Pete Kistler and his team at Brand-Yourself.com, and online reputation management and personal branding tool, were kind enough to answer a few questions about their service and give some great advice to startupists anywhere.

Brand-Yourself.com is essentially an online reputation management service, which the name accurately conveys. Why did you choose to name B-Y so aptly, rather than opt for a more Web2.0/catchy name?

PK: Your name is the foundation of your brand. As a team we talked about the benefits of Web 2.0 names: they’re catchy, concise, attention grabbing, and trendy. It’s also easy to monitor who’s talking about your service with tools like Google alerts since it’s not a real word.

On the flip side, Web 2.0 names usually don’t describe what the business does. They’re difficult to pass on to others verbally without writing it down, because they’re spelled irregularly.

In the end we wanted people to immediately understand that we are a service you can use to BRAND YOURSELF. I also wanted people to be able to pronounce it spell it without seeing it written.

The B-Y team is largely made up of fellow students. Describe your team dynamic in a nutshell. How has this (the fact that you are fellow students) work in the startups favor and to its detriment?

PK: Here’s our team dynamic in a nutshell. I put out a high-level vision to the team. We tear it apart on white boards. By the end of a session, we have a million new ideas. Then we ruthlessly prioritize and decide on our next steps.

RJ, our CTO, takes these ideas and says, “X is impossible. Y is possible.” I’m the visionary and he is the realist. The dynamic is great. He has a mastermind group that often weighs in with thoughts about what can and can’t be done. Trace (CMO), Patrick (Online Marketing Strategist) and Evan (Chief Evangelist) figure out how to market these new ideas to the world.

Being a student means you have a support network. Your college is there to help. As my friend Matt Wilson, founder of Under30CEO.com says, “If you are at a business school don’t forget– you have an entire accounting, legal, marketing, management, finance, and IT department at your disposal. Start asking questions!” Within Syracuse University, the iSchool (my home school) and the Whitman School of Management (Trace and RJ’s home school) have been invaluable. We have asked for their help in concrete ways, and they have absolutely supported us.

B-Y participates in a sort of sandbox/incubator program where you are closely advised and steered by professors and those who have more startup experience. How has this helped, and would you recommend it to other startups?

PK: One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned is to share, share, share your idea early. Get out there and talk to people about it. Talk to everyone. Leave your inner circle! For a long time we worked out of our dorm rooms and apartments because we had an idea, we were dead set on building it, and we thought “this is how startups work: a bunch of guys pulling all-nighters magically producing an amazing product.” Sure that can happen, but your product will be a thousand times better after integrating feedback from a number of different perspectives.

The more perspectives we heard, the better we understood our own business. The more conversations we had, the more we could improve and build upon our original concept. Here’s the thing: if you tell someone your idea, in order to steal it, they’ll have to drop everything and devote their life to it. You can be pretty damn sure they’re not going to do that. So don’t hide in the shadows, especially early on when you need the most help.

The Syracuse Technology Garden’s sandbox program was amazing. We had a network of professionals, entrepreneurs, angel investors and mentors there to hear us out and critique our story. I can’t tell you how many times I met with mentors and said point blank, “Don’t be nice – rip this idea a new one.” That’s how you grow. The incubator also gave us the office space we needed to expand our team beyond RJ’s apartment.

What makes B-Y the premier online reputation management service?

PK: There are other online reputation management services, but no other website scours the web for information about you as a job applicant, then grades your web presence from the perspective of a hiring manager. No other website breaks down your website into quantifiable components, and within these components, suggests where you should be active online based on your field. We are going to automate everything up to the point where human interaction is required, and then we’ll guide you through the steps you need to take.

What we’ve built is a web 2.0 toolset to diagnose, strengthen and monitor your online image. Everybody needs a way to find out what’s out there about them on the web, know what’s helping and what’s hurting them, understand what steps they can take to improve their position, and keep tabs on any changes that might affect their career. The fact is, 83% of employers research job applicants online. If they like what they find, they solidify their decision to hire you. If they notice red flags, they cut you from the applicant pool. Gen Y, the 70 million twentysomethings who grew up the Internet, have a long trail of digital breadcrumbs that are destroying their job opportunities. We’re giving these young professionals and careerists of any age a way to control their Google results to thrive in today’s economy.

At the core of B-Y is a personal branding blog that is constantly updated with tips and excellent content for those looking to solidify their personal brand. What role does this blog play in B-Y’s success, and would you recommend most startups have blogs/content relevant to the service they offer?

PK: Our career advice blog is extremely important to us. It’s allowed us to build a community of amazing careerists, students, entrepreneurs and professionals proactively advancing their careers. We get about 30k unique visitors a month, a number that’s quickly growing. We are serious about helping people land jobs in a job market that quite frankly, sucks. The last stat I heard from the National Association of Colleges and Employers was that 20% of ‘09 college grads had a job by the time they graduated. Only one in five graduates got a job!

As a business in the 21st century, you’d be silly not to blog about the things your customers care about. It builds a community of people in your direct target market who look up to you as a credible resource. I heard once that if you’re thinking of starting a business, you should first ask yourself if you could a blog about it. If not, think long and hard before starting it. I think that’s a great mindset.