Robert Saunders built his first app in high school. It was an iOS app, and he still remembers the standing ovation he got presenting it at a school town hall. That was the moment he fell in love with building products, and it set the direction for everything that came after.
His love of building led him to Shopify, where he worked on the API Patterns team and later the Shop App. The job was great, he was learning a lot, but then he bought his first condo in downtown Toronto. From that moment, everything changed.
Watch the full conversation with Robert Saunders on Mantle Mondays.
The Closing That Started It All
Buying his first home should have been one of the biggest moments of Rob’s life. Instead, it was confusing and stressful in ways he didn’t expect. He’d never heard the term “insurance binder” before his lawyer casually mentioned he needed one. Questions sat unanswered in email chains for days. When the deal finally closed, he picked up his keys in a paper bag.
“It all felt quite anticlimactic for what was, honestly, a big moment for me,” Rob says.
That frustration became the seed for Ownright, then called Doormat. Rob dug into who actually holds the legal authority to transfer property title in Ontario. The answer: only a real estate lawyer.
“If you want to make the process of buying or selling property better for people, the first place you need to start is how title gets transferred from one person to another,” he explains.
He brought on Benjamin Berry (co-founder, Principal Lawyer), a real estate lawyer, and Joel Fox (co-founder, COO), who brought the business and operations experience. Rob’s advice for early founders now mirrors his own approach to building the founding team: “Find the people who have the skill sets you don’t, or do the things that you’re not passionate about, but they are.”
Building Inside a Regulated Industry, On Purpose
Real estate law is heavily regulated, and Rob and his co-founders had a choice most startups don’t have to make: work around the regulator, or work with it.
“We took the stance of asking for permission and making sure we were on side before we did anything,” Rob says. That meant engaging with the Law Society of Ontario and becoming an authorized participant in its Access to Innovation program, a regulatory sandbox built for exactly this kind of company.
It also meant watching competitors copy their structure once Ownright had done the hard work of proving it out.
“That’s the downside when you’re early,” Rob admits, but he doesn’t see it as a loss. The regulatory relationship itself has become one of Ownright’s biggest moats, one that’s much harder to replicate than a product feature.
From One Closing a Day to Fifteen
The growth since then has been steady and real. As of September 2026, Ownright has closed more than 5,000 property transactions, representing over $2.5 billion in transaction volume, up from a single closing a day in its early days to fifteen now.
“The thing that gives me so much joy is that’s 5,000 people who have closed on their first property, or maybe their second, that we’ve had the privilege of giving the keys to,” Rob says.
Selling Outcomes, Not Software
Ask Rob what Ownright actually sells, and his answer cuts against how most startups think about their own product.
“With AI, one thing that we’re really excited about is we sell outcomes, not software,” he says. “We sell the outcome of a title change, of you closing your property, of you getting the keys to your house. We think that’s a big aspect of our defensibility and our moat over time.”
What Comes Next
Ownright isn’t stopping at closings. Rob’s vision extends to the full homeownership journey, including refinancing and insurance, areas where the same trust and outcome-first approach could serve homeowners well beyond the moment they get their keys.
Watch Mantle’s full conversation with Rob in our latest episode of Mantle Mondays.
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Watch on YouTube.
Powered by Mantle
Ownright runs its cap table on Mantle. Join the growing list of startups that do the same.