What we collect, and what we do with it.

Who we are

Sell My Company introduces Canadian business owners to independent mergers and acquisitions advisory firms. We are a finder. We do not advise on your sale, value your company, market it, approach buyers, or hold any deal material.

This site is operated by Vantage Ventures, and the firms we introduce you to are the 28 firms in its partner network.

What we collect

When you fill in the form on this site, you give us:

• Your name and email address, which we need in order to reply.
• Your phone number, so we can call you back.
• Your company name.

If you take the scorecard, you also give us:

• Your answers to the ten questions, which are about how the business is run.
• Your name and email address, so we can send you the result.
• Your company name and roughly when you might sell, both optional.

Both are kept against your email address, so if you do one and then the other we hold one record for you rather than two.

We do not ask for financial statements, tax returns, customer lists, or any document about your business. If you send one anyway, we will ask you to take it back.

What we collect automatically

If you arrive from an advertisement, your browser carries the identifiers that say which ad it was. We keep those alongside your enquiry so we know which campaigns are worth running: the Google click identifiers, the standard campaign tags, the page you landed on, and the site you came from. They are held in your browser for the length of your visit and sent with the form when you submit it.

Where an advertising tag from Google is active on this site, Google sets its own cookies and is a separate controller of what it collects. Their handling is governed by Google’s own privacy policy, not this one.

Why we collect it

To make one introduction, and to be reachable until you want it. We read what you send, decide which advisory firm fits your sector and your size, and write back with a name and the reasoning.

Most owners who contact us are years away from selling, so we keep what you send rather than discarding it after one exchange, and we may write to you about selling your company while you are still deciding. Any email we send you carries a way to stop hearing from us, and asking once is enough. We do not sell your information, we do not trade it, and we do not use it for anything other than this.

Who sees it

Vantage Ventures, which operates this site, and then one advisory firm from its partner network, only after you have agreed to that introduction. We never send your details to a panel of brokers, we never sell your information, and we never trade it for anything.

A small number of service providers process your enquiry on our behalf so that the site works at all: our hosting provider, our email delivery provider, and, where it is active, the advertising platform described above. They act on our instructions and are not permitted to use your information for their own purposes.

How long we keep it

For as long as you might still want the introduction. In practice we treat that as five years from the last time you were in contact with us, after which the record is deleted. You can have it removed sooner at any point by asking, and we do not make you give a reason.

Your record is held in Canada, on servers in Montreal, together with your scorecard answers if you took it. If you take the scorecard more than once we keep the earlier results, so that the change is visible to you.

Getting it deleted, or seeing what we hold

Ask, and we do it. You can reply to any email from us, or send a note through the form on the home page. You are entitled to ask what we hold about you, to have it corrected, and to have it deleted. There is no form to fill in and no fee.

Security

The site is served over an encrypted connection and the form is submitted the same way. What we store is held in Canada with access restricted to us. No system is perfect, so we ask for as little as we can and we never ask for a document about your business, which is the only defence that always works.

Children

This site is for business owners. It is not directed at anyone under eighteen and we do not knowingly collect anything from them.

Changes to this page

If we change how any of this works, we change this page and move the date at the top. We will not quietly start doing something with your information that this page says we do not do.

Questions about anything on this page, including a request to see or delete what we hold, go to the same place as everything else. Use the form on the home page, and a person answers.