---
title: "My dinner invites went to spam. Delegate, don't abdicate. | Alphie Blog"
description: "A misconfigured DMARC record sent every dinner invite to spam, while Apollo showed them as delivered. The lesson about delegating to AI."
last_updated: "2026-11-12"
canonical: "https://meetalphie.com/blog/dmarc-delegate-dont-abdicate"
---

[Back to Blog](https://meetalphie.com/blog)

Delegate, but don't abdicate. Turns out, this applies to AI too.

I planned a dinner in San Francisco for growth leaders of Series A+ B2B startups. It was set for October 29, in an awesome little French restaurant near Union Square.

Nobody signed up.

Turns out, most of them never even saw the invite. A nice guy who actually checks his spam folder told me everything from me was landing there.

## The culprit: DMARC

The culprit was DMARC -- a DNS record that tells Gmail and Outlook how to treat email claiming to come from your domain. Ours was misconfigured, so my invites went straight to spam. No bounces, no errors: Apollo showed every invite as delivered. Delivered to spam still counts as delivered.

## That part is on me

That part is on me. I set up the whole campaign with Claude, automatically, because I wanted it done fast. I even went to the restaurant myself to check it out. I never checked whether the emails reached anyone.

It's fixed now. And I'm keeping the lesson: when it comes to AI, delegate -- but do not abdicate.

If you run growth at a B2B startup in the Bay Area and an evening like this sounds worth your time, email me at [yura@meetalphie.com](mailto:yura@meetalphie.com). If we get at least 8 people -- I'm booking the table!

[First posted on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7521585688623120384/)

#### Yura Riphyak

CEO of Alphie

Yura is building the future of intelligent GTM at Alphie. Previously, he co-founded YouTeam (YC W18, acquired by Toptal) and Hubbub.fm.

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## Keep reading

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