People being introspective is driving the growth of Truity Psychometrics LLC, a Roseville company that offers free online personality tests to millions of people per year.
Truity is one of the fastest-growing companies in the country, with users opting to pay for more detailed assessments of their tests. Truity ranked No. 383 on this year's Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in America, with 1,252% revenue growth over the past three years.
Most of the company’s revenue comes from individual consumers, but it has a growing business with Truity at Work, whose customers include a mix of businesses, organizations, coaches and counselors.
CEO and founder Molly Owens started Truity in 2012 in Oakland. It moved to Roseville around March of 2020, said Abby Lunardini, the company's chief marketing officer.
About 65% of the paying customers are individuals, and the remainder are companies, Lunardini said.
Truity offers a variety of personality tests, as well as career profile tests and surveys that can help people decide what would be a good career for their personality type.
The pandemic shutdowns accelerated uses of the tests by individuals, Lunardini said, adding that many people became interested in finding a better match for their return to work.
Truity employs tests based on Myers-Briggs and Enneagram personality tests, as well as others, to let people know their personality types, which can then lead them toward an appropriate career choice. They can also help people see their weaknesses, or blind spots, so they can learn to adjust.
“Millennials and Gen Z are more focused on these tools,” Lunardini said.
Millennials are people born between 1981 and 1996, and Gen Z are those born between 1997 and 2012.
“People in their 20s to late 30s are looking for development tools,” Lunardini said. “They are being introspective about their strengths and blind spots.”
The company is averaging 3 million monthly unique visitors to its website. A counter on the site says 1.6 million have taken just its TypeFinder test in the last month.
Truity has six full-time employees, four full-time contractors and eight other freelancers. Lunardini declined to disclose the company's annual revenue, but she said Truity has been profitable for seven years.
Founder Owens is a therapist, and before starting the company she worked as a consultant for large companies. She realized that large companies had access to qualified testing, but smaller companies and individuals generally only had access to low-quality tests available online. Owens started Truity to offer better testing and analysis to the majority of companies and people, Lunardini said.
Truity doesn’t believe that personality tests should be used as a screener for hiring, Lunardini said. Rather, the tests can be powerful and useful tools for companies to improve collaboration and communications at the workplace, she said. “It is a way to develop best skills.”
For example, almost all of leadership is made up of extroverts, and that can create blind spots for companies and leadership because introverts are excellent at reading people, and that is a powerful benefit to managing people.
Though its tests are free to individuals, many users opt to pay $19 for a detailed, 21-page report on what the assessment means.
The company’s employees develop content for the site, work on technological development of the site and work on training for business customers. The content for the site, which includes blogs and other media, is what draws searches to the company, and that is a large part of its marketing, Lunardini said.
