Contents
1. Who we are
Embark on AI is an AI strategy consultancy for businesses up to 1,000 employees, operating from Illinois, United States. This policy covers the website at embarkonai.com, the resources we publish through it, and the AI Strategy Assessment we deliver to clients.
For anything in this policy, including any request about your own information, write to dave@embarkonai.com. A person reads that address, not a ticketing system.
2. What we collect automatically when you visit
We log every human page view on this site. We want to be direct about that, because most sites in our category do the same thing and say nothing about it.
For each page view we record:
- Your IP address
- The owner of the network block your IP belongs to. On an office network this is usually a company name; on a home connection it is usually your internet provider
- Your approximate city, region and country, derived from that IP by our content delivery network. This is city-level at best and is often wrong by some distance
- The page you viewed, including any query string
- The referring URL, meaning the page that linked you here
- Your browser user agent string
- The date and time of the visit
Why we collect it
We are a small business-to-business firm. This log tells us which organizations are looking at our work, so that we can understand what interests them and, in some cases, follow up with the company. It also tells us which pages are worth keeping.
We do not sell this log. Visits that identify themselves as search engine crawlers, previewers and other automated traffic are filtered out and not recorded.
If you would rather not appear in this log at all, a VPN, a corporate proxy or your browser's private mode will each change what we see, and you are welcome to use them.
3. Analytics and cookies
This site uses Google Analytics 4 to count visits and see which pages get read. Google Analytics sets its own cookies in your browser and processes data under Google's terms. You can read Google's privacy policy, and you can block it entirely with Google's browser opt-out add-on or with any standard content blocker.
We set no advertising cookies, run no advertising pixels, and do not operate a cross-site tracking or retargeting network. The page-view log described in section 2 is server-side and does not depend on cookies, so blocking cookies will not remove you from it.
4. What you give us directly
Resources: the newsletter, whitepapers and articles
Our resources are free but gated, which means we ask for information before we show them to you. When you complete one of those forms we collect:
- Your name and business email address
- Your company name, job title, industry and company size
- Which resource you asked for, and the date
- Your answer to the marketing consent checkbox
Our server adds the IP address, city and country of the submission, plus a timestamp, and stores those alongside the rest.
These forms require a business email address. Addresses at common consumer mail providers are refused, both in your browser and again on our server. This is a commercial choice about who our material is for, not a security measure.
The contact and assessment intake form
When you ask us to start an assessment or simply get in touch, we collect your name, work email address, mobile phone number, company name, job title, company size, industry, and whatever you choose to write in the free-text field about what you are hoping AI can do for your business.
We ask for a mobile number because the assessment includes a scheduled phone interview, and because our interview system uses the number you give us to recognize you when you call.
5. If you become an assessment client
The AI Strategy Assessment collects considerably more than the website does, and you should know what happens to it.
- Questionnaire responses, including revenue, headcount, margin and goal information about your business
- Recorded and transcribed interviews with you and with the executives you nominate
- Anything else you send us in the course of the engagement
About the interview calls. Assessment interviews are conducted by an AI interviewer over the phone. Those calls are recorded and transcribed so that we can build your report from what was actually said. You are told this at the start of the call. Illinois, where we are based, requires the consent of every party to a recorded conversation, so if you or any participant would prefer not to be recorded, say so and we will make other arrangements rather than proceed.
Interview transcripts and questionnaire answers are processed by automated systems, including large language models, to draft the analysis in your report. Every report is reviewed by our founder before it reaches you. We use those model providers on business terms that do not permit your content to be used to train their models. We make every attempt to anonymize your company name during our AI Strategy Assessments, so that your company can't be identified for use in training commercial LLM models.
Your engagement material is yours. We do not publish it, sell it, or show it to another client. Where we produce public sample reports, they are built on invented companies and composite figures and are labeled as such.
6. Marketing email and how to unsubscribe
If you tick the consent box on a resource form, which reads "I agree to receive marketing emails from Embark on AI. Unsubscribe anytime," we may send you our newsletter and occasional notes about new material. We send this ourselves. We do not rent, sell or share our list, and we do not send on behalf of anyone else.
To stop receiving those emails, reply to any one of them and say so, or write to dave@embarkonai.com with "unsubscribe" in the subject line. We will remove you promptly and in any case within ten business days.
Separately from marketing, we will still send you email that the work itself requires, such as confirming a booking, delivering your report, or answering something you asked us. Unsubscribing from marketing does not switch those off.
7. Where your information is stored
Everything described above is held in business systems operated by third-party providers on our behalf, in the United States. Those providers cover the following functions:
| Function | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Website hosting and content delivery | Serves this site and supplies the network and location information described in section 2 |
| Analytics | Google Analytics 4, as described in section 3 |
| Customer records database | The page-view log, the resource sign-up list, prospect records and interview transcripts |
| Workflow automation | Moves submissions from the website into the records database and runs the assessment process |
| Voice interviewing | Places and records the assessment interview calls and produces transcripts |
| Language models | Draft the analysis in assessment reports, as described in section 5 |
| Google Workspace, for our correspondence with you |
We will name the specific provider behind any of these functions on request. Write to dave@embarkonai.com.
8. Who we share it with
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We have never done either.
We disclose information only to the service providers listed in section 7, who process it on our instructions to run our business; to professional advisers such as our accountant or attorney where they need it; and where the law requires it of us, for example in response to a valid legal process. If our business were ever sold or merged, client and subscriber records would transfer with it, and we would tell you before that took effect.
9. How long we keep it
- Page-view logs: up to 24 months, then deleted
- Google Analytics data: per Google's retention setting on our property, currently 14 months
- Resource sign-ups and marketing list: until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete you, and for a short period afterwards so we can honor the request
- Enquiries that go nowhere: up to 24 months
- Client engagement records, including transcripts and reports: seven years, which reflects ordinary business and tax record-keeping, unless you ask us to delete them sooner
10. Your choices and your rights
Whoever and wherever you are, you can ask us to:
- Tell you what we hold about you
- Give you a copy of it
- Correct anything that is wrong
- Delete it
- Stop sending you marketing email
Email dave@embarkonai.com and we will respond within 30 days. We may need to confirm you are who you say you are before we act, particularly on a deletion request. We will not treat you any differently for exercising these rights.
California residents. The rights above are the ones the CCPA and CPRA give you, including the right to know, delete and correct, and the right to opt out of sale or sharing. As stated in section 8, we do not sell or share personal information, so there is nothing to opt out of. You may use an authorized agent to make a request.
Residents of the EU, EEA and UK. Where the GDPR applies to you, our lawful bases are your consent, for marketing email; the performance of a contract, for client work; and our legitimate interest in understanding and reaching potential business customers, for the page-view log and analytics. You may object to processing based on legitimate interest, withdraw consent at any time, request portability of your data, and complain to your national supervisory authority.
11. Security
Access to our records is limited to our founder and to any contractor working on a specific engagement. The systems we use are accessed over encrypted connections with multi-factor authentication, and this site is served entirely over HTTPS. No arrangement of this kind is perfect, and we will not claim otherwise. If we ever learn of a breach affecting your information, we will tell you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.
12. Children
This is a business-to-business service. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has given us information, write to us and we will delete it.
13. Changes to this policy
When we change what we collect or what we do with it, we will update this page and move the "last updated" date at the top. If a change is significant and affects people already on our list, we will say so by email rather than quietly editing the page.
14. How to reach us
Embark on AI
Attn: Dave Richter, Founder
dave@embarkonai.com
If you have a privacy question, a request about your own information, or a complaint about how we have handled it, that address is the right place to send it.