Denis Acia

Co-Founder at SaasFluence | B2B Influencer Marketing for SaaS Brands

I’m Denis, Co-Founder of SaasFluence

We’re an influencer marketing agency helping B2B tech brands drive demand and visibility by partnering with LinkedIn influencers.

Currently — with over 200 influencers, we manage influencer marketing programs for B2B sales tech companies like Maildoso, Icypeas, Saleshandy, Fowla, and others.

Why We Started SaasFluence

Before SaasFluence, I ran an outbound agency, Applus Leads. Through that experience, we worked with some incredible B2B tech brands — companies with fantastic products and real value to offer. But despite outbound efforts (cold calls and cold emails), they weren’t getting the traction they deserved.

A big reason?

Their LinkedIn presence and engagement were minimal. Most had only a few hundred page followers and very little visibility in the market.

That lack of recognition made it hard to convert cold leads. Without social proof or brand mentions, prospects were hesitant to engage — especially in the highly competitive sales tech space.
What they really needed was a new approach — one that would:

1. Build credibility
2. Earn trust
3. And drive demand by establishing them as trusted solutions in the market.

That’s where SaasFluence comes in.

Our mission;
To help B2B tech brands leverage influencer marketing to drive demand, increase sales, and grow.

How We Can Help

☑ If you’re a B2B tech founder or business leader with an influencer marketing budget of at least $10K/month,
 ☑ And you don’t have the time to run campaigns or manage influencer partnerships,
We’ll handle it for you.

We’ve launched thousands of LinkedIn-sponsored campaigns, and our clients are seeing exceptional ROI.

If you’re curious, DM me and I’ll share a few of our client case studies so you can learn more about our systems and results.

Or, visit our website to explore further:
 👉 www.saasfluence.co

Lead Generation Partner - Outbound

I am so tired of seeing 20-year-olds giving me life advice on this app.

I scroll my feed and I see people who haven't really done any work yet telling us how we should run our companies.

Why is everyone trying so hard to be a teacher before they have even been a student?

I don't want to hear your philosophy or your 'mindset' tips that you found in a book. I want to see what you did with your own two hands.

Show me the scars from a mistake you made last month. Tell me about the client you lost or the project that blew up in your face because you messed up. 

That is the only way I can believe that what you are saying is something I can use in my life too.

We have enough people on LinkedIn talking about how things should be. We need more people showing how things are.

I would rather follow a person who is failing and being honest about it than a "thought leader" who has never done any work.

Do you want to see more advice or more stories from trenches?

Growth Strategy Advisor | Business Development | B2B Start-ups SaaS | Conversational AI & LLM | GTM Strategy

You closed the first 10-15 deals yourself. Now the board says "scale GTM."

So you hire your first AE. Maybe add an AI outbound tool. Hand them a Google Doc of your gut feel and hope it works.

3 months later: pipeline looks full. Nothing is closing.

I have walked into this at 5 companies. Same story. The founder sold on instinct. Nobody documented what converted. Then they expected a new hire to replicate magic they couldn't explain.

Here's what I actually do. I join as a fractional operator. Or as an advisor. I close deals, document every step, and hand you a motion that works without me.

What that looked like:

I took a biotech startup from $0 to $1.5M ARR in 9 months. No team. No budget. Tried outbound first, zero closed. Scrapped it, built a content engine, ended up with 3-5 inbound leads per month at $0 CAC. 8 customers, $30-50K ACV, 100% prepayment.

Who this is for:

B2B SaaS and AI founders. Seed or Series A. $1-5M+ ARR. You can't hand your sales process to a rep yet. Or you want leads from LinkedIn but your posts get 200 impressions and zero DMs.

One thing most founders miss: 80% of mid-market buyers research vendors 3-6 months before talking to sales. The discovery call is the last step. If you're not in their top 3 before that call, you already lost.

I build the motion that gets you there.

DM me "GTM" or book a call: https://calendar.app.google/D2hh4fn79pV7Crfx6

Maxim Tanevskiy

YOUR job will be automated in 12 months. 


Microsoft's AI chief Mustafa Suleyman told the Financial Times this week: lawyers, accountants, project managers, marketers. All fully automated within 12 to 18 months.

Anthropic's CEO says half of entry-level white-collar jobs will be disrupted. Ford's CEO says AI will cut half of all US white-collar jobs.

Sounds like the apocalypse is on schedule.

It's not.

Oxford Economics studied the actual numbers. Only 4.5% of US job losses in 2025 were AI-related. 55,000 out of over a million.

Standard economic conditions caused 4x more layoffs than AI.

Wharton professor Peter Cappelli: "They're just hoping. They're saying it because that's what investors want to hear."

Here's the test. If AI were truly replacing workers at scale, productivity per worker should be skyrocketing. It's not. Productivity growth has slowed.

Suleyman runs Microsoft AI. His job is to sell you on the future. That's not analysis. That's a pitch deck.

I spent 2 years selling AI to Fortune 500 companies. The gap between what executives promise investors and what AI actually delivers in production is the widest I've ever seen.

➕ Follow Maxim Tanevskiy for AI truths behind the headlines.

Head of Sales | B2B SaaS | a16z-backed | Sold AI to Fortune 500

No alternative text description for this image

ChatGPT destroyed LinkedIn. Views down 50%. Engagement down 25%. 

Follower growth down 59%. And the "growth gurus" selling you templates caused it.

That data comes from Richard van der Blom's Algorithm Insights report. Measured across thousands of accounts. Not a guess.

Everyone blames the algorithm. The algorithm is reacting to something else.

Originality.ai studied 3,368 posts from 99 influential LinkedIn profiles. 54% of long-form posts are now AI-generated. Since ChatGPT launched, AI content on the platform increased 189%.

Half your feed is written by machines.

LinkedIn's algorithm learned to detect it. Generic phrasing, repetitive structure, and templated patterns now get suppressed before distribution even starts.

The platform went from rewarding volume to punishing sameness.

And the advice most people follow makes it worse. "Write better hooks." "Post consistently." "Use templates." "Add carousels."

I have 8,700 followers. In the last 14 days I generated ~300,000 impressions. That is full year of typical reach for accounts my size. Done in two weeks.

Not with better hooks. Not with AI tools. Not with templates.

With one thing. I stopped posting what I wanted to talk about. I started studying what my actual audience reacts to.

I have seen perfectly formatted posts with great hooks get 400 impressions. I have seen rough, unpolished posts with the right topic hit 100,000.

The gap is not craft. It is context.

Before you write your next post, answer three questions.

What does my audience scroll for? What makes them stop? What triggers them to comment?

If you cannot answer those, no formatting trick will save you.

Stop optimising posts. Start studying people.

Follow Maxim Tanevskiy for what LinkedIn gurus won't tell you.

Head of Sales | B2B SaaS & AI GTM Advisor | Sold AI to Fortune 500

Stop desperately applying for jobs. 27%+ are fakes.

They're called ghost jobs. Positions that don't exist. Were never going to be filled. Posted on purpose.

81% of recruiters admit their companies do it. Greenhouse studied it. LinkedIn's data shows 27.4% of US listings are ghosts, report by ResumeUp.AI (Sept 2025). In LA, it's over 30%.

In June 2025, there were 7.4 million job openings in the US. Only 5.2 million hires. 2.2 million jobs that led nowhere.

Why do companies post them?

62% of managers admitted they post fake jobs to make current employees feel replaceable. To scare them into working harder.

Others do it to look like they're growing during fundraising. Or to collect resumes for roles they might open in 2027. Or because nobody remembered to take the listing down.

The FTC launched a task force over it. California passed a law against it. Congress published a report on it.

That's how broken the system is.

The best roles aren't on job boards. They're filled through conversations, referrals, and people who already know your work.

Start showing up where hiring managers make decisions. Conferences. DMs. Referrals. The roles worth having aren't listed. They're unlocked.

Your network is a better recruiter than any algorithm.

➕ Follow Maxim Tanevskiy for career truths the job market won't tell you.

You pay $1,000/month for software. An AI agent does 80% of it for $20.

Salesforce down 25%. Adobe down 25%. Workday down 40%. Traders called it the "SaaSpocalypse."

But that was just the stock market. The real hit hasn't landed yet.

You don't need 100 tools anymore. You need one agent.

Right now, the average company pays for 130 SaaS subscriptions. One for email. One for CRM. One for project management. One for design. One for analytics. One for outreach. Each with its own login, its own dashboard, its own monthly bill.

AI agents from Claude, ChatGPT, and custom builders don't replace one tool. They replace the need for most of them.

One agent can write your outreach, manage your pipeline, optimize your ads, draft your reports, and schedule your team. Not perfectly. But 80% of the job, for 5% of the cost.

The remaining 20%, your niche, your edge, your specific workflow, still needs specialized software.

But 80% of what businesses pay for today is generic. CRM. Email. Docs. Scheduling. Reporting. An agent covers all of it.

That is not a Salesforce problem. That is an every-SaaS-company problem. And every business that built itself around selling, integrating, or managing those tools.

I built GTM for 8 software companies. The ones that survive will own the 20% no agent can touch. The rest just became features inside someone else's AI.

➕ Follow Maxim Tanevskiy for what the SaaS industry won't admit.

Sam Altman just admitted AI layoffs are fake.

Yesterday at the India AI Summit, the CEO of OpenAI said companies are "AI-washing." Blaming layoffs on AI when the real reason is bad management.

His exact words: "There's some AI washing where people are blaming AI for layoffs that they would otherwise do."

The man who built ChatGPT just told you your boss used his product as an excuse to fire you.

The data backs him up.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas tracked 1.2 million US job cuts in 2025. AI was cited in 55,000. That is 4.5%.

The other 95.5%? "Market conditions." Which is corporate for "we overhired and need to fix the balance sheet."

Forrester published a report in January. Their finding: most companies announcing AI layoffs don't even have working AI to fill those roles. They're cutting heads now and hoping the tech catches up later.

It gets worse.

The National Bureau of Economic Research surveyed thousands of C-suite executives across the US, UK, Germany, and Australia. 90% said AI had zero impact on employment over the past three years.

Zero.

Oxford Economics called it out directly. "We suspect some firms are trying to dress up layoffs as a good news story." Because telling investors "we're restructuring for AI" gets your stock price up. Telling them "we overhired during COVID" does not.

Wharton professor Peter Cappelli: "The headline is, it's because of AI. But if you read what they actually say, they say we expect AI will cover this work. Hadn't done it. They're just hoping."

So here is what is actually happening.

Your company fires you. Tells the board it is "AI transformation." Stock goes up. CEO gets a bonus. You update your LinkedIn.

Meanwhile the AI they bought sits in a pilot program nobody uses.

I spent 2 years selling AI to Fortune 500 companies. The gap between what executives promise investors and what AI actually delivers in production is the widest I have ever seen.

They are not replacing you with AI. They are replacing you with a press release.

♻️ Repost before your manager reads this first.

➕ Follow Maxim Tanevskiy for AI truths behind the headlines.

Anthropic just analysed 2 million real AI conversations at work.

Sales reps: 62.8% of tasks already exposed to AI.

Not in 3 years. Not "someday." Right now.

Prospecting. Lead qualification. Outreach. Follow-ups. Reporting.

All automatable. Today.

Here's what the data says:

→ Computer programmers: 74.5% exposed
→ Marketing specialists: 64.8%
→ Sales reps: 62.8%
→ Financial analysts: 57.2%

The pattern is clear. Knowledge workers got hit first.

The scariest part?

Hiring for workers aged 22-25 in exposed roles already dropped 14%.

Companies aren't firing salespeople. They're just not hiring new ones.

Your job title still exists. Your job description doesn't.

I sold AI tools to Fortune 500 for 2 years. Most sales teams I saw were doing the same tasks AI handles better, faster, and cheaper.

The reps who survive aren't the ones who "learn AI tools."

They're the ones who do what AI can't: build trust, close complex deals, and own a GTM strategy.

DM me "GTM" if your pipeline stalled and you're not sure whether to hire reps or replace them with AI.

Follow Maxim Tanevskiy for more.

Your sales team fights over deals that are already decided.

6sense tracked 3,974 B2B purchases.

94% of buyers picked their shortlist before talking to any salesperson.

Before your cold email. Before your demo. Before your SDR even dialed.

The deal was 70% done.

The real timeline:

↳ B2B buying takes 211 days
↳ 147 days happen before you even know they exist
↳ 85% of buyers set requirements on their own
↳ Your team gets 64 days. The leftovers.

VCs tell founders "hire 3 SDRs and scale outbound." That costs $600K/year to fight for scraps.

What works instead:

I ran sales at a biotech startup. Zero SDRs. Zero cold outbound. Zero ads.

$0 to $1.5M ARR in 9 months.

Our buyers already knew us. They saw our content on relevant social media. Read our case studies. Talked to peers who used us.

By the time they booked a demo, they were just confirming a choice they already made.

Amazon spends $1.2B/year on sales tools. Google rebuilt its enterprise sales team in 2025. Even they figured it out: chasing buyers doesn't work anymore.

The companies winning in 2026 don't chase. They show up on the shortlist before the buyer picks up the phone.

Position first. Sell second.

♻️ Repost if your sales team needs to hear this
➕ Follow Maxim Tanevskiy for GTM truths your board won't tell you

Companies spent $57.99 billion on AI marketing. 80% of it failed.

The AI marketing industry hit $57.99 billion in 2026. That is a 37.2% compound annual growth rate since 2018. Projected to reach $240 billion by 2030.

Meanwhile, the actual results.

RAND Corporation: 80% of AI and machine learning projects fail. 
S&P Global: 42% of companies killed their AI projects entirely in 2025. 
MIT: 95% of generative AI pilots made zero money. 
Gartner: only 48% of AI projects make it past pilot.

Only 1% of businesses fully recover their generative AI investment.

Read that number again. 1%.

Companies are spending billions on AI tools their teams cannot use. Upwork found 77% of employees say AI added to their workload. 47% have no idea how to achieve the productivity gains their employer expects. McKinsey surveyed 200+ senior marketing and technology leaders. None could clearly articulate the ROI of their martech investments.

None.

Companies spending over $500,000 per year on marketing technology cannot explain what it returns. They track email opens and impressions instead of revenue.

This is not an AI problem. This is a management problem wearing an AI costume.

The companies that actually get results are not the ones buying more tools. They are the ones that redesigned their workflows before adding technology. McKinsey's data shows that organizations reporting real financial returns were twice as likely to have rebuilt end-to-end processes first.

But that is hard. Buying a $50,000 AI platform and telling the board you are "AI-first" is easy.

I have built GTM for 8 B2B companies. The ones wasting money on AI share the same pattern. They buy the tool, skip the strategy, blame the team when it fails, then buy another tool.

The AI bubble is not coming. It is here. The companies pouring money in are not investing. They are gambling.

Follow Maxim Tanevskiy for what the AI industry won't admit.

Every B2B startup runs the same demand capture playbook.
That's exactly the problem.

Had a call with a Head of Sales last week. Series A SaaS.

Me: "Walk me through your GTM spend."

Him: "Clay for prospecting. Lemlist for sequences. ZoomInfo for data. AI agents for outbound. HubSpot for nurture."

Me: "So 100% demand capture. What about demand creation?"

Him: "That's what the SDRs do."

No. That's the problem.

Demand capture is fighting over the 5% of buyers already shopping.

With the same tools. The same sequences. The same templates. Everyone has Clay. Everyone has AI agents. There is zero moat in demand capture anymore.

Meanwhile, 70% of the B2B buyer journey happens before any sales contact. 81% already picked their vendor before the first call (6sense, 2025).

That's demand creation territory.

And almost nobody invests there.

What demand creation actually looks like:
→ Founder-led content building trust months before the buyer is in-market
→ Ungated insights that educate your category, not just your funnel
→ Community, podcasts, partnerships that make you the obvious choice

The right split is 60% demand creation, 40% demand capture.

Most Series A companies do the opposite. Then wonder why pipeline dies at month 6.

Follow Maxim Tanevskiy for more on B2B GTM.

taplio

The Battle

Denis Acia

Maxim Tanevskiy

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreDenis Acia's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreMaxim Tanevskiy's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Denis Acia

Maxim Tanevskiy

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Denis Acia's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreMaxim Tanevskiy's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreDenis Acia's LinkedIn Performance