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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.

Insights

Week of August 5 – August 11

Glenn Gottlieb
August 14, 2024
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22 Crypto Private Financings Raised ~$106M 

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $201M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $194M

 

With 22 deals and a mere $108M of invested capital, this past week demonstrated notably subdued activity in the market. Given subdued activity over the last few weeks, we’ll be closely monitoring whether this represents a summer lull or signals a more prolonged trend.

 

In our ongoing effort to spotlight interesting blockchain applications and business models, we turn our attention to Andrena.

 

Andrena, a high-speed Wi-Fi Internet provider, is developing DAWN (Decentralized Autonomous Wireless Network), a decentralized broadband protocol. This initiative leverages blockchain technology and decentralized physical infrastructure networking (DePIN) to create a mesh Internet access system. The company’s approach involves deploying wireless base stations on rooftops, potentially disrupting the traditional ISP model.

 

Wireless, mesh networked Internet coverage (and the possibility of shared resources) is not a new concept.   Silicon Valley is littered with “corpses” that attempted to solve this problem.  Andrena’s decentralized solution perhaps has the best opportunity for success in relation to past attempts.

 

Andrena has successfully raised $18 million in an extended Series A funding round, led by Dragonfly Capital, bringing its total funding to $33.45 million. This level of investment suggests strong market confidence in Andrena’s decentralized broadband concept. The company’s plans to cover over three million households at launch indicate a substantial addressable market, with potential for global expansion.

 

The DAWN protocol incorporates Solana blockchain technology for token incentives, allowing users to purchase and exchange DAWN tokens for network Internet speed. This tokenization model could create a new economic ecosystem within the Internet service provision space, potentially attracting both users and investors interested in the intersection of blockchain and telecommunications.

 

The decentralized broadband model proposed by Andrena draws parallels with the democratization of energy production through solar panels. Just as consumers can generate their own electricity and sell excess back to the grid, DAWN aims to enable users to do the same with Internet bandwidth.  Thus, Andrena’s decentralized broadband model represents a significant shift in the Internet service provider landscape. If successful, it could lead to increased competition, potentially driving down costs for consumers and spurring innovation in the sector.  However, regulatory, technical, and security challenges, and the need for widespread adoption remain key hurdles for the company to overcome.