Lawrence Shaw: Protecting You from The Risk of ADA Litigation With Automation And Insurance

At the helm of the revolutionary InsurTech solution, AAAtraq is Lawrence Shaw, who founded the firm in 2018 and as the CEO, he aims to support organizations by protecting them from Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) litigation with automation that is proven to lower the costs to maintain compliance. To do this, AAAtraq clarifies its clients’ ADA risk and provides insurance, claims automation, and legal support. To mitigate risk, the organization provides the steps to help its clients understand, manage and monitor compliance.

In academics, Lawrence Shaw went to comprehensive school before joining the RAF where he studied aeronautical physics and applied math. Whilst in school Lawrence wrote computer games for the Sinclair ZX81 and COMMODORE VIC-20. He has been involved in automated testing for 18 years across various businesses in compliance technology including accessibility and privacy regulation.

He introduced AAAtraq as a unique solution that acts as an independent compliance identification and management service to ensure risk managers can understand their ADA litigation risk. Lawrence Shaw was the first to market with content governance (quality/compliance) nearly 20 years ago. Currently, he combines content auditing (website accessibility) compliance process and litigation insurance.

More about the Initiative

AAAtraq shields organizations from legal aggression and brand damage by making it easier to understand compliance requirements, less distracting to achieve, and at a lower cost to maintain compliance. As a Compliance Identification and Management Service, AAAtraq provides a strategic, principle-driven pathway to compliance without technical distractions. Its intelligencedriven automation provides organizations with their principledriven pathway to compliance, with clear timescales and milestones. To create the first insurance product to support organizations that want to be inclusive.

There is a team of experienced and self-motivated professionals where everyone shares in the goal of making the web inclusive. In order to keep his team encouraged and at their best, Lawrence Shaw ensures to have an open and friendly environment, where people can make mistakes, learn from their mistakes and grow with the firm.

“The biggest challenge was around building a scalable frictionless business that could go easily from thousands to millions of users. Compliance with the ADA is something that affects every organization, so we needed to make sure our platform suited both small and large organizations. We also needed it to be a simple system which was easy to use and understand as it guides you through a series of steps – all of this entwined with costs coverage insurance and enabling organizations to mitigate risk against litigation. The service needed to facilitate user selfservice, without any staff offering direct support – no human interaction.” says Lawrence Shaw.

He further continued, “Having the right set of people is another major challenge for me. Finding the 10% of people who have a can-do attitude rather than those who like to come up with excuses about why they can’t do something. One of the big difficulties often faced in new business is funding from things like government support and grants – for one grant we were looking to apply for, they were impressed that we would have to employ three people just to deal with the funding paperwork which isn’t the point of an innovative business!”

Lawrence’s Definition of Success

The major hurdles are that software companies seem to write their own rules, tell their clients what they want to hear, hope they don’t find out and if they do find out, they want to charge more money to fix the problem they had promised to fix in the first instance. There’s a lot of promises from vendors in this market who are hoping that the truth about their capability doesn’t come out. Success will be those businesses going out of business. There is a need for far greater accountability from these organizations.

What led to being a leader in a technology business

Living in Coventry there weren’t many opportunities, Lawrence Shaw didn’t want to get his hands dirty and so the options of car manufacturing or working in a factory weren’t for him. Lawrence Shaw also struggled with being told what he can’t do – it only made him want to do it more. He also had a £1 bet about starting a business with a friend who still hasn’t paid up!

Lawrence’s Take on the Current Market & European Business

The majority of companies are talking about Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) but it’s mainly hot air and the latest marketing hype – organizations need to stop talking about it and pay attention to it and live up to their promise and do something about it.

“The European market is not on our radar, it’s complex and has a lot of red tape with limited value. The US is our focus with our partners and delivery being based there. There is a limited appetite for investment in the EU and not being willing to take risks”, the visionary apprised.

Where might the organization be in the next five years?

“Based on the offers we’ve had to date, because of the uniqueness of our capability and the scale, AAAtraq could be acquired for a triple-digit million figure by an American platform.”

A Piece of Advice for Entrepreneurs

There’s no easy way to be an entrepreneur! A lot of people think that there are get rich quick schemes or you can just become a YouTube millionaire, but that rarely works. For every one venture that succeeds there’s a thousand that don’t but make sure you’re that one in a thousand by sticking to the basics. You need to keep doing the right thing and don’t be afraid of the truth and be upfront and honest.