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Hi, I’m Jeremy.

I build companies.These days I helpother people build theirs.

Thirty years of starting things, including a few that sold and one that flopped. Now I work with founders on the marketing, technology, and AI underneath their growth, usually for a lot less than they are paying today.

Read the story

Seattle, Washington. Working with businesses anywhere.

Jeremy Young, smiling, in a blue blazer

Started

12 companies

Sold

3 of them

Some of the businesses I have worked with

Gander GroupHell's KitchenSilveradoStudio Beverage GroupWineShippingRelief FactorNetworkONGård Estate WinesBledsoe McDanielsSolena EstateMeadowcroft WinesPapapietro Perry Winery

About

That’s great, but who are you?

I’m a serial entrepreneur. Over about thirty years I’ve started technology, e-commerce, and consumer product companies. Most of them worked out well. One of them was a considerable failure, and I learned as much from that one as from all the rest put together.

What I do now is share all of it. I help businesses build out their technology and marketing stacks, grow revenue, and boost profit. I also bring a network of programmers and marketers that can cut what you spend getting there, sometimes by as much as 70 percent.

Started
Direct Connect, Vservers, SuperStats, UberPlay, SimplyFun, Tanga, Increasing Customers
Sold to
About.com, Micron Electronics, and Adobe by way of the Omniture IPO
Recognized
EY Entrepreneur Of The Year finalist, Arizona Tech CEO of the Year
After hours
WSET Level 3 with Distinction, 3,000+ published wine reviews

What I do

Things I can help with

Every engagement starts with a free look at the business. Pick the one closest to your problem and we will figure out the rest on a call.

Start with the audit

  • Custom AI tools shaped around how your business already runs, AI put to work inside your marketing, and an honest read on where it pays for itself and where it is a distraction.

How it usually starts

A free business audit, then a conversation.

  1. 1

    Say hello

    Use the form below or send an email. Tell me what the business does and what is in the way.

  2. 2

    The audit

    My team and I go through your marketing, advertising, competitors, SEO rankings, and more. It costs you nothing.

  3. 3

    The brainstorm

    We sit down together and I share ideas you can put to work in your business right away.

The story

Thirty-two years, in order.

Everything I have started, sold, or been asked to help run, and what each one taught me. Including the one that did not work.

  1. 1994

    Direct Connect

    Founder

    Sold to About.com for $21M

    I got online for the first time from my college apartment in 1993 and could see right away what it was going to do to business and communication. I talked my employer, a telemarketing firm with dozens of clients, into letting me build the internet arm of the company. We wrote some of the earliest shopping cart software for secure online purchases and put Rush Limbaugh, Megahertz (US Robotics), and ProForm Fitness on the web.

  2. 1996

    Vservers.com

    Founder

    Sold to Micron Electronics for close to $50M

    One of the first cloud web hosting companies in the world to run in a virtual environment. I grew it to a $10M run rate and sold it in December of 1999. It trades today as Web.com and is still a major player in hosting.

  3. 1998

    SuperStats, later Omniture

    Co-founder

    IPO, then acquired by Adobe

    With my partners Josh and John I started one of the first web analytics companies built for business. SuperStats became Omniture, went public, and Adobe bought it about a year into public trading. The technology still lives inside Adobe Experience Cloud.

  4. 2002

    UberPlay

    Founder

    50+ games licensed and produced

    A radical idea launched a little before the hardware could carry it. We set out to build massive RPGs on the PocketPC, and the devices were not quite powerful enough. Within a year I pivoted to licensing and publishing tabletop games, partnering with the Teuber family behind The Settlers of Catan. Over 50 games were licensed or created, produced in Germany and China, and sold across the US and Canada.

  5. 2003

    SimplyFun

    Founder

    $6M raised, still operating

    The hard part of selling a board game is getting someone to sit down and play it. You need social proof and a friend who insists. SimplyFun solved that with a party plan model, hundreds of Funsultants hosting game nights in living rooms and taking orders on the spot. It still runs today out of Bellevue, Washington.

  6. 2004

    Plato's Closet

    Franchisee

    Three Salt Lake City stores

    My brother and I bought the franchise rights for the Salt Lake City area and opened three stores over a few years, buying gently used name brand clothing from customers and reselling it. We have since sold two of them.

  7. 2006

    Tanga

    Founder

    About $30M a year at its peak, and the one that failed

    One killer deal a day at the best price you could find anywhere. It grew into multiple daily deals across verticals, then into a marketplace moving millions of products from tens of thousands of drop shippers to millions of customers. Growth came almost entirely from affiliate marketing and Google PPC. It is also the one that did not work out in the end, and the one I learned the most from.

  8. 2015

    EY Entrepreneur Of The Year

    Finalist, Mountain Desert region

    Top 25 across four states

    One of four Arizona entrepreneurs to reach the top 25 finalists across Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming.

  9. 2016

    Arizona Tech CEO of the Year

    Phoenix Business Journal

    One CEO chosen each year

    The Phoenix Business Journal picks a single CEO for this award every year. Being nominated and then selected was an honor.

  10. 2017

    EO Arizona

    Board Member and Learning Chair

    150+ Arizona entrepreneurs

    As Learning Chair I booked the speakers and entertainment for the chapter. Highlights included a private concert from Grammy winner Jim Brickman, a talk from Jerry Molen, the Oscar winning producer of Schindler’s List, a magic and social media session with Rick Lax, and the Iron Cowboy, who finished 50 Ironman races in 50 states in 50 days.

  11. 2019

    Young Consulting

    Founder

    Up to 70% savings on build costs

    Consulting work with Limerick Lane, Gary Farrell, WineShipping.com, BoxCheck, Studio Beverage Group, Relief Factor, RockSteady Speakers, Take Five Hard Seltzer, Gander Group, Silverado, Glassie.co, Altitude Promos, NetworkOn, Hell’s Kitchen, Vanessa Williams, Northwest Wine Company, and Growth Natives. Plus a lot of time given freely to founders who needed a marketing idea, a growth hack, or a sales plan.

  12. 2019

    Gander Group

    Chief Strategy Officer

    Page one of Google for 50+ keywords

    Helping a good friend in casino product marketing. I rebuilt the website, ran the SEO and content strategy, stood up geofenced advertising, and built an ecommerce marketplace pulling live inventory from NetSuite so businesses could buy online. Video brochures landed the large accounts.

  13. 2021

    International Wine Report

    Senior Editor

    3,000+ wines reviewed

    After leaving a fundamentalist religion where alcohol was forbidden, I started at zero. Wine turned into a way of life, a culture, and a way to tell stories. I earned my WSET Level 3 with Distinction for fun, blind taste with advanced and master sommeliers, and cover Washington, Oregon, and California for the report.

  14. 2023

    Increasing Customers

    Founder

    increasingcustomers.com

    A marketing company for small and mid sized businesses, built around the part most of them are missing, which is the system underneath. Omnichannel strategy, compliant paid advertising and lead generation, retargeting, customer journey work, marketing automation, and analytics that report on profit instead of impressions.

  15. 2026

    Snap and Simmer logo

    Snap and Simmer

    Founder

    Any link, photo, or video into a clean recipe

    A recipe keeper for the whole household. Paste a link, snap a cookbook page, or share a video from Facebook or Pinterest, and it comes back as a clean recipe without the life story. From there it builds the grocery list, plans the week, tracks nutrition, keeps notes on what you cooked, and can turn your favorites into a printed cookbook.

  16. 2026

    The Italy Wine Project logo

    The Italy Wine Project

    Founder

    All 411 DOC and DOCG appellations

    I am tasting at least one wine from every DOC and DOCG in Italy, all 411 of them, and writing each one up with a score. The site tracks the bottle count as I go and has pronunciation buttons so you can finally say the names out loud with confidence.

  17. 2026

    Alcohol Industry Insider logo

    Alcohol Industry Insider

    Founder

    Three issues a week, free

    A growth newsletter for wine, beer, and spirits businesses, out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Each issue brings marketing plays, sales and retention ideas, and AI tools you can put to work the same day. The site also keeps a free library of ready to use prompts and a directory of the AI tools the newsletter has covered.

  18. Now

    Building in public

    Founder

    Also live

    A cigar review site, sister to The Italy Wine Project.

Also, wine

I started at zero. Late.

I grew up in a religion where alcohol was forbidden, so for most of my life I ate in good restaurants and ordered a Diet Coke as the pairing. I now recognize this as a crime.

When I left, I fell for wine as a way of life, a culture, and a way to tell stories. I earned my WSET Level 3 with Distinction for fun, blind taste with advanced and master sommeliers, and I have reviewed more than 3,000 wines as a Senior Editor at International Wine Report, covering Washington, Oregon, and California.

It is also why winery marketing is on the list above. I understand the product and the people who buy it.

The Italy Wine Project Alcohol Industry Insider

Contact

I’d love to hear from you.

Ask for the free business audit, suggest a way we could work together, or book me to speak. Whatever it is, start here.

Jeremy Young

Seattle, Washington

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