The Wire

Real-time updates from ANZ tech sales

3 months ago
News

Gridcog raises $12.5M Series A, two other startups add $7M

## The Numbers Three Australian startups raised $19.5 million this week. Gridcog, an energy modelling platform, took $12.5 million in a Series A led by ABB Electrification Ventures. The other two startups accounted for $7 million, though names were not disclosed in available reporting. ## What Gridcog Does Founded by Fabian Le Gay Brereton and Pete Tickler, Gridcog replaces spreadsheet-based energy project modelling with a simulation platform. Target buyers: renewable energy developers, utilities, and businesses planning solar, wind, and battery storage projects. This is enterprise software sales. Complex buying committees, long sales cycles, technical demos required. The kind of deal where an AE needs to speak fluent engineering and finance. Gridcog raised $6.4 million in 2024. Series A usually means the sales playbook is working and now it is time to scale the team. Expect AE and solution engineer hiring in the next six months. ## The Investors ABB Electrification Ventures led, with Axpo Ventures, DNV Ventures, and Verbund Ventures participating. All strategic investors with energy sector networks, which matters for enterprise sales. When your lead investor can open doors at utilities, quota gets easier to hit. ## Market Context Australian startups raised $1.8 billion in Q1 2026, up 63% from Q1 2025. Climate tech and infrastructure software are drawing capital. For sales professionals: that means more funded companies hiring, but also more competition for enterprise deals in the energy transition space. Series A rounds typically fund 6 to 12 months of aggressive hiring. If Gridcog follows the pattern, expect territory expansion and quota increases for existing reps as new AEs ramp. ## What This Means for Sales Teams Energy modelling is not sexy, but it is necessary. Companies that solve spreadsheet problems for engineers tend to have strong retention and expansion revenue. That makes for stable comp plans and predictable attainment, assuming the product delivers. Watch for Gridcog job postings in Melbourne and Sydney over the next quarter. If you have sold technical infrastructure software to energy buyers, this is your market.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

SaaStr CEO: Ignore your VC's hiring pressure 70% of the time

## When Your VC Pushes Aggressive Hiring, Push Back SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin has a warning for early-stage founders: when your VC tells you to hire faster and burn harder, that advice is wrong 66-70% of the time. The pressure typically comes from large VC firms. The reason is not complex. They want to deploy more capital to increase their ownership stake. Your burn rate is your problem, not theirs. ## Founders Already Know Their Numbers Lemkin's take: by the time you hit $6-10m ARR and 50-200 customers, you understand how to invest $X to get $Y out. First-time founders might take longer to scale spend comfortably, especially if they bootstrapped before raising. So what. They figure it out. Pushing them to accelerate that learning does not help. It just increases the risk of runaway burn. ## The Real Cost of VC Pressure Even a slightly elevated burn rate compounds fast. Founders need to own their Zero Cash Date and burn multiple (ideally 1-2x). VCs are less worried about your runway than you should be. This matters more in 2026. Traditional B2B SaaS fundraising has slowed outside AI-native products. Capital is concentrated in hypergrowth AI companies. Assume the next round might not happen. ## What Good Advice Looks Like Instead of "spend more," VCs should help identify where to hire: VP of Marketing, Customer Success expansion, AEs for a growing segment. Show the ROI on specific roles. Let founders control the pace. The sales hiring implication: if your leadership is feeling VC pressure to double the team, ask about the math. What is the expected payback period? What does attainment look like in the new territory? Who owns the ramp plan? Good growth comes from strategic hires, not aggressive ones. Know your burn multiple. Protect your runway. The VC gets another shot with their next investment. You do not.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Notion scaled comp from 80 to 400 reps: here is the playbook

## The Numbers Notion scaled its commissionable headcount from 80 to over 400 employees under Brian Le's compensation framework. Top AEs pull over $1 million per quarter. The company automated commissions through Everstage after running manual calculations across spreadsheets. ## What Changed Le's first priority was not plan design. It was trust. Notion's comp had been managed manually across fragmented data sources. He ran a full RFP, automated the stack, and gave reps visibility into their earnings before touching structure. The framework sits on three pillars: OTE and pay mix, quota and payout curves, and governance (crediting rules, policies, terms). When these stop talking to each other, the plan degrades. ## Early Warning Signs Attainment pacing tells you first. Deals bunching at quarter end signal cycle problems. Attainment distribution comes next: if everyone blows out quota, the quota is wrong. Diagnose by segment and region before adjusting. Le flags the real cost of comp errors: a rep who quits over payout surprises takes their ramp investment with them. You eat that cost twice: once on the exit, again on the backfill. ## First Hire Approach Two schools for early-stage comp. Option one: 100% guarantee while gathering data on what actually closes. Option two: best-estimate quota with downside protection and an upside cap. Either way, respect the precedent. Once you set a threshold, walking it back is hard. ## Usage-Based Shift Notion transitioned from seat-based to usage pricing during this scale period. That changes everything: commission triggers, clawback terms, quota construction. Pay mix signals what reps can influence. If the comp does not match the motion, behavior will not either. ## What It Means Comp is not an HR derivative. It is the operating system for go-to-market. Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome is not motivational: it is mechanical. Notion's scale proves the point. Automate the basics, earn trust, then design for the business model you are actually running.

Sales Hacker
3 months ago
News

LendUs closes $5M Seed, building white-label mortgage platform for partners

## LendUs closes $5M Seed, building white-label mortgage platform for partners Sydney mortgage fintech LendUs closed a $5 million Seed round led by Carthona Capital. The round was oversubscribed, attracting nearly double the committed capital before the company capped it. Founded in 2023 by Dean Mendelowitz (26, former Zip data scientist), LendUs builds embedded finance infrastructure for brands and platforms. Partners white-label the home loan broking tech into their own apps. The platform compares 30+ lenders using AI and Open Banking, then connects users with human advisors to close deals. Mendelowitz is backed by Brad Lindenberg (sold QuadPay to Zip for $403M) and Graham Mendelowitz (founded MKM Capital, acquired by MA Financial Group). That pedigree likely helped the oversubscription. **What this means for sales teams:** LendUs now has 20+ integrated partnerships and 10,000+ users comparing loans through the platform. The Seed capital funds headcount expansion, though the company has not disclosed current team size or hiring plans. Worth watching if they start building an enterprise sales motion to sign more platform partners. The model is B2B2C: sell the white-label platform to organisations (member groups, digital platforms, brands), who then offer mortgage broking to their end users. That typically means a mix of partnership managers and AEs working enterprise deals, plus customer success to retain partners. **ANZ fintech sales context:** Mortgage fintech hiring in Australia has been quiet since rate hikes slowed the market in 2022-23. LendUs is competing against traditional brokers and digital platforms like A2Z Home Loans and Better Finance. The embedded finance angle (plug into existing platforms rather than build your own customer acquisition) is the differentiator here. No comp details disclosed. The company is not currently advertising sales roles, but a $5M Seed at this stage usually means 2-4 early sales hires over the next 6-12 months as they scale partnerships. **Note:** This is the Sydney-based LendUs (fintech). Unrelated to the US retail lender LendUS, which CrossCountry Mortgage acquired in 2024.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

Marketo loses 20-year customer over pricing, won't discount at renewal

## The Discount That Would Have Worked Adobe Marketo just lost one of its first 10 customers. Jason Lemkin, SaaStr founder, churned after nearly 20 years. The reason: Marketo raised pricing at renewal instead of offering a discount. The product had issues: broken unsubscribe handling, daily API rate limits, six-month history caps. But Lemkin was clear: "If they'd offered us a large discount to stay, we'd probably stay. At least for another year." Instead, Marketo increased pricing for zero new features. The account walked. ## The NRR Trap This is the problem with optimising for Net Revenue Retention at all costs. Median private B2B NRR sits at 101%. Companies above 120% NRR trade at a 63% premium to median. Companies below 100% trade at a 46% discount. That pressure pushes legacy vendors to hold the line on renewal pricing. Discounting a renewal drags NRR down this quarter. Letting the difficult account walk keeps the number clean. But here is what you actually lose: the year that discount would have bought you to fix the product. The account that would have expanded once you did. The signal about where your product is falling behind. You protect the metric by harvesting the base. It looks fine right up until the base is gone and there is nothing left to expand into. ## What Account Managers Should Actually Do The discount is a stall, not a fix. The real answer is a better product. But the discount buys you time to build it. For account managers sitting on at-risk renewals right now: usage trending down, support tickets piling up, logins dropping, the champion who stopped showing up to the QBR. Those customers are telling you they are going to leave. They probably mean it. The question is not whether discounting hurts NRR this quarter. The question is whether keeping the customer at a lower price is better than losing them to protect Average Selling Price. Sometimes the answer is no, and you let them go. But you should be making that call on the signals, not missing it because you were protecting a metric instead of the business. ## The Adobe Marketo Context Adobe acquired Marketo in 2018 for $4.75 billion. The platform hit $400 million revenue in 2024 with approximately 174 quota-carrying sales reps globally. It competes with HubSpot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and Eloqua. With a customer base spanning two decades, renewal strategy matters. Protecting NRR and protecting the company are not the same thing. Legacy vendors confuse them constantly.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

SaaStr founder: AI agents should beat your best rep by 20%, not match them

## Agents outperforming reps, not replacing them Jason Lemkin, founder of SaaStr, told 10,000 founders and execs at SaaStr AI 2026 that sales teams are setting the wrong target for AI agents. Most teams build to 80% of their best rep. Lemkin says aim for 120%. Two weeks before the event, an AI agent he built on Replit wrote outbound emails that identified the top 40 people worth meeting and explained why. The copy was solid. The reasoning underneath was what stood out. "Nobody on my team could hold that much in their head," Lemkin said. "It was the first time I watched an agent do something clearly better than a person, not cheaper, better." SaaStr's inbound agent booked 682 qualified meetings. Lemkin says it outperformed any BDR he has worked with because it never lowers the bar at the end of the month to hit quota. That consistency matters when you are scaling pipeline. ## What this means for sales teams Lemkin's view: automate inbound fully before anything else. The bar for keeping human reps is rising fast. Reps who know the product cold and can answer technical questions are irreplaceable. Reps who schmooze without substance are getting bypassed. He also says planning cycles are collapsing. The fastest growing companies at the event plan weekly now, not annually. When products change every month, spending hours on annual planning means you are not shipping. For sales leaders evaluating AI agents, the question is not "can this replace my worst rep?" It is "where can this beat my best one?" If you are building to match human performance, you are aiming too low. ## The comp angle Lemkin did not share specific cost data on the agents versus human BDR comp, but the implication is clear: if an agent books 682 meetings without the usual end-of-month desperation, that is a different ROI conversation than "we saved on headcount." The question for sales leaders is whether top performers see AI as a tool that makes them better or a signal that their role is getting commoditised. Lemkin's bet: the best reps will use agents to move upmarket faster. SaaStr operates primarily in the U.S. with no confirmed ANZ presence, but the playbook applies: if your inbound motion is still human-led and your reps are not product experts, you are already behind.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

AI job losses not hitting ANZ sales yet, government data shows

# AI Job Losses Not Hitting ANZ Sales Yet, Government Data Shows Australia's Department of Employment and Workplace Relations released the country's first comprehensive AI employment assessment. The data: no mass job losses. Not yet, anyway. Since ChatGPT went mainstream in November 2022, software development roles in Australia grew 25%. Youth employment (ages 20 to 24) stayed resilient. Unemployment sits at 4.4% as of May 2026. The feared AI apocalypse has not materialized in ANZ. ## What the Data Actually Shows Clerical and admin roles are growing slower than other occupations. That tracks with AI's current capabilities: automation of repetitive tasks, data entry, basic customer service. Sales roles are not showing up in the slow-growth category. Employment Minister Amanda Rishworth: "AI is changing how we work, but it also has real potential to lift productivity, build skills, and create new opportunities." Translation: the government is watching closely but not panicking. ## What This Means for Sales Teams SDR and AE roles remain stable for now. AI tools are augmenting outbound workflows (email sequencing, lead scoring, call analysis) but not replacing quota-carrying humans. The tech sector layoffs making global headlines? Not mirrored in ANZ sales hiring. Software sales roles specifically saw growth, which makes sense: someone still needs to sell the AI tools disrupting other functions. The report notes "gradual shift may signal the beginning of longer-term changes." Worth paying attention to. If clerical roles are slowing now, sales ops and sales enablement could be next. Tools that automate CRM hygiene, territory planning, and pipeline analysis are already shipping. ## The Real Question Not "will AI replace sales jobs" but "which parts of the sales motion get automated first." Prospecting? Already happening. Discovery calls? Still need humans. Contract negotiation? Not yet. Historical workforce participation near record highs suggests the market is absorbing AI without mass displacement. For now. Keep an eye on which specific sales functions start consolidating. That is your early warning signal. Australia is not seeing AI-driven job losses in sales. The data is clear on that. What happens in the next 12 to 24 months will matter more.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

Telstra outage hits SMB payments, mobile sales teams nationwide

Telstra's mobile network failed Wednesday morning, disrupting business operations nationwide. The outage started before 5am AEST, with over 7,000 reports logged by 7am. The impact on sales operations was immediate. Mobile calls dropped. Data stopped. Field sales teams lost connectivity. Businesses relying on Telstra for EFTPOS reported they could not process card payments, forcing some retailers to turn away customers. The outage extended beyond Telstra's direct customers. Resellers using Telstra infrastructure, including Boost Mobile, Belong, Aldi Mobile, Everyday Mobile, and Tangerine, also went dark. For businesses using these providers for backup connectivity or distributed teams, redundancy plans failed. Telstra generated $23.6 billion in revenue in 2025 and employs 30,553 people. The company holds dominant market share in Australia against Optus and TPG Telecom. Mobile services revenue grew 3.5% recently, but this outage highlights infrastructure risk for businesses dependent on a single carrier. For sales teams: if your CRM, payment processing, or mobile connectivity runs on Telstra, you felt this. If your field reps rely on mobile data for demos or order entry, they were offline. If your retail operation uses Telstra for EFTPOS, you stopped taking payments. The timing matters. Peak morning hours mean lost sales calls, missed pipeline activity, and stalled deal progression. For teams with daily or weekly quotas, an outage during business hours costs real revenue. Telstra has not yet disclosed the cause or expected resolution time. No compensation details have been announced, though the company has a history of crediting customers after major disruptions. Worth noting: this is the second significant Telstra outage in recent years. In 2022, a similar incident affected businesses nationwide. For sales leaders evaluating carrier reliability or building business continuity plans, track record matters.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

Who Gives a Crap suspends AI agent after email quoted 110% price hike

## AI Agent Misfire Costs Customer Trust Who Gives a Crap, the $1 billion valuation Australian toilet paper social enterprise, suspended its AI-powered email automation after it quoted a customer a 110% price increase instead of the actual few-dollar bump. The customer received an email stating their 48-roll bamboo subscription would rise from $66 to $69.50 for 24 rolls. Per-roll cost: $1.38 to $2.90. The actual price increase across the range was described by co-founder Simon Griffiths as "a few dollars" driven by input cost pressures. The AI agent botched the unit count. It should have written $69.50 for 48 rolls, not 24. ## What This Means for B2B Sales Teams If you are running AI agents for outreach, renewals, or customer communications, this is your warning shot. Who Gives a Crap caught this because a customer questioned it. How many prospects or customers would just ghost you instead? The risk profile: - **Pricing errors** in renewal emails can trigger contract disputes or churn - **Compliance exposure** if AI misquotes terms in regulated industries - **CRM data quality** matters more when agents pull from it automatically - **No human review** means no catch before send Who Gives a Crap acted fast, suspending the tool immediately. That is the right call. But the damage is out there: a customer posted the email publicly, and now the story is making rounds as a case study in AI automation risk. ## The Sales Automation Reality Check AI agents are shipping fast in 2026. SDR sequences, renewal campaigns, lead nurturing. The promise: scale without headcount. The reality: you are one hallucination away from torching your pipeline. Best practice emerging from early adopters: - **Human review** on high-value or price-sensitive communications - **Hard limits** on what AI can quote or commit to - **Audit trails** so you can trace what went wrong - **Kill switches** you can pull fast when something breaks Who Gives a Crap built a strong brand on transparency and purpose. They will recover. Can your pipeline afford the same hit if your AI quotes the wrong OTE or renewal terms? Worth noting: this was a customer email, not a sales outreach tool. But the lesson applies. If you are automating communication that involves numbers, pricing, or commitments, assume the AI will eventually screw it up. Plan accordingly.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

One in three ANZ workers using AI tools at work without approval

## The Numbers One in three Australian workers (33%) are using AI tools at work without telling their employer, according to Employment Hero's survey of 2,600 ANZ employees and business leaders. The split: 44% of workers using personal AI accounts on the job, and two in five say using these tools feels like cheating. Productivity impact: 75% report improved output, 74% say work quality improved. That tracks with what we are seeing in sales: reps using ChatGPT for email prospecting, objection handling prep, and account research are cutting task time by 30-40%. ## Why It Matters for Sales Teams This is not just an HR policy issue. Sales leaders need to address this now: **The secret AI user problem:** Your top performers are already using ChatGPT to write sequences, research prospects, and prep for calls. If they are doing it on personal accounts, you have zero visibility into what client data is being shared with public AI models. **The training gap:** More than half of AI-using workers are self-training with online materials. That means your SDRs are learning prompt engineering from Reddit, not from a structured approach that protects customer data and maintains quality standards. **The guilt factor:** When 40% of workers feel like they are cheating by using productivity tools, you have a culture problem. Compare this to CRM adoption 15 years ago: early resistance, then mandatory rollout, now table stakes. ## What This Looks Like in Practice Sales reps are using AI for: - Prospect research (company news, pain points, buying signals) - Email personalisation at scale - Call prep and objection handling scripts - Meeting summaries and follow-up tasks - Competitive intelligence gathering The National AI Centre reports 47% of ANZ organisations are adopting AI, but 19% say they still do not know how to deploy it effectively. That gap is being filled by individual contributors who are shipping their own solutions. ## The Action Item If your sales team does not have approved AI tools and clear usage guidelines, they are using unapproved ones. The question is not whether to allow AI in your sales process. The question is whether you want visibility and control over how it is being used. Employment Hero's data confirms what sales leaders already know: the tools work, people are using them, and pretending otherwise just pushes usage underground. Build the policy, approve the tools, train the team. Or watch your quota crushers do it anyway, on personal ChatGPT accounts you cannot audit.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

Deep tech sector pushes back on R&D tax changes hitting sub-10-year companies

Australia's deep tech, biotech, and medtech sectors are pushing back on two R&D Tax Incentive reforms announced in the federal budget, arguing they will damage the early-stage companies they are meant to support. A coalition of 17 industry organisations, including AusBiotech, Science & Technology Australia, and Cicada Innovations, sent a letter to Treasurer Jim Chalmers on June 30 calling for consultation on the changes. The letter was released publicly last Friday. The reforms would limit refundable R&D tax offsets to companies under 10 years old and remove supporting R&D activity expenditure from eligibility. Both changes are scheduled to take effect from 2028-29. ## Why this matters for sales teams For sales professionals at deep tech firms, R&D tax credits are not just a finance team issue. They directly impact runway, hiring capacity, and territory expansion plans. The refundable offset currently gives early-stage companies cash back on R&D spending, even if they are not yet profitable. This cash flow funds operations, including sales headcount. Cutting that lifeline at the 10-year mark could force mature startups to slow hiring or cut costs right when they are scaling. The sector argues the timing is wrong. Deep tech companies, particularly in biotech and medtech, often take longer than 10 years to commercialise. Limiting refunds based on age rather than revenue or profitability penalises companies for the nature of their market, not their business performance. The removal of supporting R&D activity expenditure, such as costs for trials or regulatory work, further tightens eligibility. For companies selling into regulated industries, this could reduce claimable spend and shrink the credit. ## What the data shows OECD research shows R&D tax incentives have a stronger effect on small firms, which makes these reforms particularly risky for early-stage companies. Australia's current RDTI minimum threshold sits at $20,000 in R&D spend. The government previously floated raising this to $50,000 and lifting the turnover cap for refundable offsets from $20m to $50m. The sector's concern is that these changes will make Australia less competitive for deep tech investment. If cash flow dries up, so does hiring. Sales teams at affected companies should watch for budget freezes or headcount adjustments as firms model out the impact ahead of 2028-29. The government has not yet responded to the consultation request. For now, current RDTI rules remain in place, but sales leaders at sub-10-year deep tech firms should be tracking this closely.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

Culture Amp cuts 70 jobs, posts $91m loss across two years

## The Numbers Culture Amp is cutting 70 roles, roughly 9% of its workforce. This follows 60 job cuts in November 2024. The Melbourne-based employee engagement platform posted losses of $91.5 million across FY24 and FY25, including a $37 million loss in FY25. Revenue growth has slowed hard: 32% in FY23, 19% in FY24, 10.8% in FY25. Key investor Blackbird cut the company's valuation by 23.5% earlier this year. The unicorn peaked at $2 billion in 2021 after raising $135 million Series F. ## What Changed Founder Didier Elzinga stepped down as CEO in January 2026 after 17 years, replaced by Caroline Rawlinson. He now chairs the board. The CRO also left in May after 18 months in role. Sources told Capital Brief the latest cuts target middle management across multiple teams. Rawlinson said the changes "align investment with our refreshed strategic priorities" and are "necessary to deliver on our long term ambitions." ## What This Means for Sales Teams If you are selling at Culture Amp or considering a role there, pay attention. Two rounds of cuts in eight months, slowing revenue growth, and CRO turnover signal GTM pressure. The company raised $257.5 million total and employs 500 to 1,000 people globally across Melbourne, San Francisco, New York, and London. Culture Amp competes with Qualtrics, Lattice, and 15Five in the employee engagement space. Enterprise customers include companies with $500 million revenue and 3,000 employees. The platform's estimated annual revenue is $197.4 million. For sales professionals in HR tech: this is the second ANZ unicorn showing strain after SafetyCulture's own adjustments. If you are evaluating offers in this space, ask about quota trends, team stability, and realistic attainment over the past four quarters. Revenue growth at 10.8% with enterprise ACV cycles means longer sales cycles and tougher quota math. Worth noting: Culture Amp launched AI Coach in November 2024, suggesting product-led growth bets as the sales-led model faces headwinds.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

WiseTech founder White quits chair, shares rally 9%

Richard White quit as chair of WiseTech Global this morning after 18 months in the role. The company's shares rallied 9% on the news. White founded the logistics software company in 1994 and served as CEO until October 2024. He became chair in February 2025, but ongoing media coverage of his personal life prompted the exit. Independent director Raelene Murphy, who joined the board in January, takes over as chair. White stays on as director and Chief Innovation Officer. That role focuses on product strategy for CargoWise, the company's dominant logistics platform. **The share price context:** WiseTech stock has dropped 75% over the past 12 months to below $30, a five-year low. The decline came amid media reports about investigations into White, including allegations he denied regarding visa arrangements and human exploitation claims. Former Kyckr CEO Kathy Phelan is suing White over her dismissal from that business, which WiseTech acquired for $43.5M in 2022. White said the media attention creates "an unnecessary distraction from the strength of WiseTech's business" and could attract short sellers. **What this means for sales teams:** WiseTech reported $1.2B revenue in 2025 with 97-99% recurring revenue and less than 1% customer churn. Those numbers put it at the top of SaaS retention metrics globally. The company competes with Descartes, Oracle Logistics, and SAP Transportation Management, but its market position remains strong. No word yet on changes to the sales leadership structure or hiring plans. WiseTech operates globally with headquarters in Alexandria, NSW. The company has offices across ANZ, Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Current CEO is Zubin Appoo, who took over when White stepped down from that role in October 2024. The leadership transition from founder-CEO to professional management is now complete at the board level, though White maintains significant influence through his director and CIO roles. Worth noting: a 9% share price jump on a founder stepping down as chair tells you what the market thought about the distraction factor.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

Software spend up 15%, yet half of SaaS dying: market splits in two

# Software spend up 15%, yet half of SaaS dying: market splits in two Two things are happening in B2B software right now, and they look contradictory. Total software spend is growing 15% this year, up from 12.8% last year. Gartner has it going from $1.2T to $1.4T. That is the fastest acceleration in a decade. At the same time, public software is trading at a discount to the S&P 500 for the first time ever. Monday, HubSpot, and Atlassian got cut 60-70% in recent months. The markets have stopped believing in the premium multiple that SaaS companies carried for years. The resolution: software is not one market anymore. It has split in two. One group is tapping AI budget and re-accelerating. The other is running the same playbook from 18 months ago, waiting for a recovery that is not coming. Very little exists in the middle. ## What actually matters now Jason Lemkin, who runs SaaStr, tested this thesis by rebuilding his own operation. They went from 20+ humans in 2024 to 3 humans and 21 agents in 2025. Productivity went up, not down. Their AI VP of Marketing and AI VP of Customer Success cost $257 per month combined. Those two agents replaced roughly $500K of employee cost. One AI agent closed a $60K sponsorship deal on its own. The takeaway for sales teams: customers will prefer a great AI to a mediocre human. Train an agent for 30 days, keep updating it weekly, and the guardrails work. A great AI that solves the problem today beats a mediocre human who needs an engineer and an appointment next week. ## The bifurcation Vibe coding your own CRM is dead. Nobody wants a prettier leads tab with a purple gradient. They want deals on the calendar. Some vendors at SaaStr AI 2026 are doing millions per week in new revenue because they put real deals on your calendar. That is worth $50K to $100K to even the smallest company. The SaaS companies getting crushed are the ones selling the same pitch from 2023. The ones re-accelerating are the ones that grabbed AI budget before their competitors did. About half of what CIOs are spending is net new AI budget. The other half is being reallocated from existing software contracts. If you are not in the first bucket, you are getting cut from the second. ## What this means for sales professionals Quota is not coming down just because your company is in the wrong bucket. Territory is not getting easier. The bifurcation means some AEs are hitting 150% attainment because their product is in the AI budget conversation. Others are at 60% because renewal rates are collapsing and nobody will admit it. If you are evaluating roles right now, ask: is this company tapping AI budget, or defending legacy contracts? The difference is career-defining in 2025.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Google Cloud VP: 70% faster asset production, quality up with AI agents

## Google Cloud runs its marketing on AI agents. Here is what happened. Sarah Kennedy Ellis, VP of Global Demand & Growth at Google Cloud, laid out the company's shift to AI-native marketing operations at SaaStr AI 2026. She previously ran marketing at Marketo (sold to Adobe for $4.75B) and led Adobe's enterprise software division, so she has seen platform shifts before. The headline number: 70% faster asset production for the Gemini in Chrome launch. Production time collapsed from weeks to days. The surprise: conversion rates lifted. Volume spiked, quality improved. That is rare. Usually when output scales, quality drops. The reason it worked: personalization down to the individual level at a scale that was not possible 12 months ago. Kennedy's rule for where to deploy agents: high volume plus limited human judgment required to get a high-quality outcome. ## Adoption blockers: workflow friction, not model quality The biggest barrier inside Google Cloud is not agent performance. It is workflow friction and behavioral change. Teams that invest in change management and training extract real productivity. Teams waiting for a better model stay stuck. Kennedy's data: the top 20% of AI adopters are the same people finding the most productivity, and they are the ones who completed the most training. That correlation matters for how you roll out AI across a go-to-market team. ## Training in 5-minute chunks Time is the single biggest constraint. Kennedy said people have about 5 minutes a week to spend learning. So Google built training around that reality. AI Boost Bites: 5-to-7-minute videos, some as short as 2 minutes, each covering one specific task. Early ones were basic (how to create slides with Gemini). They evolved into multi-agent orchestration across a campaign. They gamified it. Internal competitions, task completion, badges. Kennedy called badges "gamification from 20 years ago," and it still worked. They made it external. Boost Bites started internal, got adopted fast, and Google published it free on YouTube. Now past a million views. ## What this means for sales teams Google Cloud is at $58.7 billion annual revenue, growing 36% year-over-year, with a $460 billion backlog driven by AI demand. They are Customer Zero for their own AI tools. They ship what works, fix what breaks, and feed that back to product teams. For B2B sales and marketing teams, the lesson is workflow integration over model quality. If your team is not using AI tools, the problem is usually not the tools. It is the 5 minutes they do not have to learn them, and the behavioral change required to make them stick. Worth noting: Google Cloud supports ANZ startups through the Scale tier, offering $200,000 in cloud credits and up to $350,000 for AI startups. The company does not disclose ANZ headcount or specific sales hiring plans, but the global push suggests continued regional expansion.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Stop tracking blended churn: segment by deal size or miss the pattern

Churn is not a GAAP metric. No universal definition. Public companies and startups all define it differently, and often hide problems by doing so. Jason Lemkin learned this early as a B2B CEO. He compared his company to a public competitor that excluded churn in the first 60 days, calling it a trial period. The real reason: churn was much higher in those first 60 days. ## The three-segment model Lemkin segmented churn into three tiers at his company: **Single-seat and sub-$99/month deals:** 3% monthly churn by revenue. Credit cards expire, jobs change, solopreneurs go under. This segment turns over fast. **$99 to $999/month deals:** 100% net revenue retention after churn. Similar to HubSpot and Zendesk in this zone. **$10k to $100k+ deals:** 120% net revenue retention. Matches patterns at Box, Salesforce, and other enterprise-focused companies. As the company scaled, category sizes expanded (big deals went from $12k to $120k annually), but the segmentation and metrics stayed consistent. ## Why this matters for sales Churn should be naturally higher in smaller business segments than larger ones. If you do not segment it, no one will see that pattern. Blended churn metrics make big customer retention look worse than it is. You end up trying to solve different churn problems with the same answers. Keeping enterprise customers happy is not the same as stopping small businesses from switching to cheaper tools. Track where the money goes. Even if churn looks high by certain metrics, if you retain most of the revenue, that might be fine. Want to exclude trials and POCs from churn? Fine. Just do not call them recurring revenue. Segment them out as POC/trial revenue. Do not count deals as core MRR/ARR until the trial converts. Churn is often much lower when you separate POCs from post-trial revenue. ## Segment NPS and CSAT too NPS and CSAT vary widely by segment. Double down on the happiest segments. Usually the ones growing fastest. You will see new patterns. Maybe churn is not as bad as you think. Or at least different than you think. Big companies stay for years if you provide a real solution. Individual and small customers come and go, even when happy. Blended churn metrics only confuse things. Segment churn and track the money.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Australia needs 312,000 tech workers by 2030, loses 60,000 women annually

# Australia needs 312,000 tech workers by 2030, loses 60,000 women annually Australia's goal of 1.2 million tech workers by 2030 faces a structural problem: experienced women are leaving at rates that make the target mathematically impossible. The numbers are clear. Women make up 22–29% of the Australian ICT workforce. More than 50% of women who enter tech quit before age 35. The sector loses 60,000 women from data and tech roles annually. Meanwhile, Australia produces 7,000 IT graduates per year and needs 312,000 additional tech workers by 2030. The first T-EDI Standards Impact Report, developed by Project F with the Tech Council of Australia, assessed organisations employing 900,000+ Australians. Women leave highly technical roles at nearly twice the rate of men after age 40. The report cites toxic culture and lack of support as primary drivers, not caring responsibilities. ## What this means for sales teams The shortage hits hardest in AI, cybersecurity, and cloud specialists. Software engineering roles have partially eased. For sales teams selling technical products, this means fewer technical resources, longer sales cycles for complex deals, and increased competition for talent with technical fluency. Female sales engineers and technical account managers are particularly affected. The data suggests retention challenges accelerate after 35, exactly when these professionals hit peak productivity and enterprise relationship value. Reskilling women represents a $65 billion opportunity, according to the report. Current retention strategies are not working. The report notes 62% of Australia's tech workforce sits outside traditional tech companies, spanning finance, retail, healthcare, and government. ## The comp angle Organisations were assessed against 98 workplace standards covering hiring, pay transparency, parental leave, leadership, and flexible work. Pay transparency scored particularly low, a familiar pattern for anyone tracking ANZ tech comp. The sector cannot solve this through migration alone. The talent gap requires retaining existing experienced workers, particularly women who leave mid-career. For sales leaders, this means pressure on comp, benefits, and culture will increase as the 2030 deadline approaches and the talent shortage intensifies.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

Australia bans subscription traps: cancellation must match signup ease by July 2027

## What Changed Parliament passed legislation banning subscription traps and drip pricing. Live date: 1 July 2027. If your sales motion involves recurring revenue, your checkout flow and cancellation process need work. The Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Bill 2026 makes it illegal to design cancellation harder than signup. One-click subscribe means one-click cancel. Multi-step signup means multi-step cancel, maximum. Phone-only cancellation for web signups: banned. ## The Numbers Penalties for non-compliance: $100 million, or three times the benefit gained, or 30% of adjusted turnover during breach period. Whichever is highest. The ACCC enforces this, and they issue infringement notices. Drip pricing is also banned. Base price must include all mandatory fees. Adding booking fees, service charges, or platform fees during checkout: illegal unless disclosed upfront with the headline price. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If you sell SaaS, memberships, or any subscription model, audit your processes now. You have 12 months. **Checkout redesign required:** Every fee must show in the advertised price. Dynamic pricing that increases during a transaction due to demand: banned. Your pricing page and your checkout total need to match. **Cancellation flow rebuild:** Map your current cancellation process against your signup flow. If signup takes three clicks and cancellation requires calling support, you are non-compliant. Build self-service cancellation that mirrors signup complexity. **Contract review:** Small business contracts are covered too. If you sell to SMBs, your standard agreements fall under these rules. Boilerplate terms that make exit difficult: audit them. ## The Context This mirrors the FTC's click-to-cancel rule in the US, which took effect in 2024. The ANZ market is catching up to North American subscription billing regulations. Treasury Ministers Andrew Leigh and Stephen Jones pushed this through after public consultation showed subscription traps and hidden fees as top consumer complaints. The law targets manipulative design: fake countdown timers, hidden fees that appear at checkout, impossible cancellation processes. If your go-to-market relies on friction to retain customers, that model dies in July 2027. ## Action Items 1. Audit signup versus cancellation complexity 2. Review pricing transparency: does your advertised price match final checkout? 3. Check contract terms for exit clauses 4. Build self-service cancellation tools 5. Train support teams on new cancellation requirements You have 12 months. Non-compliance carries penalties that will end your quarter.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

Toast hits $6.5B run-rate, 22% growth, profitable: 40,000 locations using AI weekly

## The Numbers Toast hit a $6.5 billion revenue run-rate in Q1, up 22% year-over-year. The company added roughly 7,000 net new restaurant locations in the quarter, ending at 171,000 total locations. Net income more than doubled to $126 million. Free cash flow: $115 million, up from $69 million. Software gross margins crossed 80% for the first time, hitting 81%. That is 300 basis points up year-over-year. The software piece of the business, $2.2 billion of the total, grew 26%. ## The AI Reality Check Toast IQ, their AI analytics and agent platform, has 40,000 weekly active locations. That is roughly one in four locations using it every week. Not roadmap. Shipping product with real usage. The company's advantage: the data already lives inside Toast. Guest orders, visit patterns, labor spend, inventory. Years of operational data that powers the agents. ## Enterprise Is Moving First-quarter enterprise bookings for new locations exceeded the entire prior year's customer count. Recent wins include Applebee's and Preferred Hotels. The company is also pushing international: Canada, UK, Ireland, and Australia, focusing on tier-1 cities with higher-GPV restaurants. Retail is the new target. Toast called out 20,000 independent grocers in the U.S. generating over $250 billion in sales. Same platform, different vertical. ## The Take Rate Story Toast crossed 1% monetization of payment volume for the first time. They processed $51.3 billion in gross payment volume, up 22%. Payments take rate hit 51 basis points, fintech take rate hit 61 basis points. Toast Capital, their lending product, contributed $51 million in gross profit alone. ## What This Means for Sales Vertical SaaS at scale, with real profitability and real AI adoption. If you are selling into restaurants or hospitality, Toast owns the system of record and is layering payments, capital, and AI on top. The comp structure for roles at Toast likely reflects this growth: enterprise AE roles at high-growth SaaS companies hitting this scale typically see OTE north of $200k, with strong accelerators on new logo acquisition. The enterprise motion matters. When Q1 enterprise bookings beat the full prior year, that signals serious sales capacity expansion. Toast added 30,000+ net locations in 2025 and guided to beat that in 2026. That means hiring: AEs, SDRs, account management, overlay specialists for retail and international. For sales professionals: vertical SaaS plus AI is not hype here. It is 40,000 locations using the product weekly. That is a sales motion you can actually run.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Coinbase cuts AI token spend 50%, nobody can show the revenue lift

Coinbase cut its AI token spend by 50% this quarter while usage actually increased, CEO Brian Armstrong posted in late June. The shift: defaulting to open-source models, smarter routing, and caching instead of burning cash on frontier models. The problem is not unique to Coinbase. Companies across B2B quintupled token spend in the first half of 2026. Almost nobody can point to the revenue lift that justified it. That includes sales teams burning tokens on AI SDR tools, conversation intelligence platforms, and agentic prospecting workflows. The token ROI crisis is real. Your CFO wants to see pipeline contribution per dollar of AI spend. Your CRO wants to know if those AI-generated emails are actually booking meetings. Most teams cannot answer either question with data. ## What Coinbase Actually Did Armstrong's team did not cap usage or block engineers. They changed defaults: route simpler tasks to cheaper models, cache repetitive queries, let engineers opt into frontier models only when needed. Result: flat spend, exponential usage growth. For sales teams, this translates: stop paying Claude Sonnet 4.5 rates (up to $50 per million output tokens) for tasks a $3/million model can handle. Analyse where your tokens are going. Most AI SDR tools burn premium tokens on basic personalisation that does not move conversion rates. ## The Anthropic Context Anthropic, now valued at $965 billion and filing for IPO, makes 70-75% of revenue from pay-per-token API calls. The company hit $47 billion annualised revenue in May 2026, up from $9 billion at end of 2025. That growth came from enterprise teams scaling token usage across workflows. But if enterprises start pulling back like Coinbase, Anthropic's growth model gets tested. The company's IPO filing in June 2026 signals confidence, but the broader token spend reckoning puts pressure on every AI vendor's unit economics. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If you are using AI tools, audit your token spend this quarter. Break it down by use case: prospecting, email generation, call analysis, forecast modeling. Ask your vendor for token usage data. Calculate cost per meeting booked, cost per SQL, cost per closed deal. Most teams will find they are paying frontier model rates for tasks that do not require frontier intelligence. That is the fix: route to cheaper models, cache common queries, reserve premium tokens for high-value workflows. The AI spend party is over. Now comes the part where you prove it was worth it.

SaaStr
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