Last updated 23 September 2026
J floorJosefstrasse 2198005 Zürich, Switzerland contact@halfbacked.org
J floor is the controller for personal data submitted through this site. Half-Backed is run together with the Agentic Systems Lab at ETH Zürich; members of that organising team read applications, but J floor is responsible for how the data is handled.
Only two things.
We do not ask for, and ask that you do not send, special-category data (health, biometrics, political or religious views), payment details, or credentials.
| Purpose | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Read and assess your application, and contact you about it | Steps taken at your request before entering into a contract (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Run the programme: select a cohort, plan resources, organise the Zürich sprint | Our legitimate interest in running the programme (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Keep the site and the upload endpoint working and free from abuse | Our legitimate interest in security and reliability (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Meet legal or accounting obligations | Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) |
Under the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection we process this data because it is necessary to assess and respond to the application you sent us.
Nobody else. We do not sell personal data, we do not share it for advertising, and we do not pass applications to investors, partners or sponsors without asking you first.
On AWS infrastructure in the European Union. We are based in Switzerland, which the European Commission recognises as providing an adequate level of data protection. Where a provider processes data outside Switzerland or the EEA, we rely on the safeguards in their data processing agreement, such as standard contractual clauses.
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Application files and any correspondence about them | Until 31 March 2028 — twelve months after the sprint — then deleted. Ask us sooner and we will delete yours. |
| Server and upload logs | Up to six months. |
| Anonymous visit counts | Up to six months. |
| Records we must keep by law | For as long as the law requires. |
This site sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device — no advertising tracker, and nothing that follows you to another site.
We count visits with Umami, a cookieless analytics service run by Umami Software, Inc. (United States) as our processor, with our data held in its European region. It records the page you viewed, the referring site, your approximate country, and your browser and device type. It does not store your IP address or set any identifier on your device, so there is nothing to consent to and nothing that can be used to recognise you on a later visit.
We also count a handful of anonymous interactions so we can tell whether the application form actually works: that the upload dialog was opened, that a file was chosen, and that an upload succeeded or failed. Nothing from your application is ever sent — not the file, not its name, not your email address, not a single word of its contents.
The site loads fonts from Google Fonts, which means Google receives your IP address in order to serve them.
You can ask us to give you a copy of the data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, restrict what we do with it, or send it to you in a portable form. You can object to processing we base on legitimate interests. Withdrawing an application is always enough to have the file deleted.
Write to contact@halfbacked.org. We answer within 30 days. We may need to check who you are before acting on a request.
If you think we have handled your data badly, you can complain to a supervisory authority: in Switzerland the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner, or in the EEA or UK the authority where you live.
This programme is not intended for anyone under 16. We do not knowingly collect data from children. If you believe a child has sent us an application, write to us and we will delete it.
If this policy changes we will update the date at the top. If a change materially affects applicants whose files we already hold, we will email them.