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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 November 4 – November 11

Todd White
November 13, 2024
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November 4 – November 11 (Published November 13th)

PERSPECTIVES by Todd White

 

23 Crypto Private Financings Raised: ~$187M 

Rolling 3-Month-Average: ~$216M

Rolling 52-Week Average: ~$218M

 

I first learned about Bitcoin at a Freedom and Unity Festival in 2012. I saw an intellectually fascinating form of digital money created and managed by a community of libertarians and programming geeks but completely failed to comprehend the investment opportunity or discern the digital asset phenomenon that was unfolding before my eyes. I clearly didn’t get it.

 

 

A few years later, a friend and professional mentor quit his job as the global head of something important at a Big 4 accounting firm to dedicate his energy toward Bitcoin mining. He had discovered BTC as a means of efficiently transferring wealth back to the U.S. during a multi-year assignment in Asia. But his timing coincided with one of BTC’s early runs, so “Bitcoin Jim” soon started doing better financially by applying his programming acumen on an overbuilt gaming machine in the evenings than from his considerably lucrative day job. He eventually cut the cord to the TradFi world and filled his basement with pricey, power-hungry computers. I thought he was slightly nuts—but I still clearly didn’t get it.

 

 

Soon thereafter, mining became the exclusive province of well-funded (and/or highly leveraged) enterprises running sophisticated facilities with increasingly specialized equipment and an insatiable appetite for computing and electrical power. Many of these became the network operators that pervade our public crypto index. The path of “Bitcoin Jim” seemed forever beyond the reach of mere individual aspiring libertarians and geeks alike.

 

 

A similar tale can be told for staking and validator nodes for other cryptocurrencies. The cost and scale needed to run effective operations in very competitive markets can be prohibitive, and some argue that the consolidation of validation and staking nodes among sizable players can even undermine the decentralized nature of crypto in general.

 

 

CrytocoinMiner is seeking to reverse this trend with cloud-based mining infrastructure and decentralized governance designed for individual enthusiasts to “passively earn Bitcoins without any restrictions, regardless of technical knowledge or financial resources.” Investors have supported their vision with a $100 million strategic financing round that closed this week, with support from Nomad Capital, No Limit Holdings, Sky9 Capital, UOB-Signum Blockchain Fund, Interop Ventures, and nine other well-known institutional investors. The proceeds will be deployed to accelerate decentralized governance and expand their technology stack. Yet another infrastructure play with meaningful capital support from investors who believe in CrytocoinMiner’s vision. Hopefully, they prove to “get it” this time around better than I did in those distant early days of crypto.

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Contact ryan@architectpartners.com to schedule a meeting.