Can ccLoop Rid Us Of Our Collective Email Woes?

Launching in public beta today at Disrupt is ccLoop, a previously stealth startup founded by serial entrepreneur Michael Wolfe that aims to tackle one of the biggest problems with modern communication: the disaster that is email.

We heard the company had raised $3.5 million from Benchmark Capital, SV Angel and other investors earlier this year, but not how they were planning to solve that particular problem.

On stage, Wolfe attempted to explain just that. He argues the problem with email isn’t so much the information overload that almost automatically comes out of using it, but rather the fact that emails are too hard to track down, provided they’ve been received at all.

ccLoop thinks lists are the answer, more specifically their vision of the ‘Smart Mailing List’.

Essentially, ccLoop wants to make it easier for users to create, manage, share, discover, join, and follow lists. Dubbed Loops, users can decide for themselves which emails they want to receive in what way, using a cloud-based service.

Users can opt to receive certain emails in their inbox, others as mere summary digests, and others simply as messages that can be searched for whenever certain information is needed.

And since it’s SaaS, there’s no need to download anything or change your email ways.

ccLoop users can also share lists with each other, or publicly for anyone to discover, and all documents are version-tracked. The startup expects Loops to be used in professional environments, but also in personal and community life.

The service will be freemium: end users will be able to create and join lists for free, but a paid version for enterprises would come with additional features such as advanced administration and security capabilities as well as the ability to manage loops that are open to members of a specific domain (i.e. techcrunch.ccloop.com).

In short: ccLoop thinks email on itself is fine, and users don’t necessarily need to get forced to use something else for collaboration or plain communication, so rather than replace it, they want to make email better. If they can pull that off, they will be lauded worldwide.

Utopian or realistic? Here’s what the judges had to say about ccLoop:

Q&A

Q: How are you making money?

A: it’s based on a freemium model.

Q: How do you control security with email and internal communications?

A: You have to explicitly indicate whether a communication is meant for a certain section of the company?

Q: I don’t think that many loops will be created.

A: It’s through customer acquisition. We have a Stanford alum class who wants to use ccLoop to keep in touch.

Q: What is the problem you are trying to solve?

A: Inbox wreck, discoverability.