Last updated: June 30th, 2025
1) Introduction: This is the privacy policy of Ascendance US Inc., a Delaware corporation, doing business as Expop (“Expop”, “we”, “us”, “our Platform”,” our Services”, and “our Challenge”). We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This policy describes the types of information we may collect from you or that you may provide when you use the Expop platform (“Platform”), compete in The Start-Up Challenge by Expop (the “Challenge”) and engage with the content therein (the “Services”), as well as our practices for collecting, using, maintaining, protecting, and disclosing that information.
This policy, which incorporates our Terms of Use by reference, applies to information we collect on our Platform, in email, other electronic messages between you and the platform, in the course of utilizing our Services, and by participating in the Challenge. Please read this policy carefully to understand our policies and practices regarding your information and how we will treat it. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, your choice is not to use our Website. By accessing or using this Platform, these Services, and by participating in the Challenge, you agree to this privacy policy and consent to our processing data in the United States and under its laws.
While we do our best to protect your personal information, Expop cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. In essence, you must protect yourself. You are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of any password and/or account information. Please be careful and responsible whenever you are online, especially when using a computer that other people can use also or if you are on an unsecured network.
This policy may change from time to time. Your continued use of this Platform, the Services, and participation in the Challenge after we make changes is deemed to be acceptance of those changes, so please check the policy periodically for updates.
2) Children under the age of 13: Our Platform, Services, and Challenge iare not intended for children under 13 years of age. No one under age 13 may provide any personal information to the Platform. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are under 13, do not use or provide any information on this Platform, through our Services, or participate in the Challenge or otherwise provide any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, email address, or any screen name or user name you may use. If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a child under 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 13, please contact us at data@expop.io.
3) Information We Collect About You and How We Collect It: Upon registration and during the Challenge, Expop will collect certain personal information from participants. This may include:
Your name, date of birth, email address, school or affiliation, grade level, country of residence, and contact information for you and/or your parent or guardian.
Unique personal identifies, such as online identifiers, usernames, or account names.
Characteristics of protected classes such as age.
Education level.
We may also collect payment information, such as:
Names of payors, credit card information, expiration dates, billing addresses, etc.
We may also collect records and copies of your correspondence (including email addresses) if you contact us, search queries on the Platform, and when you report a problem on our Platform, with our services, or with regards to the Challenge.
We also collect information that you provide as part of the Challenge activities, such as:
Project submissions, pitch decks, business idea descriptions, survey responses, or other materials you create. Additionally, we may record video or audio of Challenge sessions, workshops, presentations, or events, which could capture your image, likeness, or voice, as enumerated in our Terms.
We may also collect information about your internet connection, the equipment you use to access our Platform, Services, and participate in the Challenge, and usage details. We collect this information directly from you when you provide it to us, and automatically as you navigate through the Platform, Services, and participate in the Challenge. Information collected automatically may include browser or device identifiers, usage details, physical/geolocation or network location information, IP addresses, and information collected through cookies. We do not collect personal information automatically, but we may tie non-personal information collected automatically to personal information about you that we collect from other sources or that you provide to us. It helps us improve our Platform and Services and to deliver a better and more personalized service by allowing us to:
Estimate our audience size and usage patterns.
Learn about your preferences, allowing us to customize our Platform and Services to your individual interests.
Speed up your searches, Platform, and Service performance.
Recognize you when you return to our Platform.
The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include:
Cookies (or browser cookies): A cookie is a small file placed on the hard drive of your computer. You may refuse to accept browser cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our Website. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you direct your browser to our Website.
Web Beacons: Pages of our Platform and Services may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit Expop, for example, to count users who have visited those pages and for other related statistics (for example, recording the popularity of certain content and verifying system and server integrity).
You also may provide information to be published or displayed (hereinafter, "posted") on public areas of the Platform, or transmitted to other users of the Platform or third parties (collectively, "User Contributions"). Your User Contributions are posted on and transmitted to others at your own risk. Although we may limit access to certain features, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. Additionally, we cannot control the actions of other users of the Platform with whom you may choose to share your User Contributions. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that your User Contributions will not be viewed by unauthorized persons.
4) Cookie Removal and More Information: You can always modify your browser so as not to accept cookies or to notify you when cookies are sent to it. For more information about cookies including removing any or all your cookies, please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org.
Also, if you would like to remove the Google Analytics and DoubleClick cookies, please go to http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout and http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/plugin/ respectively. You should be aware that this will affect your Google cookies on all sites, and not just ours.
5) How We Use Your Information: The data we collect is used for purposes of administering and delivering the Platform, Services, and Challenge. This includes:
Upholding contractual obligations. For example, if you subscribe to our Platform and Services, we use your personal data to fulfill and deliver access to the Platform and provide those Services to you.
Verifying eligibility (e.g., age and parental consent), grouping teams or assigning mentors, contacting participants with updates, judging entries, awarding prizes, improving program content, and notifying you about changes to our Platform, Services, and Challenge.
This also includes:
Providing you with notices about your account, subscription, expiration and renewal notices. Information collected may also be used to carry out our contractual obligations and enforce our rights arising from any agreements between you and Expop, including billing and collection.
We use contact information (email, phone) to communicate with you about Platform, Service, and Challenge matters and upcoming opportunities.
School information may be used to ensure diverse representation and to verify student status.
Recorded sessions may be made available to other participants for educational review, for promotion purposes of future Services and Challenges and programs organized by Expop or used by Expop for internal training and quality assurance.
Disclosing depersonalized, non-identifying information to educational partners, sponsors, and investors in client pitches in the course of expanding the Platform, Services, and Challenge.
Other uses include:
Operational uses: To administer our site, site performance, and internal operations, such as to conduct troubleshooting, testing, and projecting usage volume and impact.
Security Purposes: To keep our site safe and secure and to control access to your account and services.
Advertising: To deliver relevant advertising to you and to measure and optimize the effectiveness of our advertising.
Optimization: To ensure our content, layout, and offerings are presented in the most effective manner for you and your devices.
Research: To better understand our subscribers, potential subscribers, and visitors so we can improve our Platform, Services, and Challenge, and better target how we deliver information about those products and services.
We may disclose depersonalized, aggregated information about our users and information that does not identify any individual without restriction.
We may also disclose information that we collect, or you provide as described in this policy:
To our subsidiaries and affiliates.
To our service providers and third parties who perform services on our behalf. For example, this may include payment processors such as Stripe. The categories of information we may share include any of the categories described above.
To contractors, service providers, and other third parties we use to support our business, and who are bound by contractual obligations to keep personal information confidential and use it only for the purposes for which we disclose it to them.
To fulfill the purpose for which you provide it. For example, if you give us an email address to use the "email a friend" feature of our Platform, we will transmit the contents of that email and your email address to the recipients.
For any other purpose disclosed by us when you provide the information.
With your consent.
We may also disclose your personal information:
To comply with any court order, law, or legal process, including to respond to any government or regulatory request.
To enforce or apply our terms of use, and other agreements, including for billing and collection purposes.
6) Tracking and Analytics: We use industry-standard tracking tools to improve our website, understand user behavior, and deliver personalized advertising. This includes services provided by Google and Meta (Facebook). By accessing or using this Platform, these Services, and by participating in the Challenge, you agree to this privacy policy and consent to our processing data in the United States and under its laws. Below is how these tools are used on our website:
Google Analytics: We use Google Analytics to analyze and improve user experience on our website. This includes collecting data such as:
Pages you visit and the amount of time spent on each.
General location (City, Country) based on your IP address.
Device type (mobile, desktop, tablet).
Browser and operating system used.
How you engage with our content (e.g., clicks, scrolls, session duration).
How you arrived at our site (e.g., search engine, referral, social media, direct link).
This information is anonymized and does not personally identify you.
Meta Pixel (Facebook Pixel): We use the Meta Pixel to track website activity for advertising and remarketing purposes:
To identify when a user reaches a “Thank You” or confirmation page (conversion tracking).
To recognize users who visited the site but did not complete an action, so we can show relevant ads later (retargeting).
To create lookalike audiences and custom interest groups using anonymous behavioral data.
Google Tag Manager & Google Ads: These tools are used to manage website tags and track ad performance:
Monitoring actions like form submissions and purchases (conversion tracking).
Identifying users who left the site without completing key actions (retargeting).
Segmenting audiences to improve the relevance of our ads based on behavior.
Your Choices: You have control over your data and can opt out of certain tracking or ad personalization:
Google Analytics: Opt-out browser add-on
Google Ads personalization: https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/0ySbC9r7QkfkJ7Z7DIofvhqsWLE?domain=adssettings.google.com
Meta Ads preferences: https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/gvzkC0RyVWSGnPEPphDhWh9bDaa?domain=facebook.com
You may also limit tracking by adjusting your browser settings, using private browsing modes, or installing ad blockers.
7) Sale of Your Information: We will not sell your personal information to third parties. We may share certain data with trusted third-party service providers that help us administer and deliver the Platform, Services and the Challenge (for example, platforms like Zoom for video calls, or our email service provider) – but always under obligations of confidentiality and solely for the purpose of delivering our contractual obligations. If we have sponsors or partner organizations involved in the Challenge, we will not give them your personal details unless (a) it is necessary for an aspect of the Challenge (such as a judge needing your team name to evaluate your submission), or (b) you separately consent to such sharing. Any public disclosure of winners (for example, posting winner names and schools on our website) will be done in accordance with the publicity consent in our Terms.
8) How We Store, Retain and Secure Your Information:
We retain personal data for as long as necessary to fulfill any legal obligations we may have as well as for purposes of processing your information for the delivery of our services (for example, if you continue to subscribe to one of our email-based services, we will need your information to email the service to you). We may also retain aggregate information beyond this time for research purposes and to help us develop and improve our services. You cannot be identified from aggregate information retained or used for these purposes.
We are committed to protecting your personal information. All information that you provide to us is stored on our secure servers. Access to our Platform and Services is password-protected for your privacy and security. While we do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. What does all this mean? Just as in the investing world, you must protect yourself. You are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your passwords and/or any account information.
Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorized access.
Our Platform and Services may, from time to time, contain links to external sites. We are not responsible for the privacy policies or the content of such sites.
9) Accessing and Correcting Your Information: You can review and change your personal information by logging into the Platform and visiting your account profile page.
You may also send us an email at data@expop.io to request access to, correct, or delete any personal information that you have provided to us. We cannot delete your personal information except by also deleting your user account. We may not accommodate a request to change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.
10) Your State Privacy Rights: State consumer privacy laws may provide their residents with additional rights regarding our use of their personal information. California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia provide (now or in the future) their state residents with rights to:
Confirm whether we process their personal information.
Access and delete certain personal information.
Correct inaccuracies in their personal information, considering the information's nature processing purpose (excluding Iowa and Utah).
Data portability.
Opt-out of personal data processing for:
targeted advertising (excluding Iowa);
sales; or
profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects (excluding Iowa and Utah).
Either limit (opt-out of) or require consent to process sensitive personal data.
The exact scope of these rights may vary by state. To exercise any of these rights please email us at data@expop.io.
11) Europe: For the purposes of European Economic Area data protection law, (the "Data Protection Law"), the data controller is: Ascendance US Inc., 169 Madison Ave STE 11804, New York, NY 10016
Use of Cookies: Our site places cookies on your device for a variety of purposes described in the Cookies and Other Technologies section of this privacy statement. Please refer to that section for more information about those cookies and how to prevent the use of cookies. If you have any questions about the cookies we set, please contact our Data Protection Officer at dpo@fool.com.
Data Storage: The data that we collect from you is transferred to, and may be stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area ("EEA") that is not subject to equivalent Data Protection Law. For our purposes, the information we collect is processed and stored in the US.
We may transfer your personal information outside the EEA.
Where your information is transferred outside the EEA, we will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is subject to appropriate safeguards, such as relying on a recognized legal adequacy mechanism, and that it is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.
European site users have certain rights under certain circumstances:
to be provided with a copy of your personal data held by us;
to request the rectification or erasure of your personal data held by us;
to request that we restrict the processing of your personal data (while we verify or investigate your concerns with this information, for example);
to object to the further processing of your personal data, including the right to object to marketing (as mentioned in 'our promotional updates and communications' section);
to request that your provided personal data be moved to a third party.
Your right to withdraw consent: Where the processing of your personal information by us is based on consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent without detriment. You can withdraw consent online or by contacting us. For more information on this or other options to manage your privacy rights, please see the Accessing or Correcting Your Information section of this privacy statement.
12) Changes to this Policy: We may amend this Privacy and Cookie Statement from time to time. Please check back regularly to review your rights and to check the Effective date or Last Updated date listed below. If we make any substantive changes to this policy, we’ll announce it on our site and notify you by email.
13) Contact Us: Questions, comments, and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to:
Data Privacy Officer
Ascendance Us Inc.
169 Madison Ave STE 11804, New York, NY 10016