Prior to Red Hat, Young built a couple of computer rental and leasing businesses, including founding Vernon Computer Rentals in 1984.[3] Descendants of Vernon are still operating under that name. After leaving Vernon, Young founded the ACC Corp Inc. in 1993.[4]
Marc Ewing and Young co-founded open-source software company Red Hat. Red Hat was a member of the S&P 500 Index before being purchased by IBM on July 9, 2019. Marc Ewing and Young's partnership started in 1994 when ACC acquired the Red Hat trademarks from Ewing. In early 1995, ACC changed its name to Red Hat Software, which has subsequently been shortened to simply Red Hat, Inc. Young was Red Hat's CEO until 1999.
In 2002, Young founded Lulu.com, a print-on-demand, self-publishing company, and was CEO. In 2006, Young established the Lulu Blooker Prize, a book prize for books that began as blogs. He launched the prize partly as a means to promote Lulu.
Young was CEO of PrecisionHawk, a commercial drone technology company, from 2015 to 2017.[5] Prior to being named PrecisionHawk's CEO in 2015, he was an early investor in the company. He continues on its board as chairman.