Company with connection to domain name industry will become a public company later this year.
System1, a company with roots in the domain name industry, will become a public company later this year.
The business is combining with Trebia Acquisition Corp. (NYSE: TREB), a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). The company will trade on the NYSE under the symbol SST once the combination is complete.
As part of the transaction, System1 will combine with Protected.net, a developer of security and privacy subscription products with over 2 million paying subscribers. The combined entity will be valued at $1.4 billion.
Michael Blend founded System1 after leaving Demand Media (now Leaf Group). Blend sold his domain parking company HotKeys to Demand Media and became an executive at the company.
System1 describes itself as an “omnichannel customer acquisition platform.” It operates sites such as MapQuest, Startpage, HowStuffWorks, info.com, and CarsGenius.
At its core, System1 is a sophisticated traffic arbitrage business. It spends over $500 million of digital advertising per year, which drives 1.3 billion visits to its websites, including search and content sites. 800 million of these visitors then go to an advertiser’s website, such as through a Google and Bing feed.
Leave a Comment