BrandYourself.com Reaches 10K Users in 14 Days; CEO to Personally Deliver Homemade Cookies to 10,000th User

SYRACUSE, N.Y., March 29, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- BrandYourself.com, the only do-it-yourself platform that helps people take control of their own search results, announced today it has surpassed 10,000 users in under 14 days since launching the product on March 9. Hundreds of users have also converted into paying premium members, exceeding the company's growth projections by more than five times. To recognize the milestone, CEO Patrick Ambron has pledged to honor the 10,000th user—and every 10,000th user thereafter—with a special personalized gesture: a homemade batch of their favorite cookies personally delivered to their door by Ambron. 

"It's important that we always put our users first. It's a major reason why we're picking up traction so quickly, and gestures like these will make sure we never forget that," says Ambron. According to Ambron, every 10,000th user will get:

• A free premium BrandYourself account for 10,000 days ($3,000 value),
• 10,000 seconds (3 hours) of free coaching from a personalized search rep to improve his or her search results,
• A featured article and interview on the popular BrandYourself blog, and
• A box of his or her favorite cookies personally delivered to their door by Patrick Ambron,

According to Ambron, for every big milestone he will up the ante. "Right now it's a box of cookies; for our 100,000th user I might buy them a keg, for our millionth, I might go out and throw them a party. The point is, our company is very customer friendly and we think this gesture shows that."

BrandYourself.com started when co-founder Pete Kistler couldn't get an internship in college because he was being mistaken for a drug dealer in Google. The co-founders didn't believe it was justifiable for reputation companies to charge people thousands of dollars to control their search results, as if they were a business. Kistler and Ambron teamed up with co-founder Evan Watson and together they built a team, raised a round of venture capital and released their product two weeks ago.

In that short time, it has gained traction quickly, including bringing home the top Startup Award at the annual SXSW startup accelerator. "We've gotten some great press and signed up a lot of people, but more importantly, those people are actively using the product and improving their lives," says Ambron. "In the last two weeks, we've raised positive results over 100,000 positions total in Google. That means when an average user boosts a link, it shoots up about 10 results—or one page in Google results—in just two weeks. That's huge."

About BrandYourself
BrandYourself.com is the first do-it-yourself platform that makes it easy for anyone to take control of their own Google results. It was founded in 2009 by Syracuse University classmates Pete Kistler, Patrick Ambron and Evan McGowan-Watson after Kistler couldn't get an internship for being mistaken in Google as a drug dealer. BrandYourself has raised more than $1.2 million in Series A funding and been recognized for its innovative technology, including being honored by the White House as one of the Top 100 Startups Run by Entrepreneurs Under 30. BrandYourself was also named one of the Top 5 Collegiate Startups by Entrepreneur Magazine, and chosen as the winner of the New York State Emerging Business Technology competition, a $200,000 prize, the youngest team to ever win.

SOURCE BrandYourself.com