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Champ Titles Raised $18M from Point72 Ventures
Champ Titles Raised $18M from Point72 Ventures

Architect Partners was the exclusive Financial Advisor to Champ Titles.

Transaction Overview

On March 27, 2024, Cleveland-based digital title and registration platform Champ Titles announced an $18 million Series C equity round led by Point72 Ventures with participation by existing investors.

Company Description

Champ Titles provides a digital title and registration suite to streamline the vehicle titling process. Their platform enables the creation of legal, digital titles for easy transfer and verification, serving insurance carriers, lenders, state governments, auto dealers, and owners. Stakeholders, including state motor vehicle departments, lenders, and vehicle owners, benefit from a unified and transparent system, where all information is readily accessible and transaction times are markedly reduced. The governance of the digital platform is established through clear guidelines, ensuring all parties adhere to the updated processes and regulations.

Champ Titles’ success is measured by the elimination of more than 5 million pieces of paper annually on average per state; a reduction in processing time from 40-60 days to a matter of hours; increased productivity of DMV title clerks processing more than five times as many titles per day; and the improved experience for consumers in each state that has adopted Champ Titles’ solutions. Over the last twelve months, the company has successfully onboarded new states including New Jersey, Kentucky, and Illinois, and expanded its relationship with West Virginia by creating the first National Digital Titling Clearinghouse (NDTC). Through these efforts, the company has grown rapidly with revenue increasing by more than 300% year over year. 

Founded in 2018 by CEO, Shane Bigelow, the company now has 63 employees and is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. 

Funding

In this Series C funding round, Champ Titles raised $18M from Point72 Ventures and existing investors including W.R. Berkley Corporation, Eos Venture Partners, Guidewire Software, and Rev1 Ventures, bringing the total amount raised since inception to $45M. 

In the prior Series B round, Champ Titles raised $13M from Guidewire Software, Eos Venture Partners, and Ally Ventures.

Before that, Champ Titles raised $13.5M in 2021 in a Series A. Emergents, now Architect Partners, served as the exclusive Financial Advisor for that financing. 

Competition

Champ Titles’ biggest competitors are existing state DMVs deciding to be a software company and developing solutions on their own or via large systems developers.  However, they also compete with other digital title networks such as Cario and Oxhead Alpha/Tezos. In addition, technology-enabled DMV solutions such as Fast Enterprises are seen as competitive but don’t offer the same efficacy.

 

Architect Partners’ Perspective

Champ Titles’ SaaS-based solutions present a compelling example of blockchain-enabled infrastructure solving real-world problems.  By focusing on the needs and pain points of legacy auto title, registration, and lien processing, Champ has leveraged the power of blockchain to transform critical government services.  The result is exponentially accelerated processing time for DMV constituents, with improved accuracy and reduced cost.  Yet Champ’s solutions capture many key benefits of on-chain data processing – which include trust, transparency, data integrity, security, and efficiency – without users even being aware of their blockchain foundations.  

While much attention is focused on recent resilience in crypto asset prices, we believe 2024 will see significant growth in non-speculative enterprise applications for distributed ledger technology.  Champ’s successful raise demonstrates investor interest in practical and scalable solutions to real-world problems.

Crypto M&A Snapshot

Week of November 11 – November 17

Eric F. Risley
November 11, 2024
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November 11th – November 17th

PERSPECTIVES by Eric F. Risley 

 

 

Could this be a trend?

 

 

It’s been 21 months since we’ve announced transactions at this week’s pace — eight — notably many with headline-worthy counterparties. M&A transactions take months (or longer) to come to fruition, so we’re looking back in time at when the circumstances were deemed right to initiate these processes. In other words, a long time before recent market euphoria developed. Promising indeed.

 

 

As highlighted in the past, we are fans of themes. Themes help explain why things are happening and act as an an organizing principle; both represent corporate strategy unfolding. What themes were present this week?

 

 

  • Scale Matters: Putting aside the insatiable desire for revenue growth that appears to have become embedded in our DNA, many businesses have economic efficiencies that emerge as they get larger. Trading and capital management are two areas with strong economic incentives to do “more of the same.” Crypto.com’s acquisition of Fintek and Arca’s merger with well-known BlockTower Capital (our M&A alert) is a great examples, in trading and capital management, respectively.

 

 

  • New Products and Enhancement to Existing Products: The scope of products and solutions is continually evolving, often expanding, within technology-led businesses. This is true regardless of size. Management teams and Boards of Directors are continually considering the age-old question: buy vs. build. Top one-percent successful technology companies like IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Symantec, Salesforce, Google, Meta, etc., have proven that well-considered and timed acquisitions are a powerful tool to ensure competitive advantage. Kaiko | Vinter (market index capabilities), Dune | SMLXL (data retrieval capabilities), Coinbase | Utopia Labs (payment capabilities & acqui-hire), and Bitwise | Attestant (staking capabilities)—we would characterize all these transactions as tactical rather than strategic in scale and impact. However, they all demonstrate the theme in action. We will tackle this topic, particularly strategic versions of this theme, in more detail at a later date.

 

 

  • Acqui-hires: The majority of young technology companies fail to achieve product-market fit; however, the team is often extraordinarily talented and has proven themselves to be “risk-taking doers.” Acqui-hires are an elegant way to re-engage these talented people, often tackling similar initiatives within a larger organization with the need. These types of transactions are also a preferred method for investors to “wind down” these investments while sometimes being accompanied by a partial return of invested capital. Coinbase | Utopia Labs and Caldera | Hook are perfect examples.

 

 

This week was another milestone: M&A transactions announced this year-to-date now exceed last year. This is certainly not headline-worthy; however, let’s celebrate every victory.

 

 

Finally, many of our conversations this past week, both externally and internally, were different forms of the same question: Are M&A and financing markets for crypto | digital media | blockchain companies going to get better with new U.S. government leadership and strong asset price appreciation? Sentiment is certainly the most positive since early 2022, prior to our self-induced Crypto Winter. We are certainly hopeful and can point to plenty of evidence that the answer is yes. However, this trend is in a vulnerable, formative stage. Ben Strack at Blockworks asked us the question and published their perspective this week. However, as highlighted in our Q3 2024 Crypto M&A and Financing Report, we have had what turned out to be premature optimism before.

 

 

We choose to be pragmatically optimistic!