HispanicBusiness

BrandYourself.com, the only do-it-yourself platform that makes it easy for any person to take control of their own Google results, took home the award for Best Bootstrapped Startup at the 4th Annual SXSW Accelerator event presented by Microsoft BizSpark.

The competition selected 40 finalists out of a pool of 650 companies, which were separated into 8 categories, including innovative Web, Entertainment, Health and Mobile Technologies. Entrants competed against each other in front of a panel of judges, who then chose an award winner for each category. The judges then announced an overall winner for the Best Bootstrapped Startup in the competition, choosing the company that made the most progress with the most promise given the resources of a startup.

BrandYourself started when cofounder Pete Kistler couldn't get an internship in college because he was being mistaken for a drug dealer with the same name on Google. "We wanted to give everybody the power of reputation management, regardless of how tech savvy or wealthy they might be, so we created a free product that makes it simple for anyone to do," Ambron noted.

Emcees for the 2012 Accelerator competition included Brad Burnham, Union Square Ventures; Timothy Draper, Draper Fisher Jurveston; MC Hammer, Wiredoo; Christine Herron, Intel Capital; Brad King, Ball State University; Frank Moss, Bluefin Labs; Jim Schachter, New York Times; and Scott Weiss, Andreesen Horowitz. A full list of the expert industry judges can be found here: http://sxsw.com/interactive/startupvillage/accelerator/judges.

For a complete list of SXSW Accelerator finalists and winners in the Interactive category, visit the following site: http://sxsw.com/interactive/startupvillage/accelerator. For finalists and winners in the Music category, visit: http://sxsw.com/music/startupvillage/accelerator.