KLØUT Ventures
We are updating this Policy to describe a new disclosure. Where a company grants an individual access to its document room, we will make available to that company a summary of how that room has been used: the documents opened, approximately how much of each was read, when and how often, the terms searched for, and requests that were refused. The summary is reported at the level of the organization the individual was identified with, and does not include names, email addresses, IP addresses, or device or browser information. It is provided only to the company that granted the access.
See Section 4.6 for the full description. This change takes effect on the date above. The prior version of this Policy remains available on request at info@kloutventures.com.
This summary is provided for convenience and readability. It does not modify or limit the full terms below, which govern.
KLØUT Ventures LLC, a Texas limited liability company ("KLØUT Ventures," "we," "us," or "our"), respects the confidentiality of the founders, funds, investors, and companies we serve. This Privacy Policy (the "Policy") explains how we collect, use, disclose, secure, and retain personal information.
This Policy applies to:
This Policy does not apply to information governed by a separate written agreement between you and KLØUT Ventures. Where an executed engagement letter, master services agreement, or non-disclosure agreement imposes confidentiality or data-handling obligations that are stricter than this Policy, those stricter obligations control.
Your use of the Site, the Portal, or the Services is also governed by our Terms of Service.
We collect personal information from three sources: information you provide to us, information we receive from third parties at your direction or as required by law, and information collected automatically when you interact with the Site or Portal.
We obtain limited information from third parties, generally at your direction or as required for compliance:
The summaries described in Section 4.6 are derived records, maintained separately from the underlying audit log and retained as described in Section 16.
We do not require you to provide sensitive personal information in order to browse the Site. We collect government identifiers, financial account details, and similar sensitive categories only where a specific engagement, statutory obligation, or verification requirement makes it necessary, and only for the duration that requirement remains in effect.
We use personal information only for the purposes described below:
We use de-identified and aggregated data, data that cannot reasonably be linked to you or your company, for benchmarking, service improvement, and internal reporting. We maintain such data in de-identified form, do not attempt to re-identify it, and contractually require the same of any recipient.
We will not use your personal information for a materially different, unrelated, or incompatible purpose without first providing notice and, where required by applicable law, obtaining your consent.
We disclose personal information only in the limited circumstances listed in this Section. This list is exhaustive.
We disclose information to parties you designate: for example, your outside counsel, accountants, auditors, transfer agent, valuation firm, investors, or a platform you have instructed us to use on your behalf. You control these instructions and may withdraw them at any time.
We engage a deliberately small number of vendors to perform functions on our behalf: cloud hosting and storage, secure document management, identity and access management, scheduling, email delivery, payment processing, and accounting. Every such vendor:
These vendors are service providers, processors, or subprocessors under applicable privacy law. Disclosures to them are not sales.
We disclose personal information where we reasonably believe disclosure is required by applicable law, regulation, subpoena, court order, or governmental or regulatory demand, or is necessary to investigate suspected fraud or a security incident, enforce our agreements, or protect the rights, property, or safety of KLØUT Ventures, our clients, or the public.
Where we receive a legal demand for Client Confidential Information, we will, unless legally prohibited, provide you notice promptly and with sufficient time to seek a protective order or other relief, and we will disclose only the narrowest set of information responsive to the demand.
If KLØUT Ventures is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, or sale of assets, personal information may be transferred as part of that transaction. Any acquirer or successor will be bound by commitments no less protective than those in this Policy, and we will provide notice before your information becomes subject to a materially different privacy policy.
We disclose information to our own attorneys, auditors, insurers, and accountants, each of whom is bound by professional or contractual duties of confidentiality, where reasonably necessary to obtain professional advice or maintain our own compliance.
Where a company grants you access to its document room, we make available to that company a summary of how that room has been used: the documents opened, approximately how much of each was read, when and how often, documents returned to on separate occasions, the terms searched for, and requests that were refused.
This summary is reported at the level of the organization you were identified with when access was granted. It does not include your name, email address, IP address, or device or browser information. Where the organization you were identified with has only one participant, the summary necessarily describes that individual's activity; we disclose the number of participants alongside the summary so that this is visible to the recipient.
We make the summary available only to the company that granted the access. We do not provide it to any other party granted access to the same room, and we do not provide it to anyone outside that company.
The following practices are prohibited by our internal policy and by the contracts we execute with our vendors:
These are not aspirational statements. Each is implemented as an express restriction in our vendor agreements, and a breach constitutes a material breach of those agreements.
Capitalization records, valuation inputs, fund financials, limited partner data, and intellectual property filings are among the most sensitive information a company holds. We treat Client Confidential Information under a heightened standard:
Where we act as a service provider or processor on your behalf with respect to personal information of your employees, stockholders, or limited partners, you are the controller or business with respect to that information, and we process it solely on your documented instructions.
Where the EU or UK General Data Protection Regulation applies, we rely on the following legal bases:
| Legal Basis | Processing Activities |
|---|---|
| Performance of a contract | Delivering the Services, administering the Portal, scheduling consultations, invoicing, and providing support. |
| Legitimate interests | Securing our systems and preventing fraud, maintaining audit logs, responding to inquiries from prospective clients, improving the Site, managing our business, and establishing or defending legal claims. We conduct a balancing assessment and do not rely on this basis where our interests are overridden by your rights. |
| Legal obligation | Recordkeeping, tax and financial reporting, sanctions and anti-money-laundering screening, and responding to lawful requests from authorities. |
| Consent | Non-essential cookies and analytics where consent is required, optional marketing communications, and any processing of special category data. You may withdraw consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing. |
| Vital interests / public interest | Rare circumstances involving safety or a legally mandated public interest task. |
Subject to applicable law and to verification, you may exercise the following rights with respect to your personal information:
Email: info@kloutventures.com
Mail: KLØUT Ventures LLC, Attn: Privacy Officer; postal address available on request.
Please include your name, the email address associated with your interactions with us, the specific right you wish to exercise, and sufficient detail for us to locate your information.
To protect your information, we verify requests before acting. Verification generally requires you to confirm your identity from the email address on file and, for requests involving sensitive information or Portal records, to complete an additional authentication step. We will not disclose personal information in response to an unverified request. We use information submitted for verification solely for that purpose.
You may designate an authorized agent to submit a request on your behalf. We require written proof of authorization signed by you, and we may require you to verify your identity directly with us.
We confirm receipt of your request within ten (10) business days and describe how we will process it. We respond substantively within forty-five (45) days, or within one (1) month where the EU or UK GDPR applies. Where reasonably necessary, we may extend this period, by an additional forty-five (45) days under U.S. state law, or by up to two (2) further months under the GDPR, and will notify you of the extension and the reason for it within the original period. Requests are free of charge unless manifestly unfounded, excessive, or repetitive, in which case we may charge a reasonable fee or decline the request and explain why.
If we decline a request, our response will explain the reason and describe how to appeal. To appeal, reply to our response or write to info@kloutventures.com with the subject line "Privacy Request Appeal." We will review the appeal and inform you in writing of our decision, and the reasons for it, within forty-five (45) days, or within sixty (60) days where the applicable state statute permits, in every case within the period required by the law of your state. If the appeal is denied, we will provide a method for contacting the applicable state Attorney General or supervisory authority to submit a complaint.
We may decline all or part of a request where an exception applies: for example, where retention is required by law, where information is necessary to complete a transaction or perform a contract, where deletion would impair our ability to detect security incidents or defend legal claims, or where the request concerns information we process solely as a service provider on behalf of a client. Where we act as a service provider, we will refer your request to the relevant client or, at their direction, assist them in responding.
You may opt out of non-essential marketing communications at any time using the unsubscribe link in any such message or by contacting us. We will continue to send transactional and administrative communications relating to your account or engagement.
This Section supplements the Policy for residents of Texas and is provided under the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (Tex. Bus. & Com. Code Ch. 541) (the "TDPSA").
Texas residents may exercise the rights described in Section 9 and may appeal a denial as described in Section 9.5. If an appeal is denied, you may submit a complaint to the Texas Attorney General at texasattorneygeneral.gov.
This Section supplements the Policy for California residents and is provided under the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (the "CCPA").
| CCPA Category | Examples We Collect | Sold or Shared? |
|---|---|---|
| A. Identifiers | Name, business address, email address, telephone number, IP address, account identifiers | No |
| B. Customer records (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)) | Name, address, telephone number, financial account information, and, where required for verification, government identification numbers | No |
| C. Protected classifications | Only where voluntarily provided in a recruiting context or as required for equal employment reporting | No |
| D. Commercial information | Services engaged, engagement history, billing and payment records | No |
| E. Biometric information | Not collected | No |
| F. Internet or network activity | Pages viewed, session data, Portal access and document activity logs | No |
| G. Geolocation data | Approximate location inferred from IP address only | No |
| H. Sensory data | Call or meeting recordings and transcripts, where consented to | No |
| I. Professional or employment information | Job title, employer, professional history, resumes and application materials | No |
| J. Education information | Not collected. We do not obtain education records subject to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Self-reported education history on a resume is treated under Category I. | No |
| K. Inferences | We do not build consumer profiles for advertising or marketing. Where a company grants you access to its document room, we derive from Portal audit data a summary and score describing how that room has been used, reported at organization level and made available only to that company, as described in Section 4.6 | No |
| L. Sensitive personal information | Account credentials, government identification numbers, and financial account information, collected only where necessary to perform the Services or satisfy a legal obligation | No |
Sources of collection are described in Section 2; business and commercial purposes are described in Section 3; and categories of recipients are described in Section 4.
KLØUT Ventures has not sold or shared personal information, including the personal information of consumers under sixteen (16) years of age, in the preceding twelve (12) months, and does not do so. Because we do not sell or share personal information, we do not offer a "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" mechanism; a request submitted under Section 9 will nonetheless be honored and recorded.
We use and disclose sensitive personal information only for the purposes permitted under CCPA regulations: performing the Services, verifying identity, preventing fraud and security incidents, ensuring quality and safety, and complying with law. We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information to infer characteristics about you. Accordingly, we are not required to offer a "Limit the Use of My Sensitive Personal Information" link, and no such link is provided.
Retention periods are described in Section 16.
California Civil Code § 1798.83 permits California residents to request information about disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. We make no such disclosures.
Submit requests as described in Section 9.1. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any CCPA right.
Residents of states with comprehensive consumer privacy statutes, including Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Oregon, Montana, Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Tennessee, Minnesota, Maryland, Indiana, Kentucky, Rhode Island, and Arkansas, have rights substantially similar to those described in Section 9, subject to each state's specific statute and effective date. Residents of Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Vermont will have comparable rights as their respective statutes take effect.
In each such state:
Nevada residents: Nevada law permits residents to opt out of the sale of certain covered information. We do not sell covered information as defined under Nevada law. You may nonetheless submit a verified request to info@kloutventures.com.
Washington and Nevada health data: We do not collect consumer health data as defined under the Washington My Health My Data Act or Nevada SB 370.
Where the EU GDPR, UK GDPR, or Swiss FADP applies to our processing, KLØUT Ventures LLC is the controller with respect to personal information we collect for our own purposes, and a processor with respect to Client Confidential Information we process on behalf of a client.
In addition to the rights described in Section 9, you have the right to:
Response timing. Requests from individuals protected by the GDPR are answered without undue delay and in any event within one (1) month, extendable by up to two further months where the request is complex or numerous, with notice of any extension within the first month.
EU/UK representative. KLØUT Ventures is established in the United States and directs its services to founders, companies, and funds in the United States. We do not offer goods or services to, or monitor the behaviour of, individuals in the EEA or the United Kingdom on a scale that requires the appointment of a representative under Article 27 of the EU or UK GDPR: any such processing is occasional, does not involve large-scale processing of special category data, and is unlikely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of individuals. We keep this assessment under review and will appoint and identify a representative here if it changes.
Providing personal information is generally necessary to enter into or perform a contract with us. If you decline to provide information we reasonably require, we may be unable to deliver the Services.
KLØUT Ventures is based in the United States, and our systems and those of our service providers are hosted in the United States. If you access the Site or Portal or provide information from outside the United States, your personal information will be transferred to, stored in, and processed in the United States, where data protection laws may differ from those in your jurisdiction.
Where we transfer personal information from the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland to the United States or another third country, we implement an appropriate transfer mechanism, which may include the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (and the UK International Data Transfer Addendum where applicable), together with supplementary technical and organizational measures such as encryption in transit and at rest and a policy of challenging overbroad government requests. You may request a copy of the relevant safeguards by contacting info@kloutventures.com.
We maintain administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect personal information against unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. These include:
If we determine that a breach of security has resulted in unauthorized acquisition of personal information, we will notify affected individuals and applicable regulators as and when required by law, without unreasonable delay.
No method of transmission or storage is completely secure. While we work to protect your information, we cannot guarantee absolute security. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your Portal credentials and for promptly notifying us at info@kloutventures.com of any suspected unauthorized access.
We retain personal information only as long as necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, or as required or permitted by law. In determining retention periods we consider the nature and sensitivity of the information, the duration of the engagement, applicable statutes of limitation, and legal, tax, securities, and regulatory recordkeeping obligations.
| Information Type | General Retention Approach |
|---|---|
| Website inquiries and consultation requests that do not become engagements | Up to twenty-four (24) months, then deleted |
| Client Confidential Information | For the term of the engagement, then in accordance with your written instruction and the applicable engagement agreement |
| Financial, billing, and tax records | As required by applicable tax and accounting law |
| Compliance and verification records | As required by applicable anti-money-laundering, sanctions, or securities regulations |
| Portal access and security audit logs | A rolling period sufficient for security monitoring and investigation |
| Document room engagement summaries | One (1) year from the date of the activity summarized, then deleted |
| Recruiting materials for candidates not hired | Up to twelve (12) months, unless you consent to a longer period |
Upon termination of an engagement, and at your written request, we will return or securely delete Client Confidential Information within a commercially reasonable period, except for (i) copies retained in routine encrypted backups, which are overwritten on our standard backup cycle, and (ii) records we are legally required to retain. Any retained copy remains subject to the confidentiality and security commitments in this Policy for as long as it is held.
The Site and the Services may link to or interoperate with third-party platforms, including equity and fund administration systems such as Carta, scheduling tools, and payment processors. When you use such a platform, including when we access it on your behalf at your direction, that platform's own privacy policy and terms govern its collection and use of your information. We do not control and are not responsible for the privacy practices of any third party.
KLØUT Ventures is an independent firm. References to third-party certifications, platforms, or trademarks are for identification purposes only and do not imply endorsement, sponsorship, or affiliation.
We encourage you to review the privacy policy of any third-party service before providing information to it.
The Site, the Portal, and the Services are intended for a business audience and are not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from any individual under the age of eighteen (18). If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child without appropriate consent, we will delete it promptly. If you believe a child has provided us personal information, contact info@kloutventures.com.
We may update this Policy to reflect changes in our practices or in applicable law. The "Last Updated" date at the top indicates when the Policy was last revised. If we make a material change, including any change that would expand our use or disclosure of personal information, we will provide prominent notice on the Site and, where we hold your contact information and where required by law, notify you directly before the change takes effect. Your continued use of the Site, Portal, or Services after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the revised Policy.
We maintain prior versions of this Policy and will provide a copy on request.
For questions about this Policy, to exercise a privacy right, or to submit a complaint:
KLØUT Ventures LLC
Attn: Privacy Officer
Postal address available on request.
All enquiries (privacy requests, security reports, general): info@kloutventures.com
We take privacy complaints seriously and will investigate and respond to any complaint we receive. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact your state Attorney General or, if you are located in the EEA or UK, your local supervisory authority.