related information such as page requests, browser type, operating system and average time spent on our Website. We use this information to help us understand our Website activity and to monitor and improve our Website.

• Cookies: Our Website uses a technology called “cookies”. A cookie is a tiny element of data that our Website sends to a user’s browser, which may then be stored on the user’s hard drive so that we can recognize the user’s computer or device when they return. Cookies may provide us and our service providers with information that we will use to personalize our Website in accordance with a user’s preferences. You may set your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie or to not accept certain cookies. However, if you decide not to accept cookies from our Website, you may not be able to take advantage of all of the Website features.

• Analytics: We may use a third party such as Google Analytics to help us gather and analyze information about the areas visited on the Website (such as the pages most read, time spent, search terms and other engagement data) in order to evaluate and improve the user experience and the Website. For more information or to opt-out using the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, see “How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps” and “Google Analytics and Privacy”.

• Third Party Links:  Our Website may contain links to other websites that CDL does not own or operate. We provide links to third-party websites as a convenience to the user. These links are not intended as an endorsement of or referral to the linked websites. The linked websites have separate and independent privacy policies, notices and terms of use. We do not have any control over such websites, and therefore we have no responsibility or liability for the manner in which the organizations that operate such linked websites may collect, use or disclose, secure and otherwise treat personal information. We encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

Interest-based Advertising

We work with third parties such as ad networks and other advertising companies that use their own tracking technologies (including cookies and pixel tags) on our Website in order to provide you with tailored advertisements across the Internet. For more information on Interest-Based Advertising, Please see our Cookies and Interest-Based Advertising Policy.

Safeguards and Retention

We have implemented reasonable administrative, technical and physical measures in an effort to safeguard the personal information in our custody and control against theft, loss and unauthorized access, use, modification and disclosure. We restrict access to personal information on a need-to-know basis to employees and authorized service providers who require access to fulfill their job requirements.

We have record retention processes designed to retain personal information for no longer than necessary for the purposes set out herein or as otherwise required to meet legal or business requirements.

Your Choices

As indicated above, if you have signed up to receive our email communications, you can unsubscribe any time by clicking the “unsubscribe” link included at the bottom of the email. Alternatively, you can opt-out of receiving our marketing communications by contacting us at the contact information under “Contact Us” below.

Access to Information

Subject to limited exceptions under applicable law, you have the right to access, update and correct inaccuracies in your personal information in our custody and control. You may request access, updating and corrections of inaccuracies in your personal information in our custody or control by emailing or writing to us at the contact information set out below. We may request certain personal information for the purpose of verifying the identity of the individual seeking access to his or her personal information records.

Individuals Inside the EEA

When we process your personal data, we do so with your consent; to comply with applicable legal requirements; as necessary to pursue various legitimate interests (for example, processing applications to the CDL Program and/or facilitating registration to our CDL Sessions); and as necessary to further us entering into a contract with you (for example, processing and responding to applications for current and future career opportunities).

You may be entitled, in accordance with the applicable law, to object to or request the restriction of processing of your personal information, and to request access to, rectification, erasure and portability of your personal information. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your data protection authority. Where we use your personal information on the basis of your consent, you have the right to withdraw this consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of the processing conducted on the basis of the consent prior to its withdrawal. Where we process your personal information in furtherance of entering into a contract with you, you are not obliged to provide such personal information, however, failure to do so may not allow us to consider your application for current and future career opportunities with us.

As described in this privacy policy, we may transfer your personal information to third parties. Some of these third parties may be located in countries such as the United States, other than your own, whose privacy and data protection laws may not be equivalent to those in your country of residence. When we transfer your personal information to other countries, including the United States, we apply appropriate safeguards, to protect your personal information and comply with applicable laws, such as standard data protection contractual clauses, copies of which can be obtained from us upon request.

Where you provide us with information about, or on behalf of, any other individual or third party, it is your responsibility to ensure that they are made aware of this privacy notice.

Updates to the Privacy Policy

We may update this privacy policy periodically to reflect changes to our privacy practices. We encourage you to periodically review this page to ensure you are familiar with those changes. We will indicate at the top of this privacy policy when it was most recently updated.

Contact Us

If you have any questions or comments about this privacy policy or the manner in which we or our service providers treat your personal information, or to request access to your personal information in our records, please contact our Privacy Officer at michael.rzadki@creativedestructionlab.com.