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From Title Agency to Tech Platform: How CHAMPtitles is Automating Real Estate Closings

The real estate title industry has remained largely unchanged for decades, with manual processes and paper-heavy workflows dominating even as technology transformed other sectors. Shane Bigelow saw an opportunity to change that—but his path to building CHAMPtitles wasn’t a straight line from tech startup to success. It started with buying a traditional title agency.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Shane McRann Bigelow, CEO of CHAMPtitles, explained the unconventional journey of building a title automation platform by first understanding the industry from the inside out. Rather than building software from an ivory tower, Shane and his team embedded themselves in the daily operations of title work, learning the pain points firsthand before writing a single line of code.

Starting with Operations, Not Software

Most tech founders start by building a product. Shane did the opposite. “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 wasn’t just market research—it was a deliberate strategy to understand every nuance of the title business before attempting to automate it.

The decision came from Shane’s previous experience building technology companies. He recognized that the title industry’s complexity required deep operational knowledge. “There’s this old adage, you know, software eats the world. And I think in a lot of verticals that’s true,” Shane notes. “But in title, title eats software companies.”

This hands-on approach revealed insights that would have been impossible to discover through interviews or observations alone. By processing real transactions, handling actual closings, and dealing with the same regulatory requirements as any other title company, CHAMPtitles built a foundation of credibility and understanding that informed every product decision.

The Automation Philosophy

CHAMPtitles’ approach to automation differs significantly from typical proptech solutions. Rather than trying to replace human expertise entirely, the platform focuses on eliminating repetitive, manual tasks that don’t require human judgment. “Every single closing that comes through the door requires a search of the public records,” Shane explains. “You have to go find them, pull them back, review them, type findings, type exceptions into a commitment document.”

This work is tedious, time-consuming, and doesn’t leverage the expertise of skilled title professionals. CHAMPtitles’ software automates these mechanical aspects of title work, allowing title officers to focus on actual analysis and decision-making. “That type of work is just manual labor,” Shane says. “It doesn’t require an immense amount of subject matter expertise.”

The results are significant. Tasks that traditionally took hours can now be completed in minutes. But the real value isn’t just speed—it’s consistency and scalability. By automating the manual components, title companies can handle more volume without proportionally increasing headcount, while simultaneously reducing errors that come from repetitive data entry.

Multi-State Expansion Strategy

One of CHAMPtitles’ most significant competitive advantages is its multi-state operation. While many title tech companies focus on a single market, CHAMPtitles has expanded to operate in Pennsylvania, Florida, and Texas—three distinctly different regulatory environments.

This expansion wasn’t accidental. “We picked states that were representative of kind of the diversity of the market and also were large markets,” Shane explains. Each state presented unique challenges that forced the platform to become more robust and adaptable. “Florida, there’s no attorney involvement in a closing. In Pennsylvania, attorneys are mandated to be involved. Texas, optional.”

By building software that works across these different regulatory frameworks, CHAMPtitles created a platform that’s inherently more valuable than single-state solutions. The learnings from one state inform improvements that benefit all markets, creating a flywheel effect where each expansion makes the platform stronger.

The Title Insurance Play

CHAMPtitles isn’t just a software company—they’re also a licensed title insurance agent. This dual identity is crucial to their business model and market positioning. “We’re not a SaaS company. We are an insurance distribution business at our core,” Shane clarifies.

This structure allows CHAMPtitles to align incentives in ways pure software companies cannot. Rather than charging software fees that create friction in adoption, they earn revenue from the title insurance premiums on transactions they facilitate. “We give the software away for free to partner agents,” Shane explains. “And we make our revenue off of a rev share of the title insurance premium that they collect.”

This model solves a critical go-to-market challenge. Title agents don’t need to find budget for new software or go through lengthy procurement processes. They can start using CHAMPtitles’ automation immediately, with revenue sharing only kicking in when actual transactions close. It’s a frictionless entry point that accelerates adoption.

Building for Scale

As CHAMPtitles continues to grow, Shane’s vision extends beyond just automating existing processes. The company is working toward what he calls a “fully digital closing” where many of the steps that currently require physical presence or paper documents can be handled electronically.

“You’ve got to crawl before you walk, before you run,” Shane notes about their phased approach. “And so a lot of the work we did on the front end was automating on the title side of the process.” Now, with that foundation in place, they’re expanding into closing automation, remote online notarization, and other innovations that will further streamline the transaction process.

The company’s operational experience continues to inform product development. Because they’re still running their own title agency alongside building software, they maintain direct insight into what actually works in production versus what sounds good in theory. This creates a tight feedback loop that keeps the product grounded in real-world needs.

The Road Ahead

CHAMPtitles’ journey illustrates an important lesson for B2B founders: sometimes the best way to disrupt an industry is to become part of it first. By starting with operations and building software second, Shane and his team created a product that actually solves real problems rather than theoretical ones.

The title industry’s resistance to change isn’t due to technophobia—it’s because the work is genuinely complex, highly regulated, and carries significant liability. Software companies that don’t understand these realities tend to build solutions that look elegant but fail in practice. CHAMPtitles’ operational-first approach gave them the credibility and knowledge to build automation that title professionals actually trust and use.

As real estate transactions continue to digitize, CHAMPtitles is positioned not just as a vendor, but as a partner that understands the business from the inside out—because they’re running the same business themselves.