How Onur Genes Turned His Weakest Skill into an Acquired Startup

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I'm here with owner, the founder of New Reply. Owner. How you doing today?

Hello. Hello. I'm fine. How are you doing?

Good. Thanks so much for, for joining me on the podcast. For those that may not know you, do you want to give a brief introduction of yourself?

Yeah, I've been started development like 14 years ago. I was doing freelance job a lot. And then eventually as for everyone, it's me. And I thought to myself, like, I need to do something for myself. And then I became kind of a indie hacker, and then bootstrapper, whatever you want to call it, and then kind of an entrepreneur. It's been like three years since I started building my own projects, and then a lot of crazy stuff happened and eventually I'm here in your podcast, which means I sold a good product.

You did, you did. And congrats again on the acquisition. But tell me, what did New Reply do? How'd you think of it? Let's start there.

I had a software agency, like, I was doing different things, different implementations, technical parts was the biggest problem. But for the customer acquisition, since no Reply is doing the cold emailing, and I am doing the cold emailing using the new reply for more customers to no Reply. It was much easier on the marketing side.

Gotcha. What was the biggest learning through building your, like, how to code email, how to build AI products?

I believe the biggest, like, the biggest mistake and of course the biggest learning for me was don't assume anything, because I was assuming a lot, like, customers would want this. This new feature will make this product much better. But none of them were true. You know, you have to literally sit down with a customer or a potential customer and listen. And that skill, I didn't have it at the beginning. And eventually you realize the more you listen, the better you get. And of course the product gets better. Everything is better when you're listening.

Gotcha. If you could go back and maybe like, change anything about New Reply, what would that be? Like a different type of customer. Maybe there's a feature that was requested, or maybe there's a common bug everyone complained about.

Yeah, like, I would just focus on the biggest email providers. This is also true for almost any other product. Like, you always want to have, like, all the, you know, small bugs or possible bugs to be covered. Like, you want to just, like, build a solid platform, but that's not even possible. That you cannot do this. You cannot cover every edge case. You cannot build or, like, fix any bug before it happens. What I would do, probably just focus on biggest email providers, like Google Hotmail and maybe Yahoo and discard the rest at the beginning because you want to move fast and if you try to cover every edge case, you cannot move fast. It's impossible.

Yeah, that's like with any business there's just so many things you can cover but you got to focus on the biggest use cases.

Exactly, exactly like that.

Well, let's move into the acquisition. Sounds like things were going good. You had customers, you had product market fit. Why'd you decide to sell your plan?

I believe it started with an email I wanted to send you because like you know at around that time we want to do a lifetime deal after almost like two years since the product is started because I believe like I, I wanted to get more customers. I wasn't about after the money. I just wanted to have more people to see the, see the product. No reply itself. But you know as said the life happens and my father passed away and I didn't have any motivation in me. I didn't want to do anything. I just wanted to focus on my family and personal life more and it pushed me somehow. And then at the same time, literally at the same week, the lifetime deal was happening and my father passed away. No replies. Customer base growth. Almost like twice thousands of people coming in, they want me because like I was always on the support team on the marketing side. You would always see me, people wanted to see me and it was impossible. And eventually I realized this is more of a burden for now and I needed to sell, I need to somehow a good, bad, it doesn't matter, I need an exit.

Gotcha. Makes sense. Tell me about your experience on acquire.com. how was the initial expectations? How'd everything go?

I don't know. It's not because you're here I'm saying this but it's literally the first email I sent you. You really understood me. Like you know, you said yeah, let's take care of this and you I believe. Yeah. First person I talked was Kai from your team and the best. Like I still see him as a friend. Like it was so friendly, it was awesome. Everybody literally wanted to help me out and I really felt this. It was like you know my friends trying to help me and recover from this. I wasn't thinking like this is another company. I didn't even think about it. It was just like bunch of people literally want me to help me to do achieve what I want and it started really good. It end much better than I expected. But my initial expectation about Acquire is just like this is another business they would act like they care, but probably they will not. And I was prepared for this, but it didn't go like this.

That's awesome to hear. Yeah. No, I mean a lot of us are entrepreneurs ourselves and you know, we've been through, you know, exits or a part of them, so we know how important it, it can be. So we do everything we can to help you maximize that. Was there any times during the acquisition where things maybe got off track or stressful and we helped bring things back on track?

Yeah, like, you know, these peoples are every, like these people are everywhere. They act like they care about, build or like fix any bug before it happens. What I would do, probably just focus on biggest email providers like Google, Hotmail and maybe Yahoo and discard the rest at the beginning because you want to move fast and if you try to cover every edge case, you cannot move fast. It's impossible.

Yeah, that's like with any business, there's just so many things you can cover, but you got to focus on the biggest use cases.

Exactly, exactly. Like your product, they want to buy, then of course the expectation changes. They want to see like the huge numbers for selling for really low. Everybody wants that. Like every business owner wants to buy something really good for cheap. And then they're like a lot of back and forth and eventually you decide, this is not the seller I want to go. Because I really love no reply. It's not something I just wanted to discard, just like get rid of it. I had to. So that's why I wanted to find it a good new home, if that's the word, you know. And I want someone with experience. It wasn't easy, but your team and Kai really helps me a lot because I tell this exactly to him. Like, I want someone who knows about emailing. I don't. Just someone to buy and give me money. It's not the case. And he said, yeah, let's optimize your listing. And literally did a really good job. Better than me, to be honest. Like, I, I probably wouldn't do that. And after that, in a week we found probably the, the perfect buyer. I can't even think anyone else take the new reply and make it better than the, the, the, the person who acquired it. So it was an awesome experience, to be honest.

That's awesome. What did the buyer do that made them stand out to you? Was it the way they carried themselves? The questions they asked? How did they convince you they were the right buyer for new reply?

New reply is basically an email product and these people doing anything about emailing since 98. So they know what is emailing, what are the edge cases, what can go wrong. Most of the time they were asking the question before I reply or just say something, they were just like, is this the problem? Because they knew it was an interesting match. I couldn't thank, by the way. We became friends with this buyer. We literally almost talk every week. It's not just something I sell then go out. I'm literally with him almost every week.

That is awesome. I mean those are the best acquisitions when you, you. The owner is extremely happy and then the buyers too. And it sounds like they had the experience needed to take new reply, you know, a little farther than maybe you could on your own. So that's, that's awesome, man.

Yeah, absolutely. They have like, they have a bigger team than I had for the development. They have a bigger team for support. They really know how things moving. You know, it's, it's awesome. And I am always telling like the customers, I'm emailing them and I'm saying, you know, I know you want me, you want to see me because I somehow brought you into the platform, but trust me, it will get better because I couldn't do all of them by myself. It's impossible. But they're doing, yeah, they're really doing really good job.

Great to hear. If you could go back and give yourself, you know, three pieces of advice, maybe to another founder that's looking to sell their business and get acquired. What do you think those three pieces of advice would be?

Don't trust people. Who says you don't have to build anything because you do. Everybody can build a basic landing page and try to test the market. It's a lie, you know, at least I don't say you have to build the whole product, but you need to have something, even small working copy of something. And second thing, forget about everything about all the technical side aside, put everything aside, solve the problem. And the third advice would be be the annoying bird who just like yells every time about its product. It's like whatever it's you are selling, like annoy the out people, you know, just talk and just like yell be there, talk about it. Everybody like you know, generally people, even my friends and family saying they probably so annoyed because I'm always talking about my product, even my friends and family because like I really want to talk about it. I want to somehow some people to recognize there's a product solving this. It doesn't matter if you like it, if you're going to use it, but you have to know, if you just take this as a marketing advice, probably you will succeed. That's how I see it.

Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, as the founder, you're the biggest salesperson and biggest advocate for the product. So if you're not going to do that, I mean, it will.

Yeah. Even the best salesperson you will bring on board, which I probably did in Turkey, they want to sell, but they're not you. You know, it's not even comparable. They are doing their job. They're doing a really good job, but they cannot be the founder. You know, it's impossible.

Yeah, no, it's definitely true. Well, Hunter, what are you doing next? What's new? What's. What's on? What's the next chapter looking like?

So it's almost been a year since I started, like, from idea to sell to here. And, you know, I always wanted to somehow be in the cybersecurity part. And of course, I can't stop myself to build some side products. There are a lot of things in works. Probably I will start shouting about it a lot. I will annoy you with the sounds, talking about things. Yeah.

Awesome. Well, thanks for sharing your whole story and congrats again on the acquisition. Owner, it's awesome seeing what you build. I'm glad you found the best buyer you possibly could. If people want to learn more about you or follow you online, where can they find you?

On Twitter, I believe is the best place. Because I know. I don't know, like, I don't share a lot of photos. Probably the Twitter is the best place you can hit me and I will definitely answer.

All right, I'll put that in the show. Notes. Owner, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it. Congrats again on the acquisition.

Thank you so much and helping me out. Like, it was the best experience I have had so far. And yeah, thank you for having me.