How Loops Fixes Email for Developers with Co-founder and CEO Chris Frantz

The Peel with Turner Novak

Turner Novak

Technology

4.6 • 11 Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2025

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chris Frantz is the Co-founder and CEO of Loops, the email platform for software companies.

We get into why sending emails is still a big problem, his hilariously simple framework for building products, getting in to YC with a last minute application, and why they skipped raising a Series A.

We also talk through Chris decade of working in marketing, like when to lean into PLG vs Sales vs hype led growth, early stunts they did to get their first users, why they do no marketing now, and why Loops’ customer support team is all engineers.

Thanks to Ramp for supporting this episode. It's the corporate card and expense management platform used by over 40,000 companies, like Shopify, CBRE and Stripe. Time is money. Save both with Ramp. Get $250 for signing-up here: https://ramp.com/ThePeel

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Timestamps:

(4:37) Email for software companies

(8:28) Why email is a big deal

(14:05) The future of email

(17:00) Product vs Sales vs Hype led growth

(24:33) Coming up with the idea for Loops

(29:36) Building one of the first GPT wrappers in 2020

(34:34) Lessons selling his first company

(37:13) Doing their YC app in 10 minutes

(40:53) Avoiding VC’s who add value

(46:58) Skipping a Series A

(51:37) Building in stealth for 18 months

(53:21) Marketing stunts to get the first waitlist sign-ups

(58:44) Four step cadence of building Loops

(1:01:58) Personally onboarding every new customer

(1:04:03) Balancing 996 with family

(1:11:11) Cleaning wasp nests with a shop vac

Referenced

Loops: https://loops.so

Careers at Loops: https://loops.so/careers

Curiosity: https://curiositystream.com

Snazzy AI / Unbounce: https://unbounce.com/product/smart-copy

Atlas customer support: https://atlas.so

Follow Chris

Twitter: https://x.com/frantzfries

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ctfrantz

Follow Turner

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak

Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	We don't think email belongs in the codebase. What we have found is that if you send it all through one place, then you only have one place where the problems can exist. And that helps a lot with debugging. It helps a lot with getting things out into production. And it helps a lot with having a unified brand. If everything goes out through one pipe and you feel confident that it's well managed and well built, then life gets a lot easier.
0:22.2	Welcome to the Peel. I'm your host, Turner Novak, founder of Banana Capital. Today's guest is Chris
0:27.4	France, co-founder and CEO of Loops. Loops is the email sending platform for software companies.
0:33.6	A conversation gets into why email is still such a big problem for software companies. I think people undervalue the value of email and the amount of pain that it can cause if it doesn't work.
0:42.3	If for some reason your transactional provider goes down and you primarily have users log in through email off,
0:48.3	congratulations to your application no longer works.
0:50.3	Chris spent many years in marketing and growth.
0:53.3	We spent a good portion of this conversation thinking through things like when to lean into
0:57.9	product-led growth versus height.
0:59.7	If you want to build something very good, very defensible, and something that has the
1:03.2	foundations to be a decade, multi-decade long business, it's unlikely that you're going to get
1:08.6	to that defensible state in three months.
1:10.1	Some of the early stunts they did to get their first users and why they keep it simple today.
1:14.6	We have almost zero analytics. We run no marketing, no sales.
1:18.6	The importance of good product.
1:20.6	The best way to actually improve for CAC is not to have better ads, it's to have a better product.
1:28.1	His hilariously simple framework for building products.
1:31.0	Talk to users, build the product, and then share any updates to the products and repeat,
1:37.2	forever.
1:38.2	Building one of the first GPT wrappers in 2020 and lessons from selling his first company.
1:44.0	Never let anybody take your own compensation out of your control if you can avoid it.
1:48.0	Breaking all the rules with Loops YC application.
	...

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