Privacy
Written from what the system actually does, not from a template.
The short version
The fit check is free and there is no card at any point. It asks for your name and email before it shows you the read. The read is sent to that address, and it is also how the read is kept for you, so you can sign in later and open it again. One click in any email we send deletes everything we hold on you.
What we collect, and when
Nothing about you until you type it. From the moment you arrive we do count that somebody reached the page, which the section on cookies below explains, and that count carries no name and no email address. The fit check runs on your own device and your answers stay in your browser until either you ask us to email you the result or you finish the sixteen questions, at which point the answers and the result are saved so that the link in your email works. We never ask for your address, your date of birth, or your social security number, because we do not need any of them and holding them would be a liability to you and to us. We do ask for your name and, optionally, a phone number, on one screen: the one where you hand us a resume and confirm what we read off it. That screen says so, nothing is kept unless you press the button, and this paragraph used to say we never ask for a name, which was wrong.
The four answers we cannot show you
Part two of the fit check asks about your credit band, whether you have a felony conviction, whether you are a citizen or permanent resident, and whether you have ever defaulted on federal debt. Those four decide whether an SBA loan is possible at all, which is why they are asked. They are encrypted before they are stored, they are deleted after ninety days whatever else happens, and they are never displayed on any screen again, including to us. If you come back through a link in an email, they show as answered with no value. They appear in no email, no report and no export.
Your resume or a LinkedIn profile
The fit check asks for one before it shows you the read, so that what it recommends is measured against what you have actually done rather than against your answers alone. Here is exactly what happens to it. The file is read in memory and it is never written to a disk of ours. There is no copy of your resume to delete, because there was never a copy. What we read out of it is shown back to you on the next screen, and nothing is stored until you look at it and press the button. If you skip that screen, nothing is saved, nothing changes, and we do not keep the address it found. What we keep after you press the button is what you confirmed: one strength, which of six things you have not done, which kinds of business you have worked in, your name and email, and a phone number only if you chose to leave one. We also keep what our reading of the document claimed, so we can measure how often it is wrong, and it goes when the rest of your record goes.
How long we keep things
If you never gave us an email address, everything is deleted after thirty days. If you did and you never bought anything, we keep it for twelve months and then strip your address off it. If you did buy something we leave your answers alone, because you are in the middle of a search we sold you and deleting your cash position halfway through it would be a strange thing to do to a customer. Yours goes when you ask for it to go, which is one click in any email we send. The four answers above go at ninety days regardless. Calculator runs are anonymous, contain no address, and go after twelve months. Anything you told us about your background goes with the record it is attached to, on the same clock. If you buy anything we keep the order and what we delivered for as long as tax and card dispute rules require, which is currently seven years. The page counts that sit with Google are kept on Google's clock rather than ours. They carry no name and no email address, so there is nothing in them to tie back to you.
Files you upload
Documents you put on a deal are held while you are working on it. Ninety days after you mark a deal Passed, the documents on it are deleted. So are the documents on any deal that has had nothing happen on it in two years, which is longer than most searches take. We keep the deal itself and anything you wrote about it, because that is yours and it carries nothing of the seller's. We email you fourteen days before either of those happens, so nothing you want is lost without warning, and working on the deal starts the clock over. Writing a note on it counts. Deleting your account deletes every file immediately, in the same click.
Emails
Your result if you ask for it. A copy to a spouse or partner if you ask us to send one. One reminder at seventy two hours if you got your result and stopped before the report, sent once and never again. If you buy something you also get a receipt, and the thing you bought when it is ready. If you have documents sitting on a deal you have never run a report on, and you are holding a run you already paid for, we say so once, for that deal, and never again. We also write fourteen days before any file of yours is due to be deleted. Alongside those we send occasional tips and things worth reading about buying a business, and only to people who asked for them. There is a box for that on the resume screen, under the email field, and it is unchecked. Checking it is the only thing that counts as saying yes, and we keep the date you checked it and the exact sentence that was next to it. Every email has an unsubscribe link and a delete-everything link in the footer, and this paragraph used to promise three emails and no newsletter, which stopped being true the day we started sending them.
Text messages
We send none today. The phone number on the resume screen is optional, you can leave it blank, and giving it is not permission to text you. There is a separate box next to it, unchecked, and checking that box is the only thing that counts as saying yes. We keep the date you checked it and the exact sentence that was next to it, so what you agreed to is a matter of record rather than of memory. If we never build it, nothing happens.
Who else sees it
Nobody outside the following: our hosting provider, our database provider, our email provider, our payment processor, and two measurement services, Google Analytics and Mixpanel, which count page visits and which steps people reach. The first four may use what they see only to run this site for us. The two measurement services run on their own terms, so we hold them back at our end instead, and the section below says exactly what they are and are not told.
Payments
Card details are handled entirely by Stripe and never reach us. We see the email address on the payment, the amount, and whether it succeeded.
Artificial intelligence
Deal Reads are written by hand today. We intend to build something that does a first pass, and when we do, the listing you send and the answers you gave may be sent to an AI service for analysis under a commercial agreement that does not permit training on your data. We are writing this down before that exists rather than adding it quietly afterwards. Nothing you have sent us to date has been sent to any such service.
Cookies
The site sets no advertising cookies. The fit check stores your answers in your own browser so you can close the tab and come back, which never leaves your device and which you can clear at any time in your browser settings. If you sign in to the admin, which is two people, that sets a session cookie. We use Google Analytics to count how many people reach each page and where they give up. It sets two cookies that tell one browser from another on a return visit. We have turned off the two settings in it that would let Google build an advertising profile out of your visit. Mixpanel, the second one, sets no cookie at all: we told it to keep its identifier in your own browser storage instead, where it stays on your device and rides on no request. This paragraph used to say we set no tracking cookies at all. Google Analytics sets two, so that sentence went.
What the measurement services are not told
Not your name, not your email address, not your phone number, and not one answer you gave the fit check. Not the figures you type into the calculator either. The links we email you carry a code in the address that opens your own saved answers, and on a page opened from one of those links we run no counter at all, so there is nothing for either of them to read. Everywhere else the address is cut back to the page itself and any tag saying which ad or which email brought you here, and the rest of it is not sent. What they get is which page you were on and how far through you got. Neither one records your screen, and we have turned off the settings in both that would let them watch on their own and decide for themselves what is worth sending. An automatic check runs on all of this every time we change the site, and a change that broke it would not go out.
Your rights
Ask us for a copy of what we hold, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. The delete link at the bottom of any email we have sent you does the last one immediately, with no form to fill in and nobody to convince. California and other state privacy laws give you these rights explicitly and we would rather just give them to everybody.
Children
This is not for anybody under eighteen and we do not knowingly collect anything from anybody under eighteen.
Changes
If we change this we will change the date at the top.