CHAMPtitles vs. the SaaS Playbook: When Industry Conventions Should Override Startup Best Practices

CHAMPtitles vs. the SaaS Playbook: When Industry Conventions Should Override Startup Best Practices

The startup playbook seems straightforward: build an MVP quickly, charge subscription fees, optimize for software margins, scale fast. Thousands of successful companies have followed this path. But Shane Bigelow realized early that applying these principles to title insurance would be a fatal mistake.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Shane McRann Bigelow, CEO of CHAMPtitles, articulated a principle that every vertical SaaS founder should internalize: “There’s this old adage, you know, software eats the world. And I think in a lot of verticals that’s true. But in title, title eats software companies.”

This recognition—that his target industry would destroy companies following conventional SaaS wisdom—led Shane to systematically ignore startup best practices and build CHAMPtitles around title industry economics instead.

When “Move Fast and Break Things” Breaks You

The standard advice for founders is to launch quickly, iterate based on feedback, and improve the product over time. This works beautifully in industries where mistakes are recoverable and customers tolerate imperfection in exchange for innovation.

Title insurance is not that industry. Mistakes carry legal and financial liability. Customers don’t tolerate imperfection because imperfection can mean lawsuits. Moving fast and breaking things doesn’t just create churn—it creates existential risk for both you and your customers.

Shane understood this from his operational experience. Rather than building software first and learning the industry through customer feedback, CHAMPtitles bought a title agency and spent years doing actual title work. “We bought a title agency in Pennsylvania and we ran it,” Shane explains. “We did all the title work in house, did all the closings in house.”

This violated every principle about capital efficiency and speed to market. It meant years of operational work before shipping any software. But it ensured that when CHAMPtitles finally built automation, it worked correctly from day one—because it was built by people who understood the liability they were managing.

Abandoning SaaS Economics for Insurance Distribution

Perhaps the most dramatic deviation from startup orthodoxy came in CHAMPtitles’ business model. The SaaS playbook is clear: charge subscription fees, optimize for high gross margins, build recurring revenue. Software has incredible unit economics precisely because it scales without proportional costs.

Shane threw this out entirely. “We’re not a SaaS company. We are an insurance distribution business at our core,” he clarifies. Instead of charging for software, CHAMPtitles gives it away for free. “We give the software away for free to partner agents. And we make our revenue off of a rev share of the title insurance premium that they collect.”

From a pure software perspective, this looks insane. You’re abandoning high-margin recurring revenue for a share of transaction-based insurance premiums. You’re taking on operational complexity that software companies specifically avoid. You’re giving up the scalability that makes software businesses valuable.

But from a title industry perspective, it’s brilliant. Title agents don’t have software budgets waiting to be allocated. They operate on thin margins where every expense requires justification. Asking them to pay subscription fees creates friction that slows or prevents adoption entirely.

By aligning with how money actually flows in title—through insurance premiums, not software fees—CHAMPtitles eliminated the primary barrier to adoption. Title agents could start using the automation immediately without budget approval, procurement processes, or ROI calculations. Revenue sharing only kicked in when transactions actually closed.

Building for Diversity Instead of Depth

The conventional scaling strategy for vertical SaaS is geographic: dominate one market completely, then expand to adjacent markets. Perfect your product in California before attempting Texas. Own the Northeast before heading South. Build depth before breadth.

CHAMPtitles did the opposite. After establishing operations in Pennsylvania, they deliberately expanded to Florida and Texas—states with completely different regulatory frameworks. “We picked states that were representative of kind of the diversity of the market and also were large markets,” Shane explains.

The regulatory differences aren’t trivial. “Florida, there’s no attorney involvement in a closing. In Pennsylvania, attorneys are mandated to be involved. Texas, optional.” Building software that works across these different requirements requires more engineering effort, more compliance expertise, and more operational complexity than perfecting one market would demand.

Standard startup advice would call this premature scaling. You’re spreading resources thin. You’re adding complexity before achieving dominance anywhere. You’re making the product harder to build and maintain.

But in regulated industries, this “premature” complexity becomes a competitive moat. Each state CHAMPtitles entered forced the platform to become more flexible and robust. Competitors that optimized for depth in one state now face massive technical debt when trying to expand. CHAMPtitles built for diversity from day one, making multi-state operation inherently easier.

Accepting Lower Software Margins for Industry Alignment

Pure software companies optimize ruthlessly for margin. The best SaaS businesses achieve 80%+ gross margins because software scales without proportional costs. This margin profile attracts investors and enables rapid growth.

By structuring as an insurance distribution business, CHAMPtitles accepted lower margins than pure software would generate. They took on operational complexity that software companies avoid. They gave up the clean economics that make SaaS attractive to investors.

But they gained something more valuable: perfect alignment with how their industry actually works. Title agents understood revenue sharing. They trusted a model where CHAMPtitles only made money when they made money. The mutual success alignment built trust that subscription fees never could.

This trade-off only makes sense if you believe industry alignment matters more than software margins. Shane clearly believed this—that succeeding in title required becoming part of the industry’s economic structure rather than sitting adjacent to it.

When Operations Beat Efficiency

Startup orthodoxy prizes efficiency. Outsource non-core functions. Focus on product and engineering. Avoid operational complexity that doesn’t scale. Keep the team lean and the burn rate low.

CHAMPtitles still operates a title agency alongside building software. This creates ongoing operational costs that pure software companies don’t carry. It diverts management attention from product development. It adds complexity that software-only competitors avoid.

But it provides something efficiency metrics miss: continuous insight into how the industry actually works. CHAMPtitles experiences regulatory changes as they happen. They feel market shifts in real time. They understand customer pain points because they’re customers themselves.

This operational presence keeps product development grounded. CHAMPtitles can’t build features that sound good in theory but fail in practice—they’d fail for themselves first. They can’t lose touch with customer reality because they’re living that reality daily.

Recognizing Your Industry’s Unique Constraints

The deeper lesson from CHAMPtitles isn’t that every startup should ignore SaaS best practices. It’s that founders need to recognize when their industry’s unique characteristics make conventional wisdom dangerous.

Shane’s recognition that “title eats software companies” came from understanding the industry’s complexity, liability profile, and resistance to change. He saw that companies trying to apply standard SaaS playbooks were getting destroyed—not because the playbook was wrong, but because it was wrong for title.

This requires intellectual honesty about your market. It’s easy to assume that what worked for thousands of other startups will work for yours. It’s harder to acknowledge that your industry might be genuinely different in ways that require abandoning proven approaches.

The Cost of Being Right

Following industry logic instead of startup orthodoxy came with real costs. CHAMPtitles raised more capital than pure software would require. They moved slower than lean startups. They accepted lower margins than SaaS economics would generate.

But they built something that actually works in their market. They created adoption paths that align with how customers actually buy. They developed defensibility that pure software plays struggle to achieve.

For founders entering complex, regulated industries, CHAMPtitles’ journey suggests a crucial question: are you building a software company that happens to serve an industry, or are you building an industry solution that happens to use software? The answer determines which playbook you should follow—and which one you should ignore.

Sometimes the path to building a successful software company starts with accepting you’re not really building a software company at all.