Question 1

What is Reckon?

Accepted Answer

A 70-question founder archetype assessment. The output is a 20+ section personalized report and a visual scorecard. The report covers your archetype, your shadow, the businesses you'd build well, the businesses that will destroy you, the cofounder you need, and a section called the Hard Truth that compares your stated motivation against what your responses actually point to. More on the About page.

Question 2

How is this different from other personality tests?

Accepted Answer

Most popular assessments have one of two problems. They are built on frameworks academic reviewers have found unreliable, or they are locked behind enterprise pricing and certified consultants most founders cannot access. MBTI ($59.95): peer-reviewed research has found that roughly two in five test-takers get a different type within five weeks of retesting, and the publisher's own manual discourages using it to predict job performance. CliftonStrengths ($24.99 to $59.99): designed by intention to show strengths only, so it will not tell you your derailers or blind spots. Enneagram ($20): a 2021 peer-reviewed systematic review found that factor-analytic studies do not consistently recover nine distinct types, and no criterion validity exists for predicting outcomes. DISC ($39 to $95): peer-reviewed work found its four dimensions are not psychometrically independent and largely remap existing Big Five traits. Hogan: the most rigorous instrument here, but individuals cannot self-purchase it; it requires a certified consultant and an organization willing to pay. Predictive Index: built for the employer, not the person assessed, so the hiring company receives the report. Free Big Five tests like IPIP-NEO and Truity: the science is solid but the application layer is absent, just trait percentiles with no founder lens and no next step. Reckon is built on the same validated instruments academic psychologists use: the Big Five via the NEO-PI-R and BFI-2 lineage, risk tolerance via DOSPERT, locus of control via the Rotter I-E Scale, and need for achievement via McClelland-rooted scales. Our questions are original, anchored on those scales rather than copied from them. It adds the three constructs the entrepreneurship meta-analyses tie to founder outcomes, routes the result through a founder-specific frame, and gives you decision-useful output: which businesses to refuse, which cofounder you need, and where the gap is between who you think you are and who your answers say you are. Free, no consultant, no enterprise contract.

Question 3

How long does the assessment take?

Accepted Answer

About 30 minutes. There are 70 questions, one per screen, mobile-optimized, with auto-save after every answer.

Question 4

Is this scientifically validated?

Accepted Answer

This question deserves a straight answer, not a reassuring one. Reckon is built on validated psychometric instruments. The eight dimensions it measures are anchored on the Big Five (via the NEO-PI-R, BFI-2, and Big Five Aspect Scales lineage), risk tolerance (via DOSPERT), locus of control (via the Rotter I-E Scale and Levenson IPC), and need for achievement (via McClelland-rooted scales). These are the instruments that appear in peer-reviewed journals; Reckon did not invent its own pop-psychology constructs. What Reckon is not: independently peer-reviewed, independently validated, or calibrated against a published reference panel. No independent lab has run a test-retest or criterion-validity study on this instrument. Anyone who tells you their assessment is scientifically validated without citing specific published research is selling you something. Your written analysis describes each dimension in verbal bands (high, moderate, low), and the scorecard shows indicative scores. Neither is a calibrated population percentile yet: a true percentile, meaning where you land relative to other founders, needs a reference panel of respondents. Once roughly 300 completions accrue, those scores become population-anchored percentiles. Until then, read the numbers as directional, not precise rankings. The report describes patterns, not predictions. Personality is one input, and the report is honest about that.

Question 5

Can I retake the assessment?

Accepted Answer

Not right now. Reckon is a one-time assessment, and there is no self-serve retake. That is partly deliberate: an on-demand retake would let people take it repeatedly until they land on the archetype they wanted, which hollows out the result. If your report feels genuinely off, email hello@reckon.report and we will help.

Question 6

What if my report doesn't feel right?

Accepted Answer

Every report page has a feedback affordance you can use to tell us what landed and what didn't; this feeds into ongoing refinement of the LLM prompt. If it feels genuinely off, email hello@reckon.report and we will help.

Question 7

How does the Hard Truth section work?

Accepted Answer

The first question of the assessment asks what pulls you toward starting a business. Eight options, each loosely mapped to one archetype, but the mapping isn't shown to you. After all 70 questions are scored, the report compares your stated motivation against the archetype your responses actually point to. If those agree, the Hard Truth says so and gives you the harder question (what to do about it). If they don't agree, the Hard Truth names the gap directly. The section is bound by content guardrails. It does not speculate about mental health, intelligence, relationships, trauma, or life outcomes. It stays focused on operational and business behavior patterns.

Question 8

Can I share my scorecard?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The visual scorecard is the share asset for the product, designed to be screenshot-friendly. On mobile the share button opens the native share sheet; on desktop you get copy-link and download options. Three sizes are generated: square (Instagram), landscape (link previews), and vertical (Stories).

Question 9

Will my data be used to train AI?

Accepted Answer

No. The LLM that writes the personalized sections of your report is a hosted Anthropic model called via API. The request and response are processed under Anthropic's commercial API terms, which state that data submitted through the API is not used to train Anthropic's models (the privacy policy cites the specific terms and notes the date verified). We do not run our own model training.

Question 10

What if I made a mistake on a question?

Accepted Answer

The assessment doesn't allow back-navigation. This is deliberate; allowing back-nav lets respondents pattern-match across questions and reverse-engineer toward a target archetype. If a single misclick is bothering you, the report's overall accuracy is unlikely to swing on one question, since each archetype dimension is measured by 10+ questions. If the result still feels off, email hello@reckon.report.

Question 11

Is the LLM in the loop?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The report's Hard Truth section and several other sections (historical parallel, businesses you'd build well, businesses that will destroy you, blind spots) are LLM-generated using your structured scores as input. The system prompt encodes the brand voice and the structural rules; the LLM does not freestyle. It is constrained to use your actual archetype, your actual scores, and your actual stated motivation; it cannot invent dimensions or substitute archetypes. The deterministic sections (your card, the verdict, the dimension profile readout, the cofounder profile) are templated with your scores plugged in.

Question 12

What happens if the report fails to generate?

Accepted Answer

The system retries automatically. First, three immediate retries with backoff. Then a queued background retry sequence with increasing waits between attempts: 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 2 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours. While this is happening you see a 'your report is being prepared' placeholder and can manually retrigger generation from a button on that page. If after 48 hours the report still hasn't generated, we email you and help you get it sorted.

Question 13

Is this medically accurate?

Accepted Answer

No. Reckon is not a clinical instrument. It does not diagnose anxiety, depression, ADHD, autism, or any other condition. It measures personality traits using the conventions of psychological research. Elevated Neuroticism is not a disorder; low Agreeableness is not antisocial; low Conscientiousness is not ADHD. Read the report as self-reflection, not as health information. If you want clinical assessment, talk to a licensed professional.

Question 14

Can I take this assessment for someone else?

Accepted Answer

No. The terms ask you to take it under your own email and submit your own responses. If you're trying to assess a cofounder, send them the link. The cofounder compatibility add-on (where two assessments combine into a compatibility report) is on the V2 roadmap.

Question 15

What about my data privacy?

Accepted Answer

Detailed in the privacy policy. The short version: we collect your email, your responses, and your scores. We use them to generate your report and (in aggregate) to calibrate the scoring model. We never sell it. You can request deletion at any time from the data deletion page.

Question 16

How do I delete my data?

Accepted Answer

Submit a request from the data deletion page. We send you a confirmation magic link; once you confirm, we delete your responses, scores, archetype, and report within 30 days.

Question 17

Is the assessment available in languages other than English?

Accepted Answer

V1 is English-only. Translation is on the V2 list but not committed.

Question 18

Is there a B2B or team version?

Accepted Answer

Not in V1. We are aware of the use case (founder hiring, cofounder selection, leadership team profiling) and it's on the post-V1 roadmap. If you want to be told when it ships, email us and we will keep a list.

Question 19

What if my archetype is between two types?

Accepted Answer

The assessment handles this. If your scores genuinely sit between two archetypes (small gap to second-closest match), the report frames you as 'between two types' rather than forcing you into one. The second archetype is called the tension archetype. You see both in the report.

Question 20

Can I see the questions in advance?

Accepted Answer

No. Showing the questions in advance would let respondents reverse-engineer toward a target archetype and would defeat the validity of the instrument. The questions appear one at a time with no preview.

Question 21

What are the eight archetypes?

Accepted Answer

Visionary, Operator, Closer, Craftsman, Hustler, Strategist, Lone Wolf, and Loyalist. Each has a core drive, a strength profile, a shadow (what the archetype does badly under stress), and a historical parallel. You see your archetype only after finishing the assessment.

Question 22

Can I use Reckon to evaluate someone I'm thinking about hiring?

Accepted Answer

Read the terms of service and the cautionary note in the About page. Reckon is built for self-reflection. Using a personality assessment to make hiring decisions about a third party raises validity, consent, and legal questions that this product is not built to answer. Don't use the report as a hiring instrument.

Question 23

I have a question this didn't answer.

Accepted Answer

Email hello@reckon.report and we will reply within 48 hours during V1. We will also probably add your question to this list if it is one other people are asking.

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