Announcing our investment in Indiana-based TitleWise.
A home is the most expensive purchase a typical person makes. The title search industry makes sure these important real estate transactions are conducted with clear titles—free of any liens or claims that could cause disputes. This is tricky in real estate and involves a costly, inefficient manual process of searching public records which slows down the transaction and costs significant resources. There has been growing interest in leveraging technology to automate and streamline the title search process in order to significantly reduce costs and improve efficiency. However, existing attempts are limited to legacy products that have limited utility to searchers, ineffective shortcut solutions or new technologies that have yet to achieve meaningful adoption. AI, blockchain and other technologies may seem obvious, but this is such a major and important purchase that it makes it hard to quickly adopt paradigm-shifting technology, leaving most investments struggling to gain adoption.
TitleWise is helping the title search process by prioritizing the needs of title researchers. Their initial solution aims to improve the efficiency of research professionals by providing them with a streamlined and digitized tool. Over the coming years, TitleWise will expand their services to offer integrations with closing companies for a smoother closing process, create a marketplace for title searchers and closing companies and develop standardized title data for a more automated title search solution. By starting with the foundation of the title researcher, TitleWise is using their expertise to bring greater efficiency and innovation to the industry.
At M25, we’re excited to collaborate with an incredible team that possesses a remarkable wealth of expertise and experience in the title search industry, along with their entrepreneurial acumen and an ambitious goal of resolving an area of frustration that they have experienced firsthand. Their iterative and deliberate approach to product development has shown that they can harness their own know-how and feedback from customers to create a solution that searchers will genuinely appreciate, and their product has already been well-received in the market. Before long, we expect their solution to become the industry standard, paving the way for both increased accuracy and speed at the heart of these critical transactions.
Before we close, here’s our survey of the team we are liening on to ease abstracting into the 21st century —
Jennifer Mason, Co-Founder & CEO
Jennifer has been Vice President at Southern Indiana Abstract Company (SIAC) for the last 11+ years. Founded in 1948, SIAC specializes in real estate title search covering four counties southern Indiana and Louisville, KY. It was Jennifer’s (and Chris’) personal experience with title search pain points that inspired them to start TitleWise — first as an internal project aimed at increasing SIAC’s efficiency, and now as a stand alone venture since seeing the magnitude of its impact.
Christopher (Chris) Mason, Co-Founder & Product Leader
Chris has spent his entire career in the title search industry, serving as a co-owner and president of Southern Indiana Abstract Company (SIAC), a third generation company in his family, for the last 29 years. He brings deep industry experience & connections to TitleWise, but has also been instrumental in the development of the current product. He leads the company’s efforts in customer onboarding, success, and feedback that has informed product development & roadmap.
Eric Littleton, COO
Eric has spent the last 10 years working in and around startups. He was a co-founder at PowerUp Labs, a VC backed software development firm where he worked on various B2B and B2C products and ultimately facilitated a sale to Smart Data Systems. He then transitioned to VP of Product and eventually COO at Cuddle Clones where he worked on product development, e-commerce strategy, overseas manufacturing, and company culture. He stayed through the successful sale of Cuddle Clones before joining TitleWise full-time in January 2023.
Learn more: TitleWise raises $1M Seed round
About M25: M25 is an early-stage venture firm based in Chicago, investing solely in tech startups headquartered in the Midwest. Since launching in 2015, M25 has become the most active investor in the region, quickly becoming the preferred seed investor for the next generation of Midwest unicorns. Portfolio companies include Kin Insurance, Loop Returns, Astronomer, Summersalt, SteadyMD, Branch, MVMNT and more. For more information, please visit www.m25vc.com.
