1. Who We Are
VDH Equity Ventures ("VDH", "we", "us" or "our") is a privately held investment vehicle with its principal place of business in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. VDH is the data controller in respect of personal data processed pursuant to this Privacy Policy.
For the purposes of applicable data protection law — including the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 ("GDPR") and any national implementing legislation — VDH Equity Ventures is responsible for your personal data.
2. Data We Collect
We may collect and process the following categories of personal data:
2.1 Data You Provide Directly
- Contact and identity information: name, email address, telephone number, job title, company name and address.
- Investment enquiry information: details of investment opportunities you submit, financial information you choose to share, and the nature of any proposed transaction.
- Correspondence: records of communications between you and VDH, including emails, messages submitted through our website contact form, and meeting notes.
2.2 Data Collected Automatically
- Usage data: information about how you use our website, including pages visited, time spent, and navigation paths.
- Technical data: IP address, browser type and version, operating system, device identifiers, and time zone settings.
- Cookie data: as described in Section 9 below.
2.3 Data from Third Parties
We may receive information about you from third parties such as professional intermediaries, referral partners, or from publicly available sources (including company registries and professional directories) in connection with investment due diligence and background review.
3. How We Use Your Data
We use your personal data for the following purposes:
- Responding to enquiries: to assess, respond to and follow up on investment enquiries and proposals submitted to us.
- Due diligence and investment activities: to conduct background checks, evaluate investment opportunities, and manage relationships with founders, co-investors and business partners.
- Contractual performance: to negotiate, execute and administer investment agreements, shareholder arrangements and ancillary legal documentation.
- Legal and regulatory compliance: to comply with applicable laws including anti-money laundering (AML), know-your-client (KYC), sanctions screening, and tax reporting obligations.
- Website operation and improvement: to operate, maintain and improve the functionality and user experience of our website.
- Legitimate business interests: to maintain records, manage disputes, enforce our legal rights, and for internal reporting and risk management purposes.
4. Legal Basis for Processing
Under the GDPR, we process your personal data on the following legal bases:
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have assessed that our interests do not override your rights and freedoms as a data subject. You may object to processing based on legitimate interests at any time — see Section 7.
6. Data Retention
We retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes described in this Policy, having regard to:
- The duration of any investment relationship or business engagement;
- Legal and regulatory retention requirements (for example, AML regulations typically require retention of KYC records for a minimum of 5 years after the end of a business relationship);
- Applicable statutes of limitation for contractual or legal claims;
- Our legitimate interest in maintaining records for the defence of potential claims.
For enquiries that do not progress to an investment relationship, we typically retain contact and enquiry information for up to 2 years following the last communication, after which it is securely deleted or anonymised.
7. Your Rights
Under the GDPR and applicable data protection law, you have the following rights in respect of your personal data:
- Right of access: to obtain a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
- Right to rectification: to request correction of inaccurate or incomplete personal data.
- Right to erasure: to request deletion of your personal data in certain circumstances (the "right to be forgotten").
- Right to restriction: to request that we restrict processing of your personal data in certain circumstances.
- Right to data portability: to receive your personal data in a structured, machine-readable format, where processing is based on consent or contract.
- Right to object: to object to processing based on legitimate interests, including for direct marketing purposes.
- Right to withdraw consent: where processing is based on your consent, to withdraw that consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing.
To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details in Section 12. We will respond within one month of receiving your request. We may need to verify your identity before processing your request.
If you believe we have not handled your personal data in accordance with applicable law, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection supervisory authority. In the Netherlands, this is the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl).
8. Security
We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data against unauthorised access, accidental loss, destruction or disclosure. These measures include access controls, secure transmission protocols (HTTPS/TLS), and restricted internal access to personal data on a need-to-know basis.
While we take reasonable precautions, no method of transmission over the internet or electronic storage is completely secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security but are committed to responding promptly to any data security incident in accordance with our legal obligations.
10. International Data Transfers
VDH operates internationally and may transfer your personal data to recipients located outside the European Economic Area (EEA). Where we make such transfers, we ensure an adequate level of protection by relying on:
- European Commission adequacy decisions;
- Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) approved by the European Commission; or
- Other lawful transfer mechanisms under applicable data protection law.
You may request information about the safeguards we apply to international transfers by contacting us.
11. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, legal obligations, or applicable law. We will post the updated Policy on this page with a revised "Last updated" date. We encourage you to review this Policy periodically.
If we make material changes that significantly affect how we process your personal data, we will take reasonable steps to notify you directly where required by law.
12. Contact Us
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, wish to exercise your data subject rights, or have a concern about how we handle your personal data, please contact us:
We aim to resolve all enquiries promptly and in accordance with our obligations under applicable data protection law.