BrandYourself offers online reputation-management tools that help users build personal websites, social media profiles, and other content to improve what appears in search results and suppress negative items. The company is expanding its product lineup to detect and prevent social-media pitfalls in real time and to help users scrub risky historical content. To do this it is building a “layer of context” using human-supervised machine learning to judge whether content is appropriate for a given person and situation. Examples include catching potentially damaging remarks as they are made and flagging old posts that could harm a user’s professional prospects. BrandYourself has grown to an 80-person team and is profitable, though CEO Patrick Ambron said current cashflow is insufficient to invest as aggressively as he would like. Ambron previously pitched on Shark Tank and declined funding there; if the new product direction resonates, he may pursue a larger raise. Founded in 2009 by Syracuse University classmates Pete Kistler, CEO Patrick Ambron and Evan McGowan-Watson, BrandYourself.com offers a do-it-yourself platform to help users manage their online search results. The solution is designed to simplify the search engine optimization process so non-experts can influence what appears when they are Googled. Target users mentioned include job applicants, small business owners, professional service providers and other professionals. The company is based in Syracuse, NY. The article reports the company raised $1.2M in a Series A financing. No operating metrics or detailed plans for the capital were provided in the article.

Total raised

$3M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Aug 2016