Gives me great pleasure to introduce to you, Auren Hoffman, CEO of Rapleaf. They are a startup with the purpose of providing a system to build your online reputation which can then be used for enhancing successful exchanges in any kind of business transaction. They have created apps for MySpace, Linkedin, and Facebook. Read more about them on their blog here.

What kind of impact do you see online reputation playing in the years to come and how important is it to play a role in online business?

Your reputation (both online and offline) will eventually dictate your place in the world. Your reputation will be a form of currency where those with a higher reputation will have more benefits. You can think of your online reputation as something that measures trustworthiness, along the lines of your FICO or credit score which measures your creditworthiness.

And in business, having a solid reputation can mean more money in your pocket. There’s a study done by a UC Berkeley professor who looked at Ebay auctions and the reputation of the sellers. He concluded that having a high Ebay reputation can elicit higher prices – buyers are willing to pay extra so that they can ensure they get a better service. And we agree that a higher reputation equates to more profitability.

What problem does Rapleaf hope to address?

A better reputation means more money in your pocket. That's important. But we're driven by a higher cause.

Our tagline is, “it is more profitable to be ethical,” and we are on a mission to make the world more ethical. We’re not a business. We’re a cause.

Our goal is not just to reward those people who are good. We want to encourage people to BE GOOD.

How has RapLeaf approached solving the problem with adoption of your global ratings system?

Rapleaf has really easy-to-implement APIs (takes under 90 minutes to be fully integrated), see our partners, and so dozens of sites have integrated Rapleaf into their consumer experience. The best thing about the Rapleaf API is that the consumer never has to leave your site. So 98% of our usage comes from our partner sites (few people have to go to the Rapleaf.com site directly). While we expect that ratio to change in a few weeks when we launch some new functionality on Rapleaf, our core belief is to help the user wherever the user is.

Of course, reputation isn’t just ratings, it is also your implicit behavior online and offline. I often will check someone's MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn profile before conducting business with them. Rapleaf is making it easier for people to do that. When you look at my Rapleaf profile, you'll see links to all my social networks and other information about me (all of it is automatically generated by Rapleaf).

How many people comprise the RapLeaf team and what are each of their roles?

Right now we are at eleven full-time employees with two interns and almost everyone is an engineer.

We’re primarily engineering driven with plans to bring on an engineer a month for at least the next year or so (software engineers can send their resumes to jobs@rapleaf.com). And we’re also looking for a business development person.

Being an investor and holding several noteworthy managerial positions, can you please say a few words on what you think is going to be the next boom after Web 2.0?

I think gummi bears will make a comeback.