Privacynotice.

Scale SEE is run by Scale SEE Inc (“we”, “us”), a US company. We decide how and why the personal data described here is used, which makes us its controller. Where they apply to you, we follow the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Serbian Law on Personal Data Protection.

For any question or request about your data, write to apply@scalesee.com.

When you apply

• Your email address. You sign in to the application portal with a one-time link we email to you; there is no password.
• Your application. The answers you give in the form: your name, role, phone or WhatsApp number and LinkedIn profile; your co-founders and team; your startup’s name, website, country, location, sector, legal entity, revenue stage, financials and fundraising; your customers, competitors and plans for the US market; your motivation and how you heard about us; and a link to your pitch deck or any file the form asks you to upload.
• Application records. When your application was started, saved and submitted, every version you submitted, your reference number, your acknowledgement of this notice and your newsletter choice.
• Our review. The review status, assessment and internal notes our team records while assessing applications.
• Emails. The emails we send you about your application (sign-in links, confirmation, requests for changes) and whether they were delivered.

If your answers include information about other people, such as your co-founders, please let them know and point them to this notice.

When you visit the website

Our hosting providers process the technical data every website needs, such as your IP address, browser type and the pages you request, to deliver the site and protect it against abuse (for example, to limit repeated sign-in attempts). We do not use analytics, advertising or tracking cookies. The application portal sets one strictly necessary cookie, ss.sid, which keeps you signed in for up to 30 days and is removed when you sign out.

Newsletter and community

If you subscribe to the Founders Newsletter, join the Founders Community or tick the newsletter box in your application, we process your email address and any other details you enter, such as your name, to send you the newsletter and community updates. Our sign-up forms and mailing lists run on MailerLite.

We use your data only for the purposes below. The legal bases are those of Article 12 of the Serbian Law on Personal Data Protection and Article 6 of the GDPR.

• To run the Batch 3 selection: to let you create, save and submit your application, to assess and compare applications, and to contact you about your application and the next steps. Basis: steps you ask us to take before we may enter into an agreement with you, and our legitimate interest in a fair, well-documented selection.
• To run the program if your startup is selected: to organise the Academy, Immersion Week, RiSEE Summit, the 12 months of hands-on support and Demo Day. Basis: our agreement with you and our legitimate interest in delivering the program.
• To keep the portal secure: to prevent abuse, control access and keep backups. Basis: our legitimate interest in protecting our systems and your data.
• To send the Founders Newsletter: only if you subscribed. Basis: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time with the unsubscribe link in every newsletter or by writing to us.
• To meet legal obligations: for example when the law requires us to keep records. Basis: legal obligation.

Providing the information in the application form is your choice, but we need the required answers to consider your application.

Our selection includes an AI-assisted screening step that helps our team assess applications against the program criteria. The Scale SEE team and the Expert Review Committee are responsible for the selection. You can ask us to have a person review any decision about your application, to explain how it was reached, and to take your point of view into account.

We do not sell your personal data. We share it only with:

• The people who assess applications: the Scale SEE team and the members of our Expert Review Committee, which can include mentors and experts from outside our team.
• Program partners, if your startup is selected: the mentors, advisors and event partners who deliver the program receive what they need for it, for example for Immersion Week, RiSEE Summit and Demo Day.
• Service providers that process data on our behalf and on our instructions: Hetzner Online GmbH (Germany), which hosts the application portal and its database in a data centre in the European Union; Vercel Inc. (USA), which hosts the website and forwards portal requests to our servers; Resend (USA), which delivers our emails; Google (Google Workspace), which runs our team’s email, where notifications about new applications and your messages to us arrive; and MailerLite (Lithuania), which runs our newsletter and community sign-ups.
• Authorities, when the law requires it.

Scale SEE Inc is based in the United States. The application portal and its database are hosted in the European Union, and our team and some of the providers above access and process your data from other countries, including the United States. Where the law requires safeguards for this, we rely on the standard contractual clauses our providers offer, or on an adequacy decision where one applies.

• Applications: if your startup is not selected, we delete your application, account and files by 31 December 2027 at the latest; unfinished applications follow the same schedule. If your startup takes part in the program, we keep your application while you take part and for up to 24 months afterwards.
• Sign-in data: sign-in links expire after 20 minutes; sessions end 30 days after your last visit or when you sign out.
• Backups: copies in our nightly backups are overwritten after 14 days.
• Newsletter: until you unsubscribe.
• Website logs: kept by our hosting providers for a short period only.

When the law requires us to keep something longer, we keep it only for as long as it requires.

You can ask us to:

• give you a copy of your data, also in a portable format;
• correct inaccurate data;
• delete your data;
• restrict how we use it, or stop using it where we rely on our legitimate interests;
• have a person review a decision about your application.

Where you gave consent, you can withdraw it at any time; this does not affect what we did before. Write to apply@scalesee.com; we reply within 30 days. You can change your answers until you submit, and you can ask us to delete your application at any time: we then remove your account, application, files and sign-in data and keep only a short record of the deletion (reference number and date) without your personal details.

You can also complain to the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection in Serbia (poverenik.rs). If you live in the EU, you can also contact the data protection authority in your country.

Connections to the website and the portal are encrypted (HTTPS). Only named members of our team can open the review dashboard, sign-in links work once, and applicants only ever see their own application.

We update this notice when our processes change. The date at the top shows the current version.