E175 Onur Genes: Founder @ Nureply

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 0:16 Once upon a time, there were 10s of 1000s of makers struggling every day they built for hours and hours but didn't ship and did not earn enough income one day, the no code wealth podcast came to help them find a way because of this, makers became founders and live the lives they deserve. Because of that, founders live lives of abundance, freedom, and creativity. That's what I'm really all about. Hello, my name is Aziz and from being a poor boy born to a single mother in North Africa, with no opportunities just sheer hard work, to failing multiple startups, yet learning a whole lot to barely escaping alive the war in Ukraine, even living as an illegal immigrant. I've lost everything twice. And now I'm rebuilding my life one more time. 1%. Today, sharing the wisdom of luminaries have interviewed on this podcast from Google executives, Goldman Sachs, the Financial Times Forbes, Technology Council, World Economic Forum, Harvard University, and even a priest from the Vatican church. Everyone is welcome, here. So let's begin. My guest today is owner Ganesh. Owner is the co founder of New reply, as SAS helping users send personalized first lines for their cold email outreach, using AI in seconds to get more replies and booked calls on your How are you today? Onur Genes 1:58 Hey, as is I'm fine. I'm really excited to be in that be in your podcast? So I find how are you? Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 2:06 I'm feeling grateful. I'm feeling optimistic. And I'm really curious about new reply. What's the story? How did you get the idea? How was the beginning? Onur Genes 2:22 Actually, it started with an ideal to scratch my own back. Back in the day, like two years ago, I was struggling to find new clients to my agency, I had a software agency, which still is going on. And at that time, I want to have some kind of like expansion to get new clients. And that time I have met with the cold outreach community. So they were just sending emails, reaching out people and finding new clients all the time. And it's felt exciting, then I have started to learn how to what is the process? How can I do it? After a while I realized it's mostly about automation. So we are automating anything you can't reach like you cannot scale your business, your idea, your marketing. And then while having this thing with one of my friend, we were trying to somehow reach people, but we were getting really bad results. Because we didn't personalize any emails, we were just sending the same thing. And we were going directly into the spam. After a while I realized I can do better. And then when we get got lead lists, we were going over them checking the websites one by one, and then writing something to get the attention of the receiver of that email. And you quickly realize this is impossible to do 200 websites, because you cannot process any more after a while you're just like doing this nothing else. And I was so back, I am an electrical, electronic electrical electronics engineer. And I have finished my bachelor's degree with machine learning algorithms. Then I said, okay, it might be good to have some kind of an AI to replicate my icebreakers. And this is how it started, I started to model myself with AI and it went very, very good. And you realize you can create new icebreakers like 200 of them in just one in a minute with automation, this is the power of automation. So after this, I said, Okay, this is fine. And maybe I can make a product around it. And it started like this. Then my co founder joined, said, I can't sell this because he's he was also doing some outreach for his own agency. And then we like At the beginning, it was just like trying to scratch our own back, and then it just began to bake. This is how it started. Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 5:06 Thank you. That's really interesting. And if I understood you correctly, you discovered the cold outreach community for your agency, you're trying to do things first randomly by using a template or whatever, and you had no results from it. So you discovered that you need an icebreaker line or something that personalizes the email to the recipient, the person receiving it. And so you remembered or you thought of, since you studied machine learning, you will train the algorithm to copy your method or your way of creating those personalisations. And so you solve the problem for yourself. And then one of your friends who was also in the cold outreach, community thought, well, we can sell this because if we need it, other people need it, and someone who can who needs to create, like icebreaker lines or something like that for 200 300 400. Because when you're dealing with cold outreach, the percentages are so low that you cannot just send 10 emails to 10 people and think, Okay, I have a new client or whatever. And if you spend all your day only doing that, then you will either burn out or you have no energy to do anything in the world. And therefore, the solution is new reply Correct. Onur Genes 6:33 That's, that's 100%. Correct. The idea behind it is just like, make it easier without doing any spamming. So because if you are started spamming, you are killing your campaigns. And you how you don't you have to don't spend and at the same time, make something really good out of it. Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 6:54 Thank you, then I have to ask two questions. One, and some people might think this. So I'm playing the devil's advocate, you train the machine learning algorithm based on you. But at first, you are failing a lot. So how do we know you're such a great personalization, first line writer? Or like, what's the secret? How does it work? Do you have examples? Do you have people who used it and had success? How would people trust that you who at first had hundreds of emails that brought nothing, we're able to create something that works? Not works in the AI way, but that the result is actually effective? Onur Genes 7:37 That's a great question. And I get this a lot. So I'm a bit prepared for this question. So the idea behind it started to replicate me this is true. And after a while I said as you think we need some kind of other opinions, you know, you it shouldn't be just based on me. And then I started to do hire some mutual assistance some people to like a good copywriters, and getting lines from them. And then okay, this is fine, but they these people, also not from the covenant community. And then I started to reach out to the community, if you can give me your best lines, depending on your website, or like how you do it, then I can give you some credits, somehow I can pay you back this favor. And we will get the best lines from almost everyone. So this the point is diversity. We have a lot of people, a lot of different email templates and icebreakers and everything. When you combine all of them, you got the whole point behind it, you know, this is just like, works for almost any case, for the results. Back in the day I was getting in my best campaigns I always getting 1% reply rates. Currently, if we go below 5%, we are saying there is something wrong. And in general, we are going around seven to 10%. So this really shows how it goes. And one of our customers and no reply. Even got 20% reply rate if you do it right. So do have a lot of testimonials. But we are not showing it yet on the website. We are just trying to renew the website and you will see all of them. There are hundreds of good people just reaching out and saying thanks. Because I know we are somehow showing the value behind it. Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 9:32 Thank you and I love that you mentioned it was analyzing templates and things like that. So someone when they will read on your website that the focus is the icebreaker line they will wonder should I or do I need to search for templates that I don't know if they're work? I don't know if they're good. I don't know anything? Does newer newer apply? Include some effective templates? Does it include some personalize based on your business templates that are highly likely to use. Is this part of your offer? Or it's only I'm mostly focused on the personalization part. Onur Genes 10:11 Okay, so, and this is a good question again, I don't want to mention a lot of our business plans. But what I can say, there are a few things we are trying to solve. First of all, when you even if you personalize your icebreaker, you're still sending the same body of the email to the recipients. For solving this, we have a solution, which is getting your proposal and making it more marketer type of paragraph and it just switched for each email, you won't be sending the same email ever again. So this is one of the things and other parts currently we are focusing on. Yes, the first version, we started with a niche down to just like solve the problem and solve it really good. And then we wanted to make it more broad. And we have other plans. As a sneak peek, I can say we are working on an email sending solution, which also replies with AI. Because one of the problems of this email sending cold emails, if you do it good, I told you, we are getting 10% reply rates. If you think about it, if you if you send 1000 people, it's 100 emails back. But we don't have time to just go over everything. And you have to hire a virtual assistant or someone to do it for us. It gets really complicated. And the next part, hopefully, there'll be categorizing the emails the receive, and then replying if it's just like a really easy to reply. So these are the only things that I can say, but there are a lot of cards on our sleeves, you know, we have a lot of aces, and we will be start playing them one by one. But the while they're a bit slow on the development side is we really want to make it really good. In few days, hopefully, we will be releasing the LinkedIn based personalization. And we worked a lot for to make this happen like a real good product. And when I compare it with the competitors, of course, I'm biased, but I can say we are generating lines, which you don't have to edit. Even that quality, we are not satisfied enough, we are we still want more and we will just release it as a better, you know, and then we will just make it better when we feel everything is fine. And they will move on. Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 12:53 Thank you. And I have to ask you for more details. I know you're keeping your cards close, because it's important to know, the upcoming LinkedIn release that you have, will it automatically like send connection requests and have like a follow up messaging thing? Or what? How is the LinkedIn? What do you mean with that? That's one. And secondly, when you're sending emails, does it have also AI variation and when they are sent and batching them in a way that looks human so that they're not sent randomly one after each other, which can trigger spam warnings? Or you don't even send emails because he's still in the work? What's your solution for that. So the LinkedIn more details on your work on a LinkedIn module, as well as sending in a way that looks like it's not automated for Gmail or whatever. Onur Genes 13:51 So LinkedIn part Currently, we are doing the same thing we have done with the websites. So, as a again, to give a bit more detail, I can say we are checking the leads, experiences, education, articles, and then generating icebreakers depending on this. So this is the LinkedIn part. But you really know what to ask so that I can say this, because in the upcoming part, we are not sending emails yet. This will be the priority of the like having good icebreakers when we start sending emails, and if we feel really good about about it, if it works really well, like it should be better than anything else on the market. If we reach that quality, we will start VR thinking it's still a tout, not certain, but we are thinking about sending DMS over LinkedIn, sending DMS over maybe Twitter, and maybe Facebook because Facebook is there huge market for this, I have learned this video recently. And we might also add this, but these are like, very, very off like it should be, we have to be comfortable with everything and then we will start that part. Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 15:11 Thank you. So you're specializing making yourself superior to competition and the icebreaker and personalization part before you expand to all the things that will be useful to multi channel outreaching. And I'll ask you another thing. I have spoken to some people who are in the cold outreach community, and some of them say cold outreach is that. And what they're saying is, it's about warm outreach, which means first you have to build like a connection or a brand or create content, and then people who are engaged and active on your content, they should be there should be somehow an automatic tool that will detect who clicked like or who commented or who shared, and to begin, called outreaching to those people rather than to 1000 people because cold outreach. According to them, maybe their icebreaker lines are not as good as new reply is too low probability you said 10%. They're saying that's 10% a reply. But they say oh, it's maybe 0.5% in conversion is too low. So we should create content, get people to know us. So when they see our email, then they see our name. And that's what matters much more than the subject line or anything. What's your perspective on this? Do you consider plans to have more warm interactions automated you through new reply or the possibility to schedule I don't know posts and content, and then automatically detect who did and send personalized DMS to them or something like that, what's your thought on this is cold email, or cold outreach too hard, and therefore you need social selling and warm outreach, or those people don't know really how to do it. So they complain, Onur Genes 17:03 I can say this. directly, I can say this. So it's not that it's not even close to be that they are just starting out because automations everything, as you said warm leads, works on some some areas, that's for sure. Because if you're selling a sauce subscription, you have to create content and V for this we have a huge Facebook group 1.6 1000 People are like commenting, getting around every day. This is for selling a salesperson this is true. But think it like this. One of our clients, we also recently started to just test done for you packages. And one of our clients are selling computer security stuff, basically they are auditing your website, they are going in if you are a bank, huge corporation with 1000s of employees. And when you think about it, these people don't even have time to read your content, and then click on something, they just want some solution to be there, and they are really willing to pay. So for this, this kind of businesses, it won't work, because how much content you put out there. They don't read it. They don't be there, they won't just check your who you are what you do. But for the small businesses, maybe that's true. Because we are mostly focusing on b2b. Of course, we are also doing some, like we are selling packages to just starting out people like starters. And depending on what you do, both sides, both sides are true. I'm just not trying to be too political about it. But that's that's true. It depends on what you do. You have to change your strategy. This is always like this, it's always been like this, this is not something new. And we then I started like a quick example. When I was first trying to do this cold outreach, Wherever I look, I was seeing everybody saying email is dead. This is so stupid, it won't work never works. And then when I look back that that was completely not true. That was I my experience is the exact opposite of it. So I can say it depends. But you have to try the both sides. Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 19:26 Thank you. And to dig a bit without revealing your unique you know, sauce or secrets. What is so unique about your AI writing tool that makes it superior to alternatives? Because some will say, Well, you connect to the Google language processing AI and you simply generate something What's so special about it and all that anybody can do it and therefore you're not really special. There could be anybody who can create with a no code tool, a possibility to generate a line to summarize a page from their LinkedIn or whatever. So wow, what's powerful about your AI? That makes it more competitive than those more open source or, more commonly available language processing possibilities? Onur Genes 20:21 So, before we started out, like starting out, we were just checking the competitors, and how do they do it. And what we see, I said, I have a bit of experience in machine learning area like AI. And the point is, they're just using generally available models, as you said, if you are using them, the output is generally you have to edit them, you can't use it directly. And because most of the time, the sentences are not like finished finished, it's just not like with a coma. It's just like half of the sentence, and it just cut out. And you have to just check every line. The point is, our AI is something totally different than us what you see outside, it's a totally custom model specifically made for icebreakers, nothing else, you cannot just generate some, you cannot give it like two sentence two examples of something else, and then expect the result because you cannot, it's just specialized to do one thing and do it good. That's what you see, this is the differentiator. And also, because of my experience, I can train it, and fine tune it, and then just check the variables parameters, what should be there, what should not do, and I can check everything and then making it like a one by one. And it's not just like book that data we are putting in and then expecting some good results. It's picked by hand one by one done. Like everything is handcrafted. It's not just like something automated, of course, you can generate some lines, they might be good. But the point is consistency and getting the same quality every time you hit that button. Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 22:08 Thank you. And I have more of a general question. Since you are both someone with experience in having an agency as well as SAS. Some people will say, Oh, you need to create SAS actually, Neil Patel, I don't know, you probably know him. He moved from having agency into a SAS because he said, When he had an agency clients are never happy, they always find problems. And you're always stressed, no matter what. So with the SAS, you can have more free time. And it's more automated, while someone else who I spoke to who is inside us. And he says actually so much work because it's never finished. And you always have to fix bugs and to improve things. So it's a lot of hard work as well. It's like people are seeing something from afar, and they think it's easier, but everything is as hard as it's also other. What's your perspective, because your clients are agency owners, maybe they will hear people telling them Oh agency that's just temporary until you create your own SAS or you move on to something else. Well, there are people who are making a lot of good money with agency and they say I don't want to deal with developers with all the headaches that come with with us. So what's your answer? Onur Genes 23:29 There is a big difference between having a source and agency so if you have an agency you have you are living in the time zone of your clients, you have to always get in touch with them. Even if it's just a remote work you have to always be connected. And having a SAS means you can work whenever you want and wherever you want. And you can prioritize your bugs, your ideas, you can check the demand and then act on it. But with agency you don't have this option, they are telling you to do something and you have to do it and you agreed and you have to do it now and having them at the both like both at the same time. It's really hard so I'm a bit struggling on this but the best part in general I'm an automation freak. Even everything is at my home is just like automated everything has to be even if there is a like a smallest thing opening the like pushing the button of the coffeemaker you know you I have to automate it this is this is how I live and when I think it I had to automate automatisms somehow like like make it automatic to let the customer know client know on the agency side. And we have huge automations around it. If you work with us you will get like immediate emails. You will see everything like always calculated on somewhere this that everything is automated so that way I can switch to the SAS but again for the SAS. The point is you can't automate not Almost like nothing, because there are always some new bugs which you have ever seen. There are some customers clients asking you really interesting questions, which you can't ask for most of the time. And there are a lot of people just want to see, there's a human behind it. Some of our clients, some of our clients, like customers just reaching out to just have a conversation and when you in the meeting, and you're expecting some business inquiry or something, and they're just just chatting with you, because they want to know this is a human being. So both of them have huge struggles. But I guess it's just like, pick your poison. Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 25:39 Thank you. I understand. And can you speak about new reply, where people can begin using it, you're in better now? How can people join? Like, what can they expect? And if they want to communicate with you, like you mentioned, what are the best links for them to do so. And I will write some of them in the description, Onur Genes 26:00 you can always reach out to me on Twitter, because it's the easiest way, you can also just send an email on there at No reply.com And LinkedIn, and everywhere, I'm mostly active, except the Instagram, I'm not the visuals guy. I like text more than anything. So other than that, currently, yeah, we didn't update the website fully. So it seems like better, but it's just fully working right now. You can go and just sign up, and then start using it. If you have any questions, just reach out to us. If you have any suggestions, we are always open to new suggestions. And yes, so also, if you reach me with the email, I didn't prepare it yet the discount codes but if you reach me, I can give you 25% Discount immediately. Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 26:49 That's wonderful. Whenever you have it. Let me know and I will put it in the episode description. Thank you. Oh, no, I wish you a great day. This was my privilege, my honor, and keep going you're doing important work really because it's a very frustrating part that leads a lot of agency owners to fail, which is the pain of creating those icebreakers. So you're saving businesses actually, Onur Genes 27:16 thank you for having me in this podcast as is and I'm really grateful to be there. I hope I just somehow shared some insights around the cold outreach community and what you can do what you can achieve with it. Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 27:29 Thank you too.