After achieving five different SaaS exits Alex Berman set his sights on building Omni.us, a cold outreach SaaS company with a $12,000 MRR.
In this interview, Berman sits down with Get Latka host Nathan Latka to discuss how Omni.us is getting customers and what methods they employ to gain market share.
- Over 165 paying customers within 6 months
- Author of best selling book and YouTuber with 97k+ subscribers
- Took $50k to build MVP
How Omni.us Hit $12k MRR Within 6 months
The quick growth of Omni.us isn’t by happenstance. Co-founder Alex Berman has been through five different exits with other SaaS companies. One of his previous exits, Tweet Hunter, is used for gaining new customers through Berman’s Twitter feed. Berman hopes the strategy, along with a few more methods, gets Omni.us to $6M a year.
Leveraging a Best Selling Book and 95k+ Youtube Subscribers
Alex Berman is a serial entrepreneur whose skills include being a best-selling author of the book Cold Email Manifesto. He also started a YouTube channel that currently has over 106k subscribers and his Twitter has over 68k followers.
The social media success is largely how Omni.us continues to attract new customers. “Everyone wants to meet, that’s the thing. When you have an audience, I think that makes everything possible,” explains Berman.
Omni.us Pays $50k and Spends 7 months to Build MVP
Getting a minimum viable product built for the non-tech co-founder wasn’t cheap. Omni.us ended up paying around $50k to get the first version to market. That includes a cheaper labor rate Berman was able to secure by working through India with his co-founder Ameet Mehta.
“We did 50/50 partnership stake, and then we’re splitting the cost 50/50.” Compared to another SaaS company that cost Berman around $70k, it was still a bargain.
Getting High-End Developers For $2.50/hr
The average engineer salary for someone out of college in Bangalore is around $800 – $1,000 a month. Berman’s co-founder Mehta was the first person to quote accurate pricing to Berman.
“Ameet was the first agency that I met that showed me the true prices. Ameet said we’ll do it at cost and it’s $2.50/hr.” Other competitors in India were ready to charge $50/hr for developing Omni.us.
Closing 167 customers with an ARPU of $49
Although the company hasn’t been in service for long, it’s already shown its proof of concept with 167 paying customers at an ARPU of $49. The package was the only one offered by Omni.us until recently when they opened up three more pricing options: $1,500, $2,000, and $5,000.
Achieving 5 Signups per Tweet Post
One of the biggest customer acquisition channels for Omni.us has been Twitter. Berman’s 65k+ followers become active when he offers free giveaways like free scripts or free leads through his channel.
For every post like this, Omni.us gets at least 5 new signups. Berman also uses his previous company, Tweet Hunter, to automatically respond to every comment on his Twitter thread.
Adding 3 payment plans to reach $6M/yr
Berman and his team are currently making $144,00 a year in ARR. It might seem optimistic, then, that Omni.us has goals of reaching $6M a year – but they have a strategy in place. The company recently opened up three annual contract payment plans that doubled their MRR in one month.
Lead Shark Pulls $4k while Omni makes Other $8k
Lead Shark and Omni were originally the same company. Lead Shark focused on lead generation while Omni focused on cold email outreach. First Principles, the studio owned by Ameet Mehta, ended up buying out Lead Shark but the two companies still collaborate to serve one customer base.
Selling $12k MRR but Hit $24K in Two Weeks
Adding the three annual payment plans had an immediate impact on Omni.us’s revenue. Typically, the company would make $12k/mo but the new payment plans immediately brought in $24k within two weeks. Berman and his team have other ideas in mind that can help them reach their $6M yearly goal.
Scaling from 10,000/mo Cold Outreach to 150,000/mo
Currently, the team at Omni.us is capable of sending around 10,000 cold emails a month to get new customers. Most of the process is automated thanks to Omni’s software.
To reach their goal, they plan on scaling to 60,000 emails to start with and increasing until they get to 150,000 emails a month.
Alex Berman Has a 50/50 Equity Split
Omni.us hasn’t taken any outside investment from angels or venture capitalists. The company has bootstrapped its way to $144k ARR with Alex as a co-founder along with Ameet Mehta. The two met in Bangalore where Mehta was running his own company First Principles.
Famous 5
Favorite book: His favorite book is still The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris
CEO they are following: He loves the former CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz
Favorite tool: “I really like Hubspot Automations, there is a lot of money to be made in getting your Hubspot emails set up.” Berman hired a company, Sales Momentum, to set up his Hubspot system and paid $20k.
Current Situation: Berman regularly gets around 8 hours of sleep and is currently single but hopes that changes in the future. He regularly takes the people he dates on the road while he travels. “You have to make decisions and, unfortunately, with a partner you have to get higher quality places to stay.”
Something he wishes he knew when he was 20: The 31-year-old wishes he knew how easy it was to clone an existing business to find success. “I would never come up with an original idea if it was up to me,” Berman explains, “that would be my one advice for anybody at this point.”
