ZX Investment in RateBeer

Common questions and answers
June 20, 2017

1. Does RateBeer have any investors?

As of October 2016, ZX Ventures, AB InBev’s global growth and innovation division, has taken a minority interest in RateBeer. This investment is supporting the further improvement of our user’s experience, allowing us to make significant improvements to the site we were unable to accomplish without financial support.

We are now more than ever dedicated to continuing in our mission to provide unbiased, consumer-driven information about beer and breweries, and to enhance the image and worldwide appreciation of beer. 

 

2. Why Did RateBeer Even Need Investors?
For years I have been trying to come up with a suitable solution that would help my team and I keep up with all the responsibilities that come with running a platform like RateBeer.

I wanted the platform, my life’s work, to continue to grow and evolve and I was at the point where I could not do this without a partner.

 

3. Why Did You Choose ZX Ventures as an Investor?

I believe that this partnership with ZX Ventures is the right move for RateBeer. If I was going to take on an investor, I needed to ensure they shared my same passion and love for the beer industry, which is why ZX Ventures is the best fit for RateBeer.

 

I can appreciate that ZX is a tech savvy company, and one that could provide me with support for our coding and development needs. ZX also understood my mission and drive for growth, allowing real potential in giving RateBeer a global footprint. 

4. ZX Ventures is wholly owned by AB InBev. What are you doing to ensure ratings remain fair and independent?

RateBeer is an independent company, with its community managed by me, Joseph Tucker. We understand your concern and have developed quality protections to maintain our position as the most authoritative reference in beer. Among these are

1.    RateBeer's reviews are crowd-sourced and not editorial content and as such are beyond simple influence by the site's managers and employees

2.    RateBeer offer a transparency measure in the form of an API through which other brewers, industry watchers and journalists can easily view and vet changes in scores

3.    RateBeer has existing policies against affiliated users adding reviews of their own or competitor products

4.    RateBeer is developing a system by which any user can indicate association with the industry as a means to void all of their reviews for score calculation, and public viewing, but be able to store them for personal use

 

5. So What Does This Mean for our Personal Information? Does AB InBev have access to it all?

No one, not AB InBev or anyone, will have access to your personal information. We ensure your personal information is held exclusively by RateBeer and is never shared with other entities. 

6. Does AB InBev have access to all our data?

Through our open API, RateBeer is offering the same access to data that AB InBev will have. As mentioned, no personally identifiable information will be available to any API user, including AB InBev. 

Other brewers, journalists, researchers, scholars, app builders, members of the community, etc. are welcome to apply for API access here: 
https://www.ratebeer.com/api.asp  

7. Will AB InBev now be able to alter the scores of their beers?

Never. The power of RateBeer lies in our crowd-sourced scores, and nothing about this partnership will change that.

 

All ratings and reviews are and will remain completely independent, and we have implemented an additional measure so that other brewers, industry watchers, journalists, etc., can view cumulative scores and ratings on a regular basis. 

8. This Investment Happened in October 2016, Why Did You Wait So Long to Tell the Community?

This was just a minority investment, and we wanted to take the time to r get to work and hit the ground running.

 

I wanted to start utilizing the new tools and resources available to begin improving the site and improving the user experience for my community.

9. Why Did AB InBev invest? What Do They Get Out of It?

ZX gains access to insights around consumer trends, a better understanding of the beer consumer and beer markets around the world, which enables them to keep a finger on the pulse. 

They believe RateBeer is the tool to help beer drinkers best navigate the sometimes overwhelming beer market, better informing them of all the beer selections so they can make the best choice for their tastes. 

10. Are ZX Ventures employees working on the site now? Are they touching content?

We’ve received a lot of great help from the tech team and designers at ZX Ventures to upgrade our platform, improve stability and performance, finish our mobile responsiveness initiative, and to develop our first in-house mobile app (launching soon). 


11. Can users close their account?

We honor all requests to remove all personally identifiable information from our servers and can anonymize reviews and other submitted content. Instructions for this are here: https://www.ratebeer.com/faq   

 

12. I work for a brewer. Do my ratings count toward the RateBeer score?

Today, this is managed on an "honor" system. If you work for a brewer, we ask that you associate your profile with that brewer and ask that you NOT rate beers from this brewer. 

Here are the steps to associate your profile with a brewer:
- Click on Advanced Search
- Search for the brewer in Brewer Search
- Select the brewer
- Click on "Are you affiliated with this brewery?"
- Click the button "Associate me with this brewer"

We are working on a way to systematically suppress select brewer employee scores. We feel that this is the right thing to do to support RateBeer's mission to provide independent, unbiased, consumer-driven information about beer and breweries and to enhance the image and worldwide appreciation of beer. 

13. What if a Brewer Requests to have their Brewery Delisted?

RateBeer publishes user-submitted content. If users submit any material that is protected by copyright, any copyright holder can request removal.

 

Instructions for this are in are in our Terms of Use document here: https://www.ratebeer.com/useragreement.asp  

14. I am a brewer and I want my beers removed from the site. What do I do?

The beauty and value of RateBeer comes in our users' ability to add publicly available content to our database. 

If there is content that you are concerned with, please refer to the removal processes defined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act section of our Terms of Service here: https://www.ratebeer.com/useragreement.asp