Privacy · Ex Cognia

Optimism Technologies Pty Ltd – PRIVACY POLICY

This Privacy Policy sets out our commitment to protecting the privacy of personal information provided to us, or otherwise collected by us, offline or online, including through our website (excognia.com) and the Method Investment Brief (brief.excognia.com, the Brief), and any demonstration we prepare for your firm (together, Site). In this Privacy Policy we, us or our means Optimism Technologies Pty Ltd ABN 28677371345.

Personal information

The types of personal information we may collect about you include:

your name;
your contact details, including email address, mailing address, street address and/or telephone number;
your credit card details;
your demographic information, such as postcode;
your preferences and/or opinions;
information you provide to us through customer surveys;
details of products and services we have provided to you and/or that you have enquired about, and our response to you;
your browser session and geo-location data, device and network information, statistics on page views and sessions, acquisition sources, search queries and/or browsing behaviour;
information about your access and use of our Site, including through the use of Internet cookies, your communications with our Site, the type of browser you are using, the type of operating system you are using and the domain name of your Internet service provider;
additional personal information that you provide to us, directly or indirectly, through your use of our Site, associated applications, associated social media platforms and/or accounts from which you permit us to collect information; and
any other personal information requested by us and/or provided by you or a third party.

We may collect these types of personal information directly from you or from third parties.

Collection and use of personal information

We may collect, hold, use and disclose personal information for the following purposes:

to enable you to access and use our Site, associated applications and associated social media platforms;
to contact and communicate with you;
for internal record keeping and administrative purposes;
for analytics, market research and business development, including to operate and improve our Site, associated applications and associated social media platforms;
to offer additional benefits to you;
for advertising and marketing, including to send you promotional information about our products and services and information about third parties that we consider may be of interest to you;
to comply with our legal obligations and resolve any disputes that we may have; and
to consider your employment application.

Disclosure of personal information to third parties

We may disclose personal information to:

third party service providers for the purpose of enabling them to provide their services, including (without limitation) IT service providers, data storage, web-hosting and server providers, debt collectors, maintenance or problem-solving providers, marketing or advertising providers, professional advisors and payment systems operators;
our employees, contractors and/or related entities;
our existing or potential agents or business partners;
anyone to whom our business or assets (or any part of them) are, or may (in good faith) be, transferred;
courts, tribunals and regulatory authorities, in the event you fail to pay for goods or services we have provided to you;
courts, tribunals, regulatory authorities and law enforcement officers, as required by law, in connection with any actual or prospective legal proceedings, or in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights;
third parties, including agents or sub-contractors, who assist us in providing information, products, services or direct marketing to you. This may include parties located, or that store data, outside of Australia, including the United States of America; and
third parties to collect and process data, such as Google Analytics, Meta Business Suite, and other data processing, storage, and analysis service and technology providers. This may include parties that store data outside of Australia, including the United States of America.

When you use the Brief, we disclose personal information to the following service providers, who handle it for us:

Neon, which hosts the Brief's database, so that the Brief can keep your work between visits and sign you in. The database holds the email address you give us, what you tell us about you and your firm (your first name if you give it, your firm, specialism and role, your firm's size, how you heard of us, and whether you are using a shared computer), your answers to the Brief's questions (including the tools your firm uses, the figures you give about your firm's fees, engagements, people, margin and time, and the routine task you describe), the Brief built from them, the case you save on your Brief (the option you choose, the figures you move, and the amounts, hours and months you enter), any share links you make, the sign-in codes we send you, your sign-in sessions (including your IP address and browser), the IP addresses we record to limit repeated sign-in attempts and, if you join our mailing list, a record of when you joined and the words we showed you. If you hold a Group Zero invitation, it also holds your invitation's code (only as a one-way scramble that cannot be turned back into the code), your firm's name as we wrote it on the invitation, the Brief the code is tied to, a record of wrong codes tried on a Brief, and your application: its four answers and when you sent and changed them. Neon also hosts a separate database for any demonstration we prepare for your firm, as set out below. It holds the email address you sign in to the demonstration with, the email address you gave the Brief, your name and role, your firm's name, specialism, size and location, the demonstration set up for your firm (your method as drafted from your answers, your tools and the figures set out below), the sign-in codes we send you, your sign-in sessions (including your IP address and browser) and the IP addresses we record to limit repeated sign-in attempts. Neon stores this data with Amazon Web Services in Sydney, Australia;
Amazon Web Services, which runs the Brief, and any demonstration we prepare for your firm, in Sydney, Australia, and so handles everything you give them. It also sends their emails, which carry your email address and each sign-in code or link, through Amazon Simple Email Service in Sydney. Amazon CloudFront, part of Amazon Web Services, delivers their pages from the location nearest to you, which may be outside Australia;
Anthropic, which writes the method statement and the short readings in your Brief and drafts any demonstration we prepare for your firm. We send Anthropic your firm, specialism and role, your firm's size, your twelve written answers and the tools you tick from our lists. We never send Anthropic your email address, the figures you give on the numbers screens (your fee, margin, engagements, people and time), the routine task you describe, a tool name you type, your application or your invitation's code. Anthropic stores and processes this data in the United States of America. Anthropic's published policy is to delete it within 30 days, unless it needs to keep it longer to enforce its usage policy or to comply with the law; and
Loops, which sends the emails on our mailing list. When you build a Brief and sign in, we send Loops your email address, your first name if you have given it, and that you joined through the Brief. Loops holds this data in the United States of America.

We read each Brief, and the answers behind it, to understand who uses the Brief and to prepare for any conversation you book with us. If you hold a Group Zero invitation, the code on your card, entered in your Brief, tells us the Brief is your firm's. Only Levi, our founder, reads your application, to prepare your interview. No model reads it, and we do not send it to Anthropic or Loops. You can change your answers until your interview, and ask us to delete your application at any time. A link you share opens a read-only copy of your Brief and the case you saved, and nothing you have not saved, your invitation or your application. You can turn the link off at any time.

Before that conversation, we may prepare a demonstration of our software set up for your firm. We build it from your written answers to the Brief's questions, the tools you ticked, the routine task you described, public information about your firm and its industry, and these figures from your Brief: the engagements you run in a year, the senior and junior people on your team, the days each step of your method takes, the share of work you redo, the hours a week the founder spends on review, the months a new hire takes to work alone, and the option and figures in the case you saved. Anthropic drafts it from your written answers only, in the United States, and never sees these figures or your routine task. Your fee and your gross margin go into the demonstration only if you agree to it on a call, and then we add them ourselves and keep a record of your agreement. You sign in to it with a code we email you. We delete it, and everything it holds, including any fee and margin, within 90 days of preparing it, and sooner if you ask us. We may also email you about your Brief. You can ask us to stop at any time by replying to that email.

We may store personal information overseas. Through the Brief, we disclose personal information to Anthropic and Loops in the United States of America, as set out above. Where we disclose your personal information to the third parties listed above, these third parties may also store, transfer or access personal information outside of Australia. Unless we seek and receive your consent to an overseas disclosure of your personal information, we will only disclose your personal information to countries with laws which protect your personal information in a way which is substantially similar to the Australian Privacy Principles and/or we will take such steps as are reasonable in the circumstances to require that overseas recipients protect your personal information in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles.

How we treat personal information that is also sensitive information

Sensitive information is a subset of personal information that is given a higher level of protection under the Australian Privacy Principles. Sensitive information means information relating to your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion, trade union or other professional associations or memberships, philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation or practices, criminal records, health information or biometric information.

We only collect, hold, use and disclose sensitive information for the following purposes:

any purposes you consent to;
the primary purpose for which it is collected;
secondary purposes that are directly related to the primary purpose for which it was collected, including disclosure to the above listed third parties as reasonably necessary to provide our services to you;
to contact emergency services, or to speak with your family, partner or support person where we reasonably believe there is a serious risk to the life, health or safety of you or another person and it is impracticable for us to obtain your consent; and
if otherwise required or authorised by law.

Your rights and controlling your personal information

Choice and consent

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. By providing personal information to us, you understand we will collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. You do not have to provide personal information to us, however, if you do not, it may affect your use of this Site or the products and/or services offered on or through it.

Information from third parties

If we receive personal information about you from a third party, we will protect it as set out in this Privacy Policy. If you are a third party providing personal information about somebody else, you represent and warrant that you have such person’s consent to provide the personal information to us.

Restrict

You may choose to restrict the collection or use of your personal information. If you have previously agreed to us using your personal information for direct marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time by contacting us using the details below.

Access

You may request details of the personal information that we hold about you. An administrative fee may be payable for the provision of such information. In certain circumstances, as set out in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), we may refuse to provide you with personal information that we hold about you.

Correction

If you believe that any information we hold about you is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, please contact us using the details below. We will take reasonable steps to correct any information found to be inaccurate, incomplete, misleading or out of date.

Complaints

If you believe that we have breached the Australian Privacy Principles and wish to make a complaint, please contact us using the details below and provide us with full details of the alleged breach. We will promptly investigate your complaint and respond to you, in writing, setting out the outcome of our investigation and the steps we will take to deal with your complaint.

Unsubscribe

To unsubscribe from our email database or opt-out of communications (including marketing communications), please contact us using the details below or opt-out using the opt-out facilities provided in the communication.

Storage and security

We are committed to ensuring that the personal information we collect is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the personal information and protect it from misuse, interference, loss and unauthorised access, modification and disclosure.

We cannot guarantee the security of any information that is transmitted to or by us over the Internet. The transmission and exchange of information is carried out at your own risk. Although we take measures to safeguard against unauthorised disclosures of information, we cannot assure you that the personal information we collect will not be disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this Privacy Policy.

Cookies and web beacons

We may use cookies on our Site from time to time. Cookies are text files placed in your computer's browser to store your preferences. Cookies, by themselves, do not tell us your email address or other personally identifiable information. However, they do allow third parties, such as Google and Facebook, to cause our advertisements to appear on your social media and online media feeds as part of our retargeting campaigns. If and when you choose to provide our Site with personal information, this information may be linked to the data stored in the cookie.

The Brief sets two cookies that it needs to work: one keeps your place in its questions, and one keeps you signed in. If you tell the Brief the computer is just yours, each lasts 30 days. Otherwise, including if you leave that question blank, each ends when you close your browser.

A demonstration sets one cookie that it needs to work, which keeps you signed in. It ends 8 hours after you sign in.

We may use web beacons on our Site from time to time. Web beacons (also known as Clear GIFs) are small pieces of code placed on a web page to monitor the visitor’s behaviour and collect data about the visitor’s viewing of a web page. For example, web beacons can be used to count the users who visit a web page or to deliver a cookie to the browser of a visitor viewing that page.

Links to other websites

Our Site may contain links to other websites. We do not have any control over those websites and we are not responsible for the protection and privacy of any personal information which you provide whilst visiting those websites. Those websites are not governed by this Privacy Policy.

Amendments

We may, at any time and at our discretion, vary this Privacy Policy by publishing the amended Privacy Policy on our Site. We recommend you check our Site regularly to ensure you are aware of our current Privacy Policy.

For any questions or notices, please contact us at:

Optimism Technologies Pty Ltd
ABN: 28677371345
Email: hello@excognia.com

Last update: 20-Oct-2026