About Vertical Signal
Built from the operator’s seat.
Vertical Signal was built from years of actually doing the work: building brands, shaping campaigns, creating demand, supporting sales, managing communications, and helping companies turn strong ideas into measurable growth.
Not marketing theory. Experience earned by building, launching, persuading, selling, communicating, and scaling.
Built across brands, campaigns, and growth-stage companies.
Before Vertical Signal, Austin Young built his career in environments where getting the message right had real consequences.
He launched an outdoor consumer brand from the ground up, growing it to thousands of followers and building a customer base across more than 20 countries.
He also worked across advocacy, ballot initiative, and public affairs campaigns where positioning, audience strategy, communications, persuasion, field execution, and message discipline had to work together.
That operator mindset eventually moved into venture-backed B2B technology. At Ivy Energy, Austin helped grow the business from an early-stage company to approximately $6M in revenue while working across brand, positioning, communications, digital marketing, field marketing, events, partnerships, demand generation, lead generation, sales enablement, content, PR, and go-to-market strategy.
He also helped manage investor relations and public relations surrounding the company’s $18 million Series A financing, supporting the messaging, communications, stakeholder coordination, and external narrative around a major company milestone.
A career built around making things move.
20+ Countries
Built from zero.
Launched an outdoor consumer brand and grew it to thousands of followers with customers across more than 20 countries.
Multiple Wins
Built for high-stakes environments.
Supported successful advocacy, ballot initiative, and public affairs campaigns requiring disciplined messaging, audience strategy, communications, persuasion, and field execution.
$0 → ~$6M
Helped scale a venture-backed B2B company.
Helped grow Ivy Energy from an early-stage company to approximately $6M in revenue while helping build the marketing, positioning, demand, communications, brand, and commercial infrastructure around the business.
$18M Series A
Supported the story behind a major growth milestone.
Helped manage investor relations and public relations surrounding Ivy Energy’s $18 million Series A financing, including messaging, communications, external positioning, PR, and stakeholder coordination.
Full-Stack
Operated across the entire marketing system.
Experience spanning positioning, messaging, digital, websites, design, content, PR, investor relations, events, partnerships, field marketing, demand generation, lead generation, sales enablement, campaigns, and go-to-market strategy.
Marketing problems rarely stay inside one marketing channel.
A pipeline problem might actually be a positioning problem.
A website problem might actually be a messaging problem.
A demand generation problem might actually be a credibility problem.
A communications problem might actually be a positioning problem.
And sometimes the smartest marketing decision is not launching another campaign at all. That experience shaped the Vertical Signal model.
Make it clear.
Signal Strategy clarifies positioning, differentiation, buyer messaging, category strategy, and go-to-market direction.
Make it credible.
Signal Studio turns strategy into websites, presentations, case studies, launches, brand systems, and commercial assets buyers can believe.
Make it move.
Signal Engine puts the story into motion through content, campaigns, partnerships, communications, AI-enabled execution, and pipeline generation.
The objective isn’t more marketing. It’s making the entire commercial system work harder.
Experience communicating when the stakes are high.
Some marketing environments leave very little room for vague messaging.
Campaigns have to persuade. Public communications have to withstand scrutiny. Investor communications have to create confidence. Major company milestones have to be translated into a clear external story.
The discipline
From ballot initiatives to an $18M Series A, the underlying discipline is the same: clarity creates confidence.
Senior judgment. Modern leverage. Less unnecessary overhead.
The economics of marketing are changing. AI makes research, production, analysis, iteration, and execution dramatically faster.
But faster execution does not replace strategic judgment. Vertical Signal combines experienced, senior-level marketing thinking with modern AI systems and specialized execution when needed.
Senior Strategy
01The person developing the direction stays close to the work.
AI Leverage
02Modern AI systems accelerate research, production, analysis, iteration, and execution.
Specialized Talent
03Bring in the right expertise when the work requires it, without building unnecessary agency layers around every project.
Spend more of the marketing budget on judgment, ideas, execution, and business outcomes, and less on organizational overhead.
Experience across the entire growth system.
Why Vertical Signal
The name Vertical Signal comes from two parts of my life that have always mattered to me: growth and the outdoors.
I’ve always been drawn to extreme sports, mountains, climbing, and being outside. There’s something about moving upward, finding a line, committing to it, adjusting as conditions change, and continuing toward the summit, that has always resonated with me.
That same mindset is what I love most about business.
My favorite stage of working with a company has always been the growth stage. The point where the product is real, the potential is obvious, but everything is still being figured out.
- The story needs to get sharper.
- The market needs to understand the value.
- The website needs to catch up.
- Sales needs better tools.
- Marketing needs more focus.
- New channels need to be tested.
The company has momentum, but it still needs a clear route upward. That is the part I enjoy most.
Vertical represents that climb.
It is altitude, ambition, movement, and progress. It reflects the mountains and outdoor environments that have shaped me personally, but it also represents the stage of business I’m most energized by: helping a company move from one level to the next.
Signal represents clarity.
Every growing company creates noise.
- Features.
- Campaigns.
- Opinions.
- Content.
- Decks.
- Metrics.
- Product updates.
- Sales messages.
- New ideas.
The challenge is figuring out what actually matters.
- What should the market understand?
- Why are you different?
- What does the buyer need to believe?
- Where is the real opportunity?
That is the signal.
So Vertical Signal is really about finding the strongest signal and helping it climb.
Where is growth getting stuck?
If your company has strong potential but your positioning, website, communications, marketing, or growth system has not caught up, let’s find the constraint.