This Privacy Policy is binding for the online partnering platform operated by Venture Valuation VV AG under the names HelloPartnering and Biotechgate Digital Partnering (together, the "Platform").

1. Preface

The Platform is owned and operated by Venture Valuation VV AG ("Venture Valuation"), Zurich, Switzerland, which is the controller of the personal data processed in connection with the Platform.

This Policy reflects the EU/EEA General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection of 25 September 2020 (revDSG / nFADP), in force since 1 September 2023. Our Swiss supervisory authority is the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC); if you are in the EEA, you may also contact your local supervisory authority. We apply the same standards to all data subjects, whether or not they are in the EEA. You can contact us on data protection matters at support@hellopartnering.com for HelloPartnering, or at partnering@biotechgate.com for Biotechgate Digital Partnering.

By using the Platform (including searching the database, visiting profiles, adding, importing or updating information, and submitting any information) you agree to this Privacy Policy. You also confirm that all data and information you submit is free of any infringement of the rights of third parties.

2. Personal Data

Venture Valuation will collect and process your personal data and any other information relating to your interactions and dealings on HelloPartnering. This Privacy Policy explains how we will manage your personal data, the purposes for which we use it, the security measures we have put in place to protect your data and what your rights under data protection legislation are and how you may choose to exercise these.

Personal Data is defined as information relating to identifiable living individuals, which we have obtained or you provide to us, such as your name, address, email address, telephone number, date of birth, from which you can be directly or indirectly identified, and may include information such as IP addresses and online identifiers.

3. Data Controller

Venture Valuation is defined as the Data Controller and is therefore responsible for protecting your personal data in line with our obligations under data protection legislation.

We may use third parties to process your personal data (Data Processors) where we have outsourced a particular function or where we wish to avail of that third party's expertise in providing a particular service. These include hosting and infrastructure providers, email, payment and teleconferencing providers, analytics providers, and artificial-intelligence and large-language-model providers; some are located outside Switzerland and the EEA (see "International transfers"). These third parties are carefully selected to ensure that your data is adequately protected by appropriate technical and organisational security measures.

Venture Valuation is the controller for the operation of the Platform, for VV Events (Events organised by Venture Valuation itself, including the Biotechgate Digital Partnering series), and for the security, improvement and aggregated analysis of the Platform. For an Organiser Event (an Event organised by a third party that uses the Platform for its own conference), the Organiser is a separate controller for its own purposes, in particular participant communications and running its conference; for those purposes Venture Valuation acts as the Organiser's processor. Where Venture Valuation and an Organiser jointly determine the purposes and means of processing, they make the essence of their arrangement available to data subjects on request.

4. Sources of Personal Data

We obtain personal data where you provide it directly to us, for example when you register an account, register for a conference with us or the conference organizer, or enter your information into an online form to contact us. We also obtain personal data from Biotechgate and the Biotechgate interface; from your registrations and activity at earlier Events on the Platform; and from the Organiser of an Event.

5. Purposes of Processing

Personal data is submitted by users on HelloPartnering for two purposes:

(i) "HelloPartnering users"
We collect personal data submitted by users or delegates who sign up to use HelloPartnering to create an account i.e. name, contact details, professional profile. We also collect and store all information submitted as a user of the software (i.e. using the search form, visiting a profile, creating an account as well as any information a subscriber stores in his account, such as bookmarks or notes);

(ii) "HelloPartnering profiles"
We collect information where a user voluntarily provides this to be published on HelloPartnering (such as company profiles, personal profile, etc.). User may voluntarily import an existing profile from a previous conference or from Biotechgate, an external company database.

6. Automatic registration and publishing (VV Events)

If you opt in to automatic registration for future editions of a VV Event (see the Terms of Use), then for each future edition we process your personal data as follows:

• we reuse the master data from your most recent registration, identified by your email address, to create your registration for the new edition;
• we create or update your organisation's profile from (i) a recent profile you maintained at an earlier Event, (ii) the current Biotechgate data set, only where you have opted in to exporting your profile to Biotechgate (which may not be offered for every Event), or (iii) failing these, basic organisation data only (name, address with city and country, website, industry);
• we create or maintain an entry for your organisation in Biotechgate and map it to a Biotechgate company identifier, stored for identification only, whether or not you have opted in to exporting your profile to Biotechgate; where you have not opted in, we do not import company profile content from Biotechgate into your Event profile, but we may complete your organisation's Biotechgate entry from publicly available sources, primarily its website;
• we record the origin of the profile data and your most recently active Event (from your login history) in an internal comment field that other participants cannot see;
• where the Organiser has enabled automatic publishing, we activate your account and set your profile to visible, which may happen before your first login; other participants can find your profile and contact you only once partnering has opened for that edition.

Legal basis. Your consent (the opt-in) for carrying your data into future editions and for publication before your first login; our legitimate interest in identifying and matching organisations, for the identifier mapping. You can withdraw your consent at any time from your profile page or through the opt-out link in our emails. To have an automatically published profile deactivated, contact support (actioned within one working day) or, for Biotechgate Digital Partnering editions, withdraw from the edition in your personal profile; on request we will also erase your data unless we have an overriding legal ground to keep it. Withdrawal does not affect processing carried out before it. We will notify you by email when your profile has been set up for a new edition.

7. Legal basis for processing

Where the GDPR applies, the legal bases on which we rely are Article 6(1)(b) (performance of a contract, to provide the Platform to you and share your data with Organisers and other participants so that you can connect), Article 6(1)(a) (consent, in particular for automatic registration and for non-service marketing), and Article 6(1)(f) (legitimate interests, for security, service improvement, aggregated analysis, and reference use). Under the revDSG we process personal data in accordance with its principles and, where required, on the basis of your consent or an overriding legitimate interest.

We rely on legitimate interests for legitimate purposes such as:

• For day to day operational and business purposes
• The pursuit of our activities as a commercial enterprise or that of a third party, e.g. managing our contracts and relationships with our customers, suppliers, service providers, vendors and other commercial partners
• Compliance with legal and regulatory obligations
• Improvement and development of business operations and service offerings
• Conducting analytical and statistical research
• To help us improve our services and systems and your experience on the Platform
• To provide you with information about our products and services where we are permitted to do so
• The reorganisation or sale of the whole or part of our business

We may also use your personal data to contact you in connection with, or to deal with, queries, complaints or suggestions relating to the services we provide to you and your account. Specifically, you will be notified (by e-mail or other available form) if another user would like to meet with you at a conference you have signed up for.

8. Meeting requests, messages and aggregated statistics

The content of meeting requests and messages, and the fact that two specific participants are meeting, are confidential between the participants and their organisations. Venture Valuation and the Organiser do not read, disclose or publish the content of individual meeting requests or messages, except where strictly necessary to operate the service (for example delivering the message, preventing spam or abuse, providing security, or providing support at your request) or where required by law. Messages sent through the Messenger are shared with the users assigned to the same organisation as the sender or the recipient, who can read them; it is your responsibility to check that you and your colleagues are correctly assigned to your organisation, which is shown on the dashboard.

We may compile and use aggregated, anonymised statistics about activity on the Platform, for example the total number of meeting requests and meetings, acceptance, decline and no-show rates, and the volume of requests exchanged between categories or groups of organisations (for example Biotech to Pharma, or investor to start-up). These statistics are produced at a level that does not identify, and does not permit inferences about, any individual participant, organisation, meeting or message; we suppress small groups where necessary to achieve this. We may use, publish and share such statistics, for example in post-event reports, benchmarking and marketing.

We provide the organiser of an Event with meeting metadata for that Event (meeting requests, participants, times, acceptance and attendance) so that the organiser can run and report on its Event. This does not include message content. We do not otherwise disclose which specific participants met; any wider use or sharing is aggregated and anonymised only.

9. Use of information

Before and during the conference
All information provided by you including your personal and company profiles will be made available to the other participants of the conference. As the concept of HelloPartnering is to be able to match the right people with each other, making this information available to other users is a key feature of the software. By using HelloPartnering, you agree that all information can be made available to other conference participants, the conference organizers as well as Venture Valuation for the purposes of administering your account.

After the conference
After the conference, you might select to transfer your company profile to Biotechgate, where it can be published and help promote the company on the Biotechgate website, individual country portals and on partners websites. You have the option to opt-out of transferring your corporate profile back from HelloPartnering to Biotechgate. In case your corporate profile is published on Biotechgate (such as an organization's profile, a licensing-deal, an event), you confirm that you have authority to make this information public and that this information can be made publicly available. For information about the use of this profile, please read the Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions of Biotechgate.

Marketing By registering and submitting your information to HelloPartnering you agree that we may contact you by post, telephone, e-mail or fax to keep you updated on developments regarding HelloPartnering software and any Biotechgate and Venture Valuation related information including, but not limited to the monthly newsletter of Venture Valuation. You have the possibility to unsubscribe ("opt-out") for any of these information services.

10. Sharing of Information

HelloPartnering users
All information you submit during your registration process (conference registration) i.e. name, company, position, contact details, conference goals as well as information in your personal profile will be made available to other conference participants.

Sharing with the conference organiser. Every Event has an organiser. For some Events the organiser is Venture Valuation; for others it is a third party (for example a conference company or a trade or industry body). Where a third party organises an Event, that organiser is a separate, independent controller of the participant data for that Event. We share with the organiser of an Event the registration and profile data of its participants (name, organisation, position, contact details including email, conference goals, and the personal and company profile), whether you registered directly or were registered from a list the organiser provided to us. The organiser uses this data to run and administer the Event, to communicate with you about that Event and its own related or future events, and for its own reporting and analysis. The organiser's use of your data is governed by the organiser's own privacy terms. You can object to an organiser's communications about other events at any time, with us or with the organiser.

HelloPartnering profiles
On HelloPartnering you are encouraged to publish your company information (such as an organization's profile, information about your licensing deals, financing rounds, product portfolio, specific interests, etc.) which is then provided to other conference attendees. They will have the opportunity to send you meeting requests based on your company and/or personal profile. In general we do not edit profiles, but we reserve the right to exclude or otherwise edit any information submitted to HelloPartnering which we do not deem appropriate. In addition, Venture Valuation reserves the right to complete a company profile based on public available information and/or from Biotechgate or attach additional information to it which is provided by a news feed or a cooperation partner (e.g. clinical trial information or company news etc.). This additional information may also be attached automatically to the profiles. While Venture Valuation shall exert its best effort to match the right attachment with the right profile, it cannot be guaranteed that any attached information is linked to the correct profile as it will be done with the support of artificial intelligence (AI). In this case Venture Valuation shall not be liable for any problems that might arise but will remove incorrect attachments within 48 hours of notification. For questions and requests about your profile, please contact us using the "Contact Information" below.

Service and transactional e-mails that are required for the Platform to function (for example account activation, password reset, registration and automatic-registration confirmations, a request to complete your profile (sent at least once), and notices about changes to your account or these policies) are sent automatically and cannot be turned off. You can choose which meeting-related notifications (such as new meeting requests, messages from other participants, cancellations and scheduled or rescheduled meetings) you receive in your notification preferences. By using any of our services you agree that these automatically generated service e-mails will be sent to you.

11. Automated processing

We do not take decisions producing legal or similarly significant effects about you based solely on automated processing without a lawful basis under Article 22 GDPR. Automatic registration and publishing (where you have opted in) and the automated attachment of third-party content to profiles are carried out with your consent or on the basis of our legitimate interests, are limited in effect, remain editable by you, and are subject to your right to obtain human review, to express your view and to object. AI-assisted attachment of news, clinical-trial or partner information to a profile is decision-support only; we correct mismatches within 48 hours of notification.

We use artificial intelligence, including large language models provided by third parties acting as our processors, to power search, matchmaking and profile features of the Platform (for example retrieval-augmented search over profiles that are already visible on the Platform). We do not use your data to train third-party AI models, and we do not use the content of meeting requests or messages for these features.

12. Disclosure of Personal Data

We will not disclose your personal data except as outlined above and/or as follows:

• Where the disclosure is necessary to enable us to carry out our obligations under any agreement we have with you
• Where we need to provide your data to counterparties to transactions entered into by you e.g. payment service providers / conference organizer
• Where we need to share your personal data with our auditors in accordance with applicable tax and regulatory reporting obligations
• Where we need to share your personal data with our legal advisors where necessary to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights or for the purposes of legal proceedings.
• Where we are required to share information to any (or proposed) assignee, transferee or successor in title to the whole or any relevant part of our business, and their respective officers, employees, agents and advisers; and
• If the disclosure is required by law or regulation, or court or administrative order having force of law, or is required to be made to any of our regulators

13. International transfers

Some of our processors are located outside Switzerland and the EEA, including in the United States. Where we transfer personal data to such a country, we rely on:

• an adequacy decision, where one applies to the recipient, including the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and the Swiss-US Data Privacy Framework for recipients certified under them; or
• the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, together with the recognition and adaptations required by the FDPIC for transfers from Switzerland, and additional technical and organisational measures where our assessment shows they are needed.

You may request a copy of the relevant safeguards using the contact details below.

14. Opting out

The Platform provides you with the opportunity to 'opt-out' of having your personal information used for certain purposes. For example, if you no longer wish to receive newsletters, you may opt-out by following the instructions included in each communication, or by contacting us by any of the methods listed in "Contact Information" (below).

15. Your Rights

I. Access to Personal Data
Where you wish to access a copy of your personal data held by us, you may do so by contacting us in writing. We will respond within one month, extendable by two further months for complex requests.

II. Rectification or Erasure of Personal Data
Where you wish the data we hold on you to be rectified, you have the right to request this in writing. Where you wish to exercise your right to have your personal data erased, we will do so without undue delay, subject to the exemptions in Article 17(3) GDPR.

III. Restriction of processing
You have the right to obtain restriction of processing of your personal data where you contest the accuracy of the data, for a period allowing us to verify it; where the processing is unlawful and you oppose erasure and request restriction instead; where we no longer need the data but you require us to keep it for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims; and where you have objected to processing pending verification of whether our legitimate grounds override yours.

IV. Right to Data Portability
You have the right to receive your personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and to transmit those data to another controller.

V. Withdrawal of consent and objection
You have the right to withdraw any consent at any time, without affecting processing carried out before the withdrawal, and the right to object to processing based on our legitimate interests.

VI. Right to Lodge a Complaint
You have the right to lodge a complaint about how your personal data has been processed by us with the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) in Switzerland, or with a supervisory authority in your EEA country of residence.

16. Data retention

We keep your account and profile data for as long as your account exists, so that you and other participants can see and build on earlier interactions (for example which people you met at conferences some years ago) and so that we can re-match you for future conferences. You can ask us to erase your data at any time, and we will do so unless we have an overriding legal ground to keep it. We keep any other personal data only for as long as it is needed for the purpose for which it was collected, or for as long as the law requires us to keep it, for example records relevant to accounting, which must be kept for 10 years under Swiss law.

One Platform across Events. The Platform operates as a single system. We maintain one account and profile for you across all Events, and a consolidated database of participants and organisations from all Events on the Platform. We use this to operate the Platform, to let you and other participants build on earlier interactions, to enable automatic or one-click re-registration and matchmaking for future Events, to improve the Platform, and to produce aggregated analysis. Data from an Organiser Event is included in this consolidated database for these purposes; it is not disclosed to other organisers except in aggregated, anonymised form.

If we introduce features that make your profile visible or contactable outside a specific Event, we will notify you in advance, the ongoing visibility will be off by default, and you will be able to control it in your profile settings.

17. Security

Venture Valuation follows generally accepted industry standards and takes appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. However, no method of transmission over the internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information appropriate to the level of security required, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. For any information submitted to us, we track the IP address of the submitting party for security reasons.

If a personal data breach is likely to result in a risk to your rights, we will notify the FDPIC, and any competent EEA supervisory authority, as required by Article 24 revDSG and Articles 33-34 GDPR, and we will inform you where the law requires.

18. Use of cookies

In certain cases, we use what are known as "cookies" (small text file that is stored on a user's computer for record-keeping purposes.). You can configure your browser to display a warning before cookies are saved. You can also choose to dispense with personal cookies and the advantages that they offer. If you do so, however, you will not be able to use certain services.

19. Use of Google Analytics

This website uses Google Analytics, provided by Google Ireland Limited (and Google LLC, United States), and StatCounter. These tools use cookies and similar technologies to help us understand how the Platform is used; they collect information such as pages viewed, approximate location derived from a truncated or partly masked IP address, device and browser data, and time of visit. We do not combine this with data that directly identifies you. Transfers to Google LLC in the United States are covered by the EU-US and Swiss-US Data Privacy Frameworks and, as a fallback, the Standard Contractual Clauses.

We rely on Article 6(1)(f) GDPR (our legitimate interest in understanding and improving how the Platform is used). You can object at any time through your browser settings, our cookie banner, or Google's opt-out browser add-on. You can read more about how Google Analytics treats data at Google: Safeguarding your data, and about StatCounter at statcounter.com.

20. Legal Disclaimer

Venture Valuation may disclose such information as is required by law or in order to comply with a legal process or court order.

21. Notification of Changes

We will give reasonable prior notice of material changes to this Policy by email or through the Platform. We reserve the right to modify this Policy at any time, so please review it periodically.

22. Applicable Law

This Privacy Policy is governed by the laws of Switzerland, without regard to principles of conflict of laws. The courts of Zurich, Switzerland have jurisdiction over any dispute arising in connection with it, subject to any mandatory place of jurisdiction.

23. Contact information

HelloPartnering / Biotechgate Digital Partnering
c/o Venture Valuation VV AG
Kasernenstrasse 11
CH-8004 Zurich
Switzerland

Phone: +41 (43) 321 86 60

E-mail: support@hellopartnering.com (HelloPartnering) or partnering@biotechgate.com (Biotechgate Digital Partnering)

www.venturevaluation.com
 

24. Update history

Version 2.2, published 21 September 2026: service and transactional e-mails clarified (meeting-related notifications can be configured in the notification preferences; only service e-mails required for the Platform cannot be turned off); clarified that a profile can be found by other participants only once partnering has opened. Version 2.1, published 10 September 2026: sharing of participant and profile data with the organiser of an Event (including third-party organisers as independent controllers, and organisers that supplied participant data for import); meeting metadata for an Event provided to that Event's organiser; single cross-Event account, profile and consolidated participant database; AI / large-language-model providers named as processors; retrieval-augmented AI search over already-visible profiles, with no model training and no use of message content; advance notice and default-off settings for any future visibility outside a specific Event. Previous versions: 2.0, published 10 September 2026; 1.03, published 27 April 2020.