Atlanta’s Loop Wants Your Old Stuff (And Will Pay You for It)
“Should we donate this or should we Loop it?”
That’s the new “verb” that the team behind Atlanta-based Loop wants to add to the household vocabularies across Atlanta.
Getting In The Loop
The premise is simple. Users download the Loop app, snap a photo, and answer a few quick questions about an item they would like to sell. Loop provides a guaranteed cash offer and if accepted, that item is picked up from their porch the next day, with cash being deposited directly into a Venmo account.
Once an item is picked up, the Loop team gets to work marketing and selling that item to others nearby. The most common items are household goods — including electronics, gaming, outdoor gear, kitchen appliances, fitness equipment, tools, travel, small pieces of furniture, musical instruments, and kids toys — that one person can carry and are worth $50 or more.
After a year of testing in Decatur, Loop is ready to expand into more Atlanta neighborhoods. First stop: Brookhaven.
Co-founder and CEO Seth Radman told Hypepotamus that the team is ready to expand across the city, targeting the rest of Intown Atlanta neighborhoods in the near future. But starting in Brookhaven is intentional, as the hyperlocal startup scales most strongly through word-of-mouth.
Why Now?
That grassroots approach is working because Loop addresses a problem many households are facing.
“I think during COVID, we all became so reliant on smashing the Buy Button on Amazon. We just all bought so much stuff,” Radman added. “Basements and garages are more cluttered and filled than they ever were.”
Traditionally, the option has been to drive unwanted items to a donation center or to list them individually on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist.
That requires time, vigilance, and endless back-and-forth messages. It also means meeting up with strangers and navigating an ever-growing list of potential online scamming opportunities.
"AI makes it even harder to know if you're talking to a real person," Radman said. "A lot of women especially worry about their safety—it may not be worth 50 bucks to meet up in a random Target parking lot.”
While AI has complicated peer-to-peer sales, it's also made Loop possible. Advances in AI technology enable the startup to scale efficiently. A custom AI model works behind the scenes to identify items and determine their potential value, allowing Loop to make instant cash offers without manual appraisals.
Meet The Team
Radman is building Loop alongside co-founder Dave Payne, whose previous roles include CEO of Scoutmob, Managing Director of Techstars Atlanta, and co-founder of Switchyards.
This is the fourth time Radman has led a startup. He previously built Upbeat (acquired by MakeMusic), Crescendo (acquired by Ultimate Guitar), and Plutonium Apps. Radman most recently served as the CTO of Atlanta-based FinTech Infinite Giving. Radman said that he started building with Payne after realizing they had a mutual passion for building B2C (business-to-consumer) companies and “giving items long, happy lives.”
“A certain item is engineered to last a certain period of time,” Radman told Hypepotamus. “It’s painful when that time is cut short.”
Payne and Radman experimented with several different business models over the last year to figure out the best way to “help items flow in and out of people's lives.”
They tried things like a lending library in Decatur and a neighborhood trading club. What resonated the most? An instant buyback platform, which ultimately led to the creation of Loop.
“We found a lot of people loved the convenience of it,” Radman added.
Radman recognizes that getting people to 'Loop it' instead of donating means changing habits.
“Most people only think about selling stuff when they're moving, having kids, downsizing, or are helping a parent transition,” he added. “We want to show people that when selling is this easy, you can do it more often.”
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