A Syracuse University alumnus walked away from a $2 million offer on Friday’s episode of the ABC hit show “Shark Tank.”

Patrick Ambron, a class of 2009 alumnus and one of the co-founders of BrandYourself, an online reputation management company that provides do-it-yourself tools and services to help people improve what shows up in a simple Google search of their name. BrandYourself also offers services where customers can pay someone to manage their online presence.

On the show, Ambron asked the investors of the show, called sharks, for a $2 million investment in exchange for a 13.5 percent stake in the company. Robert Herjavec, one of the sharks, saw potential in BrandYourself and counteroffered Ambron by asking for a 25 percent stake in the company for $2 million.

Ambron turned down Herjavec’s offer and left the tank.

“It would have been great to strike a deal,” said Pete Kistler, a co-founder of BrandYourself who is also an SU alumnus. “But since we had closed a round of funding we just couldn’t agree to their terms.”

Since the episode aired, Kistler said BrandYourself has reached the mainstream audience he had hoped to capture by going on the show. The website received hundreds of thousands of views over the weekend and the phones were ringing off the hook, he said.

Kistler collaborated with co-founders and college friends Ambron and Evan McGowan-Watson to create the company after he applied for a job and received an unexpected rejection letter — when potential employers Googled him, they were getting results about a criminal with the same name.

Kistler said he and his partners applied — along with 10,000 other applicants — to earn a spot on “Shark Tank.”

“It was a seriously intense process. Months and months long, signing document after document and several interviews later, we were notified that Patrick would be flown out for a week to pitch the sharks,” Kistler said.

Kistler said the 50 staff members at BrandYourself were in the office 14 hours a day in the days leading up to the airing. He said following Friday’s episode, they had a huge spike in sales.

BrandYourself spoke with previous “Shark Tank” contestants and made sure the team was well prepared for the chaotic office after the episode’s airing. Kistler said the team increased their phone supply and updated their website to handle the volume.

On the day of airing, the company’s new site design was launched. “Shark Tank” viewers were given 10 percent off using the promo code “sharkbite.”

The BrandYourself software idea arose independently of SU, but faculty in the School of Information Studies and resources available through the university were hugely beneficial, Kistler said.

“We did the Panasci Business Plan Competition and won $10,000, which helped us really early on,” said Kistler. “We were a part of the Student Sandbox, and the Tech Garden — joined between SU and the city of Syracuse — gave us a space to brainstorm.”

Despite not reaching a deal with the sharks, BrandYourself is going to continue creating more products, Kistler said. He said the company aims to continue making the do-it-yourself tools more powerful and easy to use.

“It’s just been crazy,” Kistler said. “To reach a mainstream audience with the show was huge for us.”

—Asst. Feature Editor Kait Hobson contributed reporting to this article

Published on March 22, 2015 at 10:11 pm

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