System1: Silicon Beach’s Sleeping Giant
Michael Blend and Chuck Ursini founded System1, the sleeping giant by the beach, quietly amassing one of the best computer engineer and data scientist teams in the country, and raising $270M in the summer of 2017
On a not-so-nondescript corner of Venice Beach (I’m talking about the roundabout at Main Street and Windward Avenue) sits a two-story office building that—apart from the eclectic Venice Beach murals—likely goes unnoticed by the scooter-riding, skateboard-kicking, Lyft-riding passersby.
Within said office building lies the Silicon Beach behemoth you’ve never heard of, System1—an industry-leading Internet technology company that works with the world’s largest search engines to enhance their businesses by unlocking what System1 calls “latent intent.”
If I’m correct and you have indeed never heard of the company, that’s fine with System1 co-founders Michael Blend (President) and Chuck Ursini (CEO). Blend and Ursini, along with their 170 employees, have kept their heads down and mouths shut since founding System1 in 2013. Today it stands as one of the city’s most proficient and successful technology companies with an upward trajectory that would make any shareholder giddy.