Devon Hennig

Writer, marketer, ex-game-show host. Helping companies grow with video and vibe-coding more apps than I can count.

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

@RobHoffman_ DMed

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

🚨 @antonosika mayday! why are all custom domains on lovable getting slammed by email blacklists? Just checked 5 of my projects and they're all blacklisted on RATS Spam and UCEPROTECTL3. Not good..

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

@Jason Helping SaaS companies rank in AI search with video - https://t.co/ovmy2sJnDv

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

Day 10 update on The Biggest Closer challenge...

🙋 Humans are winning by # of leads (50 vs 12)
🙋 Humans are winning by # of meetings (9 vs 4)
🤖 AI is winning in terms of % booked (33% vs 18%)

If the agency could book the same % of leads as the AI, they'd be so far ahead it wouldn't be funny.

My hypothesis as to why the AI booking rate is higher is because:

1) The AI uncovers contacts with hotter buying signals who are more likely to book OR 
2) It's because I'm personally involved in the follow-up. My copy might be better, and the messages come directly from me instead of an SDR.

Could be both but probably the latter if I had to guess.

To be clear - I'm not happy with 33% either. Booking rate needs to be *at least* 50%+. This is my maniacal focus now.

One fun plot twist: Monaco has heard my plea for more inboxes and will be rolling out multi-inbox users at the start of June. This will increase our volume from AI by 3x and make it a much closer race.

The big question du jour: who can address their challenges faster?

Will @MonacoGTM increase their send volume and crush it with their higher booking rate first...

...Or will Leads That Show improve their booking %s and leave the robots in the dust?

Nail biter!

P.S. If anyone has any clever follow-up templates or tactics for maximizing booking rates, DM me. I am now eating, sleeping, and breathing this till it's fixed.

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

The rubber hit the road today.

I had my first 3 meetings that were booked from The Biggest Closer contest....

....And they were frickin SOLID.

- Bang on ICPs
- 2 out of 3 commits
- $35,990 in pipeline from 4 days of prospecting
- 1 very nice compliment on my outbound copy :)

All 3 calls were from the agency - which, y'know, makes me cautiously optimistic.

BUT Monaco's not out of the race yet. They generated 4 more PRs and booked 1 more call.

We'll have the full week 1 wrap-up tomorrow.

For now, this contest is reminding me of the power of focusing on one thing.

And, as the philosopher Hormozi once said, "A focused fool can accomplish more than a distracted genius."

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

@romanbuildsaas Those acceptance and reply rates are bananas.

We use Gojiberry but we ain't getting 60%+ / 30%+.

Do you think it's because you're sorta well-known founders + YC effect and people want to connect - or something else? Genuinely curious. Would love your %s.

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

Ka-BOOM. The agency has pulled into a lead on day 2 of The Biggest Closer with 21 positive responses versus Monaco's 8.

However, they've only booked 2 out of 21 meetings vs. Monaco's 1 - so it's anyone's game.

But let's be honest. I read all the replies - and 90% of the ones from the agency are solid. If they can cinch these calls, they'll find themselves in a bigger lead than Europe in the 2025 Ryder Cup.

(Anyone else watching Full Swing rn? Anyone.....?)

Come to think of it, this is a little like 🇺🇸 versus 🇬🇧 . Monaco is a US tech company and Leads That Show is a European agency. National pride is on the line.

Anyway. More thoughts on day 2 -

👉 Booked % is still too low. Something doesn't smell right. Like I said, the responses are hot. Are replies getting stuck in spam? Dials not going through? The responses off-base? Needs attention.

👉 Monaco is sticking to their philosophy of hyper-targeted outreach. I asked them to increase # of inboxes because I don't see how they can win without more volume, but they pushed back and said it's against their DNA. Respect! We may get a few more domains hooked up, but it won't be a lot. This is the point of the challenge. We'll see who wins when the dust settles.

👉 Regardless of who wins, SDRs are the losers. I'm paying $20k for this 60-day experiment. There's no way I'd pay $20k on junior SDRs to try and train them up and have them go hunting / generate revenue in 60 days. No time, no patience, no desire. Not saying SDRs aren't valuable for larger orgs (tho maybe I'd still say that if I thought about it longer), but it's not even in my consideration set when AI is decent and good agencies have pay-per result models.

All right. Day 3, let's gooo.

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

Day 1 of The Biggest Closer challenge was off to a hot start.

👉 10 leads from the agency vs. 1 from Monaco
👉 Responses were positive and showed strong intent, but...
👉 Only 1 in 10 agency leads booked so far. Too low for positive replies. I expect closer to 30-50%. Will investigate follow-up time and messages.

Unfortunately, I was sick as a dog yesterday (great day to launch, Devon 🤦), so I wasn't able to hop on calls right away. One tactic I want to try is emailing people after they book with something like: "Hey Sally- I had slot open at 3PM et today, do you want that slot or would you prefer to stick to the original?" Faster we can connect, the better.

Three other learnings from day 1:

1. I thought I could get away with using Google Calendar scheduling links, but no dice. Despite loathing Calendly with all 206 bones in my body, they still have 3 or 4 features I need for now (time zone switching, better reminders, ability to add multiple people etc.). Google - get it together and put them out of their misery, pls.

2. Prospects don't care about sender. The Monaco emails are coming from me (founder) and my primary domain. The agency emails are coming from aliases and non-primary domains. The prospects don't care or even notice. If the offer is strong, they'll reply. If it's not, they won't.

3. LinkedIn touches are overrated. One of my Monaco inboxes is connected to my LI account to add additional touches. There's been 0 lift from that account vs. the ones that don't have LinkedIn connected. It's still early, but I don't expect this to change. Will turn it off if I don't see any evidence of uplift in the next week, as I hate prospecting DMs as much as the rest of you.

Stay tuned for more updates ✌️

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

Today I'm launching the most important experiment of my career.

I'm pitting one of the hottest AI GTM tools against a traditional lead-gen agency to see which one can generate the most revenue in 60 days.

It's AI vs. Experts.

Or, as I’m calling it, “The Biggest Closer: Robots vs. Humans.”

In the first corner: @MonacoGTM. Monaco is an AI revenue platform that's shaking up the dusty CRM space. @jasonlk said it generated SaaStr six figures in the first 24 hours, and others have been floored by its agentic outreach capabilities. I've spent the last month getting it stood up - importing TAM, enriching accounts, polishing campaigns - and it’s ready to go.

In the other corner: Leads That Show. They're an outbound lead-gen agency led by the formidable @iamliamsheridan. Absolute assassins at cold outreach. They preach fast follow-up, immediate phone touches, and hitting your full TAM every 45 days.

This contest is a microcosm for what’s happening at a higher level across tech. There’s a lot of noise about AI replacing people, improving biz dev, and making companies more efficient, but let’s see what works best.

Both vendors are live today…

Both have my full support…

Both cost a pretty penny, so…

May The Biggest Closer win 💪

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

Pricing is a cruel mistress.

I went 6 months without making a penny on my writing app - despite 10-20 users signing up for the free tier daily.

0% conversion to paid. Disgraziad!

Then yesterday I slashed the price and made $1,100 in 24 hours.

No new features. No marketing push. Just a 2-minute pricing tweak.

Three takeaways:

1. “You can always fix pricing later.” Classic @jasonlk nugget. This app is 18 months old, but so what? I updated the pricing long after launch, and voila, now it's cookin'.

2. Don't have delusions of grandeur. I priced this app way too high - especially since it's something I'm not actively developing. If you've built a simple tool, try charging a lower one-time rate instead of a subscription and watch sales spike. When it's just you and expenses are nil, the math is sick: sell 20k people a $50 lifetime license and you've got $1M. I'll take that for a quick, vibe-coded app any day of the week.

3. Companies should have dedicated pricing people. In my experience, most SaaS businesses leave pricing to some poor, ill-equipped product marketer or the whims of the c-suite. Shame. If I were running a bigger company, I'd want a Hormozi-level pricing assassin whose sole job is to run experiments and optimize pricing. They'd be the highest-leverage person in growth, no contest.

Anyway, off to tweak some more pricing pages.

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

@BarstoolBigCat @stoolpresidente Final appeal to Supreme Court

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

@pierreeliottlal @romanbuildsaas Nice 👌 Did AI make the video and if so, which tool?

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

@pierreeliottlal @romanbuildsaas *This* is the type of message template you need in Gojiberry. Can we get a library of proven bangers? The AI ones are too AI.

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

@pierreeliottlal @romanbuildsaas ayiyiy you ship growth hacks faster than anthropic ships claude features. list.

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

@Lovable Say more about the tax side. Are you guys Merchant of Record? Or is this Stripe tax under the hood and we’re still responsible for remitting?

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

@mattceras Helpful, thanks. It's that "reasonably in your control" part that's been tricky. I like the bit about stipulating they have to use xyz offer with x% close rate etc. Will test a few.

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

@mattceras We're doing ok with cold seo campaigns but could always improve.

Our differentiator is video - i.e., we use youtube videos to help companies rank in GEO/AIO.

Maybe there's something on the video side. Guarantee # of views or YT placement in 60 days or something. Thoughts?

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

@mattceras Isn’t that just an outbound agency?

[Devon Hennig @devonhennig]

@iamliamsheridan System