Privacy Policy

1.Who runs First Principles

First Principles (firstprinciplesthinking.in) is a personal, non-commercial hobby project run by Kaushik Mishra, an individual, under the name kaushik_speaks. It is not run by a company.

When this policy says "I", "me" or "my", it means Kaushik Mishra. I decide what personal data the site collects and why, so under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (the "DPDP Act") I am the Data Fiduciary for your data.

You can reach me about anything in this policy at kaushikmishra.official@gmail.com.

2.What I collect

You sign in with a one-time code sent to your email, so there is no password for me to store. I don't connect to your social media accounts, and the site never posts anything on your behalf.

If you use the site without signing in, your answers are sent to the server only to generate feedback and are not saved to any account. Your recent scores are kept in your own browser's storage on your device.

Please don't include confidential information about your employer, clients or other people in your answers. The cases are fictional practice exercises, so there's no need to. Your Idea Lab pitches are private to you: I don't publish them, share them or use them to build products.

3.How I use your data

• To run the service: generate cases, grade your answers and show your feedback.
• To keep your profile: save your history, scores, ratings and progress so you can return to them on any device.
• To keep the site safe and fair: limit how often the AI can be used, stop abuse and fix errors.
• To improve First Principles: for example, understanding which cases are too easy or too hard, using combined statistics rather than looking at individuals.
• To contact you, rarely, about important changes to the site or to this policy.

I do not sell your data, show you ads, or share your data for anyone else's marketing.

4.How the AI works with your answers

Cases, feedback and Idea Lab interviews are generated by Claude, an AI model provided by Anthropic. To produce them, your answers (and the case or idea you're working on) are sent to Anthropic's API. Your name, email and profile details are not included in what is sent.

If you answer by voice on the website, your recording is sent to Sarvam AI, an Indian speech-recognition service, which returns English text that appears in your answer box. The audio isn't stored by me; only the text you submit is.

Anthropic states that, by default, it does not use data sent through its commercial API to train its models. You can read more in Anthropic's privacy policy.

5.Using First Principles on WhatsApp

You can also practise by messaging the First Principles number on WhatsApp. It's an AI practice coach, not a person, and it only helps with business cases and product idea teardowns.

• What I store: your WhatsApp number, your WhatsApp profile name, a log of the messages you send the coach and its replies, where you are in the current exercise, and the cases, answers, ideas, scores and verdicts from your chats. WhatsApp chats aren't linked to a website profile.
• Why: to carry on the conversation from one message to the next, to apply fair daily limits, to keep your results, and to improve the coach by seeing where conversations go wrong. I read conversations only for this purpose.
• Who else is involved: messages travel through the WhatsApp Business Platform run by Meta, under WhatsApp's own privacy policy. Your answers (without your number or name) are sent to Anthropic's API to generate cases and feedback, just as on the website. If you send a voice note, the audio (without your number or name) goes to Sarvam AI, an Indian speech-recognition service, to turn it into English text. I keep the text, not the audio.
• Messages from me: the coach only replies when you write to it. I don't send marketing or broadcasts. Send stop and it won't message you.
• Deleting your data: send delete my data to the coach to erase your WhatsApp chats and scores straight away, or email kaushikmishra.official@gmail.com.

6.Services that help run the site

As an individual, I rely on a few established services to run the site. They process data only as needed to provide their service:

Some of these services may process data on servers outside India. I share data with others only if the law requires it, for example a valid order from a court or government authority.

7.How long I keep it

• Your profile and history: for as long as you have an account. If you ask me to delete it, I delete it within 30 days.
• Your WhatsApp chats and results: until you send delete my data or ask me by email. I delete messages older than 12 months, and chats that have been inactive for 12 months.
• Technical logs: kept by the hosting and database providers for a limited period under their own policies.
• If I ever shut First Principles down, I will delete stored personal data within a reasonable time afterwards.

8.Your rights

Under the DPDP Act, you can:

• Access a summary of the personal data I hold about you and how it's used.
• Correct or update it. You can edit your name, role, organisation and city yourself in your profile.
• Delete your account and data.
• Withdraw your consent at any time. This doesn't affect anything done before you withdrew it.
• Nominate someone to exercise these rights for you in case of death or incapacity.
• Raise a grievance with me, and if you're not satisfied with my response, complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

To do any of this, email kaushikmishra.official@gmail.com from the email address you sign in with, so I can confirm it's really you. I aim to reply within 30 days.

9.Cookies and browser storage

The site doesn't use advertising or tracking cookies. It uses your browser's own storage to keep you signed in, remember your draft answer while you sign in, and keep your recent scores if you're not signed in. You can clear this at any time in your browser settings; you'll simply be signed out.

10.Security

I take reasonable steps to protect your data: the site uses HTTPS, only I have access to the systems that store data, each person can read only their own records, and scores can only be saved by the server. No online service can be completely secure, though. If a breach affecting your personal data ever happens, I'll inform you and the Data Protection Board as the law requires.

11.Age requirement

First Principles is meant for adults. You must be 18 or older to sign in and create a profile. If you believe someone under 18 has created an account, email me and I'll delete it.

12.Changes to this policy

If I change this policy, I'll update the "Last updated" date above. For significant changes, I'll show a notice on the site or email signed-in users.