brandyourself.com

Brand Yourself was founded in 2009 to help people deal with damaging content about themselves online. The problems it addresses are common and personal: an ex-partner posting vindictively, a former employee attacking a company on review sites, or an old social media post that resurfaces years later and costs someone a job. Patrick Ambron described the clientele as mixed, ranging from college students to young professionals to high-profile executives and politicians.

The business runs on two revenue streams. The first is a subscription software product, which most users buy for about $7 a month, or roughly $80 a year. The second is professional services for more complicated problems, averaging about $10,000 a year per customer. Ambron said about half of total revenue comes from those services, and that customers often upgrade from the software when the issues feel damaging to their livelihood. The software is designed to spot behavioral triggers, and when a user shows signs of needing more help, an advisor calls them to offer a services package.

The company's growth was strong but slowed in its early years. Ambron said there were a few years with no revenue while the team worked out the model. After that, revenue grew from about $400,000 to $800,000, then past $1 million, $2 million, and $4 million. In 2015 the company brought in just over $4.2 million. The team has grown to about 75 employees split between New York City and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where the professional services work was moved to a lower-cost area with colleges nearby.

Brand Yourself's customers mostly found it on their own. Ambron said all of its growth has been organic, because the product solves problems that already exist, so people come looking for help. The company does a small amount of paid marketing. It spends about $3,000 to $5,000 a month on retargeting and has tried some small Facebook campaigns. It has avoided bidding on the same keywords as larger competitors such as reputation.com, which pay higher prices for them.

The Shark Tank appearance was a major turning point. The company was offered $2 million for 25%, which was double what Ambron had asked for, and he turned it down because he was the only founder on the show and did not want to give up that much equity. The exposure from the broadcast was worth more than the deal would have been. In the three or four months after the episode aired, Ambron estimated the company brought in over $1 million in revenue beyond its normal pace.

The strongest point in the model is unit economics. Ambron estimated that the average revenue per user was about $54 a month, and with customers lasting a little over a year, lifetime value came to roughly $702. The fully weighted cost to acquire a customer was under $100, far below that. Because of this gap, Ambron said the company would be willing to spend around 40% of lifetime value, or a few hundred dollars, to acquire a customer, but it had not yet found a channel where that spending could reliably produce customers.

The main challenge is scaling. Organic inbound growth is efficient but hard to control, and paid acquisition has been limited by competitors bidding up the same keywords. Ambron also said the company needs to shift from fixing problems after they occur toward preventive and proactive tools, which would extend customer relationships beyond the current one-year cycle.

Brand Yourself raised about $6 million in total, including a $4 million round led by NEA and New Atlantic Ventures with Founders Fund, at a valuation of about $20 million. Ambron said the company was not for sale at a $40 million offer from reputation.com, and that its long-term goal is to become a reputation monitoring tool that helps users prevent problems before they happen. He projected $6 million in revenue for the year, with the core question being how to find a repeatable, scalable acquisition channel.