The Wire

Real-time updates from ANZ tech sales

3 months ago
News

Labor needs Greens votes for CGT reform, Greens want tougher tax

Labor's budget includes capital gains tax changes that startup founders are pushing back on. To pass them, Treasurer Jim Chalmers needs the Greens. The Greens hold the Senate balance of power. Early-stage talks have started, per the AFR. Timeline is tight: Labor wants this through by July 2. The Greens want more aggressive tax reform than what Labor proposed. Their platform includes a 1% annual wealth tax on assets above $10 million (2% above $1 billion), aligning capital gains tax with income tax rates, and higher taxes on investment income. Greens economic spokesperson Nick McKim called the budget "defined by caution, by timidity and by protection of corporate profits." For sales professionals, this matters if your comp includes equity or if you work for companies structured around capital efficiency. Labor's CGT changes already shift the calculus on startup equity packages. If the Greens push Labor further left on capital taxation, that changes the math again. The Greens are a minor party but punch above their weight in the Senate. They have used this leverage before on budget measures. How far Labor moves to secure their votes will signal how serious the government is about tax reform versus political survival. Coalition is against the CGT changes. Greens want tougher changes. Labor is in the middle. Watch the compromise: it will tell you what equity comp and capital structures look like for the next funding cycle. No final deal yet. Negotiations continue. If you are modeling OTE that includes equity, factor in policy risk until this clears the Senate.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

AI agents now doing 80% of SDR work: what that means for quota-carrying reps

## The New Hiring Test For years, the standard management test was: given what you know now, would you hire this person again? In 2026, that question is incomplete. The real test is now: would you replace them with an agent? That is a different calculation. If an agent costs $200/month and can do 60-80% of most knowledge work, the comparison is no longer human versus human. It is human versus agent, or human plus agent versus agent alone. ## What This Looks Like in Production SaaStr runs on 3 humans and 20+ agents. Revenue moved from -19% to +47% YoY after the shift. What stayed human: strategy, judgment calls, relationships requiring trust, and work where the human voice matters more than the task. What got replaced or augmented: SDR work (Artisan, Qualified, Monaco), win-back campaigns (Salesforce Agentforce), customer success workflows, content production, sponsor coordination. For SDR work specifically, agents are now handling 80-90% of the job in production. Not demos. Not pilots. Production, at scale, with minimal oversight. ## The Three Questions Underneath When you run the replacement test, you are asking: **1. What is the job?** Most job descriptions list tasks, not outcomes. An SDR's job is not 'send 100 emails a day.' It is 'generate qualified pipeline.' Once you articulate the outcome, you can ask what mix of humans and agents gets you there most efficiently. **2. What can an agent actually do?** For SDR work, 80-90% today. For VP of Marketing, maybe 40% but climbing. For CFO, maybe 30%. For CEO, close to zero. The skill is being precise about capability in production, not in demos. **3. What is the remaining human work worth?** If an agent can do 70% of a role, is the remaining 30% worth a full-time human? Sometimes that 30% is the judgment that matters most. Sometimes it is 'being the face of the function' and could be consolidated under a more senior person running multiple functions with agent support. ## What Matters in 18 Months In 18 months, everyone will know how to build a good agent. Prompt engineering was a hot job title for 12 months, then became irrelevant. Agent building is on the same trajectory. The skill that matters is not building the agent. It is deciding which humans to replace with one. That is a management skill, not an engineering skill. ## How to Run the Test Every quarter, or at minimum every time you are about to hire: 1. Write down the outcome the role is supposed to produce, not the tasks 2. List what an agent could do today toward that outcome in production, not in demos 3. Estimate what is left for the human: both tasks and judgment calls 4. Ask whether that remainder is worth the fully-loaded cost of a human hire The managers who learn this fast will run leaner, faster companies. The ones who do not will be the ones getting replaced themselves. ## ANZ Context ANZ Banking Group is rolling out Salesforce Agentforce across its business banking teams, consolidating data from 20 separate platforms. The bank says the system will save relationship managers about one working month per year through real-time account summaries and workflow automation. That is not a pilot. That is production deployment across roughly 40,000 employees globally. The composition of the team is now a variable, not a constant. Every open req is a chance to ask: do we need a human here, or do we need an agent plus a supervisor?

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Okta CRO: How specialisation flipped $812M loss to profit

## The Turnaround Nobody Saw Coming Okta posted an $812M operating loss in fiscal 2023. Three years later, under CRO Jon Addison, it closed FY26 with $766M in non-GAAP operating income and $252M in free cash flow in Q4 alone. Most turnarounds are cost stories. This one is a GTM rebuild. Addison, who took the permanent CRO role in November 2023, restructured the entire sales motion. The core problem: asking generalist reps to carry five products meant they sold the one they understood and left the rest in the deck. New modules never got real pipeline. ## Four Levers That Moved Revenue **1. Specialisation unlocks platform value** Addison split the field into separate motions: install base, new logos, Auth0/customer identity, and broader platform. Each motion builds its own muscle instead of asking one AE to be an expert at everything. The numbers moved. New products (Identity Governance, Privileged Access, AI agent security) made up roughly 30% of Q4 FY26 bookings. Deals with new products came in 40% higher ACV. Identity Governance alone now has 2,000+ customers, three years post-launch. **2. Partner-led growth requires cultural rebuild** Okta's top 100 deals last fiscal year: 95% were partner-led. That is not a channel programme. That is a complete rewiring of how deals get sourced, scoped, and closed. Addison's line: "We need seven partners to surround that customer who also trusts us." Enterprise identity touches every system. Solo selling does not work at scale. **3. Discovery is dead, validation is everything** "The first call is no longer discovery. It is validation," Addison said. Buyers have already done the research. They know your product. The AE's job is to confirm they understand the buyer's context and prove the solution works. This changes quota, ramp, and comp. If discovery is validation, you need reps who can run technical proof-of-concept conversations, not just relationship-building calls. **4. Match GTM to the disruption phase** Addison frames markets in five phases: crisis, adoption, consolidation, maturity, disruption. Okta is in the disruption phase. AI agents need identity. That means new wedges, new ICPs, and new sales plays. The GTM implication: you cannot sell AI-agent identity the same way you sold SSO in 2018. The motion has to change with the phase. ## What This Means for ANZ Sales Teams Okta operates in Australia and New Zealand through regional sales and channel teams. If the global playbook holds, ANZ enterprise AEs are likely working more partner-led deals and carrying narrower product scopes than they did two years ago. For sales leaders: specialisation works when you have enough product surface area to justify it. If you are a three-product company asking AEs to be generalists, that is fine. If you are a ten-product platform still running a generalist model, you are leaving revenue on the table. For AEs: the skill set is shifting. Validation-first selling rewards technical fluency and proof-of-concept execution. If your close rate is dropping because buyers already know your pitch, the problem is not discovery. It is that you are still running a discovery motion in a validation market. ## The Bigger Pattern Okta's turnaround is not just about identity or security. It is about what works when a platform company hits the profitability wall. You cannot cut your way to growth. You can specialise your way there. Addison's playbook: narrow the focus, deepen the expertise, rewire the comp model, and match the motion to the market phase. That is not a marketing strategy. That is a sales operations rebuild. Worth watching: how this model scales as Okta pushes from $3B to $5B ARR. If partner-led deals stay at 95% and new products keep landing at 30% of bookings, the GTM model holds. If those numbers slip, something in the specialisation structure is not working. For now, the data says it is working.

Sales Hacker
3 months ago
News

Anthropic rebuilt sales org in 4 months: 54% of enterprise logos now self-serve

## The Problem: Demand You Cannot Hire For When Claude Opus 4.6 shipped in December 2025, Anthropic's commercial team returned from break to find demand had gone vertical. They had not hired for it. They had not planned for it. Eleanor Dorfman, Head of Industries at Anthropic, put it plainly at SaaStr AI Annual 2026: even if they had been ready to 3x the sales team, you cannot absorb that many bodies fast enough without burning quality. So in January 2026, they rebuilt the entire sales org around AI. Four months later: **54% of new enterprise logos in 2026 came through self-serve.** Real enterprise logos. Real ACV. Real terms of service. Self-served. ## Four Constraints, One Bet Dorfman's team had four immovable constraints: 1. Demand already in the door that could not be slowed 2. Headcount they could not add fast enough without lowering the bar 3. An existing tech stack they would not rip out (three years of investment) 4. Supporting functions (legal, deal desk, RevOps) that had to scale alongside sales The bet: do not buy a new stack. Thread Claude through the existing stack (Clay, LeanData, Salesforce, Gong, Ironclad, Slack, Intercom Fin). Make Claude the connective tissue. ## Investment One: Kill the PLG vs SLG Orthodoxy For 15 years, B2B has operated on a religious split: product-led growth is for SMB, sales-led is for enterprise. Self-service gets you to a landing page. Enterprise gets you an AE. Dorfman threw that out in January. They launched an enterprise self-service MVP in January 2026. Production in February. The funnel works like this: - Every lead gets enriched and qualified by Clay plus Claude - Two parallel funnels open: self-serve or sales-assisted - In self-serve, Intercom Fin guides the buyer through the journey - The buyer lands on an enterprise plan with real ACV, terms, invoicing, provisioning, and training enrolment. Completely self-serve. - If qualified for sales, the lead goes to BDR, then AE **54% of new enterprise logos in 2026 came through self-serve.** If you are still treating self-service as the consolation prize for buyers who do not deserve a human, you are leaving most of your 2026 motion on the table. ## Investment Two: Claude as Connective Tissue, Not Seventh Tool Claude is not the seventh tool bolted on. Claude makes the six core tools (Gmail, Gong, Slack, Salesforce, Intercom, Ironclad) talk to each other. What a Tuesday looks like for an Anthropic AE: **Morning.** Every rep starts the day in Claude. A "morning brief" Skill pulls context from Gmail, Gong, Slack, Google Docs, calendar, Salesforce, Intercom, and Greenhouse, then prioritises the day. Three actions to take. These emails to respond to. These deals at risk. Dorfman has hers delivered to Slack at 7am ET. She says she does not know how she used to operate without it. **Before a call.** A "call prep" Skill replaces 30 minutes of research. The rep types `/call prep` and gets a tailored one-pager: who is on the call, what they care about, historical context, discovery questions, competitive landscape. **Proposal time.** Instead of opening nine tabs of deal desk guidance and scrubbing Gong transcripts, the AE prompts Claude. Claude knows the product, the roadmap, where Anthropic has won and why. Claude drafts the proposal, validates it against policy, and uploads it to Ironclad. **Forecasting.** Still a work in progress. Dorfman was direct: they still spend at least 10 minutes at the top of every forecast call discussing how they should be forecasting. The ground is moving too fast. But the actual forecasts are now largely run by Claude and inspected by managers. Forecast calls become discussion forums about where AEs need help, not data-scrubbing exercises. ## What This Means for ANZ Sales Teams Anthropic does not have a large disclosed ANZ headcount or major office footprint in the region. Its ANZ go-to-market is likely being driven through partners, cloud marketplaces, and direct enterprise selling rather than a visibly large local sales team. But the playbook matters here. For ANZ sales leaders watching hypergrowth SaaS companies scale in 2026, the lesson is not "hire faster." It is "what can you automate so your best AEs focus on the deals that actually need them?" The self-serve enterprise motion is not a compromise. It is not the consolation prize. It is how you scale when demand moves faster than headcount ever could. ## The Shift For 15 years, the B2B sales playbook said: enterprise deals need enterprise AEs. Self-serve is for SMB. Anthropic just proved that wrong at scale. 54% of enterprise logos. Self-serve. Real terms. Real ACV. Worth noting: Anthropic is not publishing exact sales headcount numbers, and the broader workforce is estimated in the low thousands as of 2025/26. This is not a story about hiring 100 AEs. This is a story about not needing to. If your sales org is still treating AI as a toy or a seventh tab, this is the wake-up call. The reps who figure out how to thread AI through their existing workflow will close faster, forecast better, and scale harder than the ones still doing it the old way. The quota did not change. The tools did.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

GTM teams 20% leaner, reps generating 2x revenue: ICONIQ 2026 benchmark

## The Numbers ICONIQ Growth's 2026 GTM benchmark, based on 150+ B2B SaaS executives surveyed in January, shows a structural shift: companies with AI fully embedded in GTM are generating roughly 2x the net new revenue per FTE compared to medium and low adopters. The AI productivity gap now sits at $270k per GTM rep. Post-sales saw the biggest delta. One AI-native company in the data set put a single human alongside an AI CSM and covered the work of roughly 20 human CSMs. Another voice-powered AI SDR handles 90%+ of EMEA inbound before routing to humans. ## Org Structure Changed High-performing sales orgs now run 9.2 to 9.8 ICs per manager. Everyone else sits at 4.4 to 5 ICs per manager. That is roughly twice the span of control. Sales management and leadership is 12% of the sales org in high performers versus 17% in everyone else. Flatter orgs are a design choice, not a default outcome. AI tooling makes wider spans possible. Reps need less hand-holding when AI handles pipeline research, call summaries, and follow-up drafts. ## AI Adoption Hit Critical Mass Share of companies where more than 50% of the function uses AI daily: Marketing 65%, SDRs 71%, AEs 57%. RevOps jumped from 34% to 54% in a single year. AI experimentation is eating 10% of RevOps time. Top-of-funnel conversion rates are 10 points higher with AI. New lead to MQL: 38% for AI-heavy pipelines versus 27% for light AI. MQL to SQL: 37% versus 29%. The lift is concentrated at the top of the funnel, where it should be. ## Hunter-Farmer Model Returned 65% of high performers have Sales owning cross-sell versus 49% of other companies. 55% have Sales owning upsell versus 44%. High performers are deliberately giving AEs both the hunter and farmer remit. The cleanest expansion motion is the AE who closed the deal continuing to own it. AE comp tied to net new recurring revenue jumped from 25% to 33% year-over-year. AE comp tied to NDR jumped from 18% to 23%. The hunter-farmer model is showing up in the comp plan, not just the org chart. ## What It Means This is a sales operations story as much as an AI story. Buyers serving sales, marketing, and RevOps should expect more ROI-driven conversations and benchmarking against efficiency metrics like net new ARR per FTE, not just pipeline volume. If your team is using AI heavily but not seeing top-of-funnel conversion lift, your AI deployment is not working. The data says so.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Ordermentum raises $55M, Arkeus and Lume close rounds in $81M ANZ week

## The Numbers Three ANZ startups raised $81 million this week. Ordermentum took $55 million. Arkeus and Lume split the rest. All three are at different stages, which matters if you are watching the hiring market. ## Ordermentum: $55M, Established SaaS Sydney hospitality platform Ordermentum closed $55 million from Five V Capital. This is their third major round: they raised $20M in 2021, $50M in 2024, and now this. They connect 45,000 venues to food wholesalers across Australia and the UK. The platform handles ordering, payments, supplier catalogues, and integrates with accounting systems. Founder and CEO Jamie Woollard has been running this since 2012. **Sales relevance:** Ordermentum is past the founder-led stage. They have a scaled GTM motion, established customer base, and likely a full commercial team: SDRs, AEs, CSMs. When a company this size raises, watch for expansion hiring in 6-12 months. They already operate in two markets, so territory splits and remote roles are likely in play. ## Arkeus: Defence Tech, Series A Melbourne defence tech startup Arkeus closed a Series A. Amount not disclosed. They build autonomous sensing and AI for security and defence applications. Public data is thin, which is normal for early defence tech. These companies operate in regulated environments with government customers. **Sales relevance:** Arkeus is likely still founder-led on sales. Defence tech GTM is enterprise and government driven: long cycles, relationship-heavy, no high-velocity SDR model. If they are hiring, expect senior AEs with government or defence experience, not a volume play. ## Lume: Music Platform, Early Stage New Zealand digital music platform Lume raised funding ahead of launch. Backers include artist Lorde. Co-founders are Tim Harper, Justin Warren, Sacha Judd, and Duncan Greive. Lume is pre-scale. Not much public signal on revenue or GTM structure yet. **Sales relevance:** Early-stage consumer platform. Sales motion is likely partnerships and artist acquisition, not traditional SaaS sales. Hiring will be product, marketing, and maybe a head of partnerships. Not a place to expect AE roles in the next quarter. ## Market Context ANZ startup funding in 2024 has been lumpy. Large rounds still happen, but earlier-stage companies are raising smaller amounts or staying lean longer. Defence tech and SaaS infrastructure are attracting capital. Consumer platforms are harder unless there is celebrity backing or proven traction. For sales professionals: Ordermentum is the one to watch for near-term hiring. Arkeus might hire senior sellers with defence backgrounds. Lume is too early to move the hiring needle. ## What This Means When a scaled SaaS company raises $55M, expect hiring. Ordermentum has the customer base, the market, and now the capital to expand commercial teams. If you are an AE with hospitality SaaS or UK market experience, that is the signal. Defence tech raises look different. Arkeus might hire, but it will be selective and specialized. Consumer platforms like Lume are a wait-and-see unless you want to bet on pre-product-market-fit upside. ANZ sales hiring follows funding with a lag. Track the capital, then track the headcount announcements 4-8 weeks later. That is when comp details and territory splits get real.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

Diraq, PsiQuantum land US$138m government quantum deals

## Diraq, PsiQuantum land US$138m government quantum deals Sydney-founded quantum computing company Diraq signed a Letter of Intent for up to US$38 million in proposed US government funding through the CHIPS Research and Development Office. PsiQuantum, the larger player with US$7 billion valuation, signed for US$100 million. Both deals include proposed minority equity stakes for the US government. The funding comes from a US$2 billion Department of Commerce push into quantum computing and semiconductor manufacturing announced overnight. Diraq, a UNSW spinout founded in 2022, is developing silicon-based quantum processors using existing CMOS semiconductor manufacturing. The company hit US$120 million total funding after a US$15 million Series A-2 in February 2024, led by Quantonation. This latest LOI signals public-sector validation and an industrialization push. PsiQuantum is the more capitalized bet. Founded by Australian-linked founders, it raised a US$1 billion Series E in 2025 led by BlackRock, Temasek and Baillie Gifford. The Australian federal and Queensland governments committed A$940 million combined in 2024 to support a Brisbane buildout. The company is targeting utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing using photonic technology, with sites in Brisbane and Chicago. ### What this means for sales professionals Both companies are in deep R&D and infrastructure-build mode, not classic enterprise software selling. Their customers are primarily governments, research institutions, semiconductor partners and strategic investors. The commercial motion is heavily partnership-led and public-sector driven, not quota-carrying AEs working enterprise deals. Neither company publicly discloses a broad sales organisation. Available material suggests very small commercial teams relative to contract scale. Diraq highlights technical leadership and government relations over sales hires. PsiQuantum appears to rely on executive-led dealmaking and strategic partnerships. These are capital-intensive, government-backed quantum hardware bets rather than revenue-generating SaaS vendors. ANZ relevance centres on Australia as a build location, funding source and talent base. For sales professionals watching the quantum space: the big money is flowing to infrastructure and manufacturing deals, not software licenses. The sales playbook here is public procurement and strategic partnerships, not traditional B2B enterprise motion.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

Google AI search cuts organic traffic: ANZ B2B startups lose low-cost acquisition channel

## Google AI search cuts organic traffic: ANZ B2B startups lose low-cost acquisition channel Google shipped its biggest Search redesign in 25 years at I/O, replacing the traditional results page with AI Overviews, conversational answers, and persistent "information agents" that monitor topics and send updates. The commercial risk: AI answers satisfy intent without a click, compressing organic acquisition for startups that used SEO as a low-cost channel. For ANZ B2B sales teams, this matters because top-of-funnel traffic is shifting. SaaS, martech, and sales tech startups historically used long-tail content, comparison pages, and how-to articles to capture demand. AI Overviews now handle those queries inline, meaning fewer visitors land on your site, fewer MQLs enter the pipeline, and acquisition costs go up. The new playbook: optimise for "AI visibility" instead of traditional rankings. That means structured data, brand mentions in trusted sources, and content designed for extraction rather than click-through. Digital PR and topical authority matter more than keyword density. If your go-to-market relied on organic search, budget for paid media to replace that channel. For sales leaders, the implication is direct: if marketing's organic pipeline drops 20% to 30%, you need to know where the replacement volume comes from. Google is turning Search into an AI concierge that answers questions without sending traffic. Startups that can afford brand-building and paid acquisition will scale. Smaller teams relying on SEO as their primary demand channel will feel the squeeze. The competitive dynamics shift too. Enterprise buyers researching "best CRM for mid-market" or "AI prospecting tools Australia" might get AI-generated answers citing 3 to 5 vendors, drawn from high-authority sources. If your company is not mentioned, you are invisible. Ranking seventh on page one used to mean something. In AI search, it means nothing. Bottom line: Google extended its dominance by making Search an interface, not a gateway. For ANZ startups, that compresses organic demand capture and forces higher spend on partnerships, brand, and paid channels to maintain pipeline velocity.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

HubSpot hits $3.45B ARR, stock drops 16% on flat growth

## The Numbers That Matter HubSpot reported Q1 2026 revenue of $881M, up 23%. Subscription revenue hit $862.3M, putting ARR run-rate at $3.45B. Customer count reached 299,458, up 16% year-over-year. Non-GAAP operating margin expanded to 17.8%. Operating cash flow came in at $198.8M. The stock dropped 16% after hours. ## Why the Market Sold The 23% headline growth is mostly FX tailwind. Constant currency growth was 18%, flat from Q4's 18.2%. Q2 guidance steps down to 16% CC growth. CFO Kathryn Bueker called it "a slow start to Q2" tied to sales retraining around new AI pricing. Three weeks ago, Twilio went from 4% to 20% growth in one quarter. Atlassian went 14% to 32%. The market in mid-2026 is paying for visible reacceleration. HubSpot showed the opposite: flat-to-decelerating underlying growth with FX doing the heavy lifting. ## AI Revenue: Still Mostly Story Everyone wanted proof that AI drives real B2B revenue. HubSpot is not there yet. Customer Agent has roughly 8,000 customers activated. Prospecting Agent hit 10,000, up 57% quarter-over-quarter. Total credits consumed grew 67% QoQ, but off a small undisclosed base. Outcome-based pricing launched April 14, giving three weeks of data on the earnings call. Bueker described AI seats and credits as "emerging" growth levers, not core ones. When pushed on net revenue retention, she pointed to seat expansion, not AI consumption. The AI pricing transition is actually hurting near-term execution, with deals slipping while reps learn the new model. ## What Actually Drives Growth The same mechanics that have worked for six quarters: 62% of new Pro+ customers landed multi-hub in 2025. 40% of the Pro+ base by ARR owns four or more hubs, up six points year-over-year. Deals over $10K MRR grew 41%. Platform consolidation and upmarket motion remain the compounding levers. AI is secondary. ## What This Means for ANZ HubSpot has meaningful ANZ presence through direct offices and partners, with strong SMB penetration. The playbook here matters: multi-hub expansion and seat growth are proven revenue drivers at scale, while AI monetization is still being figured out. For sales leaders evaluating platforms or comp models tied to consumption revenue, the timeline just got longer. The company bought back $211M in stock this quarter and remains well-capitalized. Leadership is stable under CEO Yamini Rangan. But if you are betting on AI-driven reacceleration in mid-2026, this print suggests that story has more chapters to write.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

PepsiCo picks two Sydney startups for APAC accelerator, deployment track

PepsiCo selected two Sydney startups for its 2026 APAC Greenhouse Program: Adiona Tech (logistics optimisation) and X-Centric Sciences (digital soil analytics). The program runs seven months and culminates in a Singapore showcase in October. This is not a typical accelerator. PepsiCo shifted from pilot-only support to commercial integration. The company says the cohort will fast-track startup solutions into its supply chain. Non-equity, grant-based, but clearly designed as a route to procurement-scale deployment. That makes these startups more relevant to enterprise buyers than most accelerator cohorts. ## What They Do **Adiona Tech** has been working with PepsiCo since 2023. The company provides AI-powered fleet routing and logistics optimisation. Early deployments delivered a 19% reduction in fleet distance travelled. That is a strong proof point for sales conversations in transport-heavy industries. Adiona recently closed a $1.8 million CRC-P grant and signed a deal with Australia Post's StarTrack. Competitive set: route optimisation and fleet telematics vendors. **X-Centric Sciences** has been working with PepsiCo since 2024. The company provides digital soil analytics for regenerative agriculture: measuring soil health, optimising inputs, supply-chain traceability. Competitive set: agtech and precision agriculture platforms. No public revenue or funding figures, but inclusion in PepsiCo's program suggests enterprise pilot stage at minimum. ## Why It Matters Both are specialist B2B sustainability tech vendors. Both are Sydney-based and already embedded in PepsiCo APAC pilots, which gives them credibility for further enterprise sales across food, beverage, logistics, and agriculture supply chains in ANZ. The program itself signals where corporate procurement is heading: sustainability metrics are moving from nice-to-have to procurement requirements. That creates sales opportunities for vendors who can prove ROI on emissions reduction, fleet efficiency, and supply-chain optimisation. Last year's cohort included two other Australian startups: Endua and Calyx.eco. The 2026 cohort includes five Greenhouse alumni, suggesting PepsiCo is doubling down on proven solutions rather than early-stage bets.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

Australia's innovation problem: commercialisation, not capital

Australia does not have a funding problem. It has a commercialisation problem. New research argues the federal government's innovation programs are requiring service providers to use frameworks that empirical evidence links to failure, not success. Technology Readiness Levels, Lean methodology, Business Model Canvas: all mandated in some contracts, all incomplete oversimplifications. The numbers tell the story. Australia's R&D intensity: 1.69% of GDP in 2023–24, down from 2.24% in 2008–09. More than 90% of granted patents never reach commercial outcomes. As many as 90% of technology-based startups fail. An estimated 95% of researchers' efforts to translate work into commercial outcomes fail. These are not edge cases. This is the norm. The Ambitious Australia report correctly identifies research translation as central to economic future. But it risks treating the research system as if it were the innovation system. Different problems, different solutions. For sales teams selling into innovation infrastructure: universities, R&D-heavy SMEs, accelerators, government agencies, enterprise software vendors supporting commercialisation, this is market context. The addressable market is constrained by smaller average company size, modest corporate R&D spend, heavy dependence on public funding and grants. That means longer sales cycles, more procurement-driven purchasing than US or EU markets. The policy environment has many separate programs and funds. Commentators argue the mission is fragmented, incentives poorly aligned. The bottleneck is not capital availability. It is commercialisation, procurement, scale-up pathways, industry-research collaboration. Patents filed, startups launched, funding raised: these metrics measure activity, not outcomes. Policy designed around poor metrics produces more of what the metrics measure, not more of what matters. Australia will never compete with China, Europe, or the US on total funding dollars. Without fixing the commercialisation pathway, the most competitive innovations will follow the money overseas. That is not a capital problem. That is a systems problem.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

SaaStr grades 144 B2B APIs: average score 71, Marketo gets C, Stripe leads

SaaStr, the B2B SaaS community founded by Jason Lemkin, has graded 144 B2B APIs on how ready they are for AI agents. The average score: 71 out of 100. That is a C+. The AI Agent API Report Card runs 6 criteria: API design, events and streaming, auth and security, rate limits, SDKs and docs, and agent readiness. Each gets 10 points. The goal is to measure how well APIs work for autonomous agents, not human developers. After 4,521 analyses, the results are clear. 45 APIs earned A grades. 87 got B grades. 12 sit at C through F. **The leaders:** Stripe (95), Slack (87), Adyen (83), RevenueCat (82), Linear (80). These companies built APIs as the product, not an afterthought. Stripe has idempotency keys, structured errors, and an MCP server. Slack's webhook and events architecture works cleanly for agents. **The middle:** Clay (73), Brex (72), HubSpot (70), Ramp (67), Gong (60). All functional. All have gaps. HubSpot is going headless, which should improve its score. **The bottom:** Marketo (50), Gainsight (48), Workday (38). These are legacy platforms built around human UIs. The API was never the product. That worked for 15 years. It does not work now. Lemkin's thesis: the C-grade APIs are public scorecards for which vendors will bleed market share over the next 24 months. Marketo is the cleanest example. The day a headless, agent-grade marketing automation platform ships at scale, Marketo loses 30% of its base in 18 months. **What this means for sales teams:** If your CRM, engagement platform, or sales tool scores below 70, your ops team is fighting the API every day. Agents cannot authenticate cleanly. Webhooks are missing. Rate limits were set for human-pace traffic, not agents polling at 3am. That friction slows pipeline work. The report card is live at saastr.ai/api-report-card. Each grade includes prompts you can paste into Cursor, Claude, or Replit to fix what is flagged. SaaStr has no disclosed ANZ presence. The tool is digital-first. If you are evaluating sales tools for agent-driven workflows, this is the benchmarking layer. The A-grade APIs are gaining share. The C-grade APIs are on borrowed time.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

LaunchVic shut down, merged into Innovation Victoria with $360m cut

LaunchVic is dead. The Victorian government has merged the startup agency with Breakthrough Victoria into a new entity: Innovation Victoria. Rod Bristow, current CEO of Breakthrough Victoria, will lead the combined organisation. LaunchVic chair Leigh Jasper (Aconex, Firmable) and Breakthrough Victoria chair John Brumby are both finishing up as the transition happens. ## The Numbers The merger comes with a $360 million funding cut over four years, following the Silver Review's recommendation to abolish LaunchVic as part of broader public sector savings. That is a significant reduction for an agency that has supported Victoria's startup ecosystem since 2016. LaunchVic's program stack included accelerator support, startup grants, the Venture Growth Fund ($60 million), the Alice Anderson Fund ($10 million for female tech founders), and the Hugh Victor McKay Fund ($2 million agtech co-investment). Those programs are moving across to Innovation Victoria, but the funding envelope suggests fewer grants or a more selective approach. Breakthrough Victoria brings $2 billion in VC funding (pre-seed to Series B) to the table. The combined entity will sit at the intersection of ecosystem building and direct capital deployment. ## What It Means for Sales Professionals LaunchVic was not a traditional commercial operation with a sales team. It ran grants and programs. Innovation Victoria will continue that model, but with less funding and a consolidated mandate. For tech sales professionals in Melbourne, the practical implications: - **Startup deal flow may tighten.** Fewer grants could mean slower early-stage company formation, which flows through to hiring and SDR/AE roles at seed and Series A companies. - **Government-backed capital is consolidating.** Innovation Victoria will be a single front door for founders and investors, which could streamline some pathways but also create a bottleneck. - **Enterprise sales into startups may shift.** Companies selling to Victorian startups should watch how Innovation Victoria's investment priorities shape the local market. The Victorian government says Innovation Victoria will help "more people turn good ideas into successful companies built to scale and compete globally." The $360 million cut suggests otherwise. Worth watching how this plays out over the next 12 months.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

Federal government pauses Industry Growth Program, $287M startup grant pool

## What happened The federal government has paused new applications for the Industry Growth Program, the flagship commercialisation grant scheme launched in the 2023-24 Budget. The program offered grants from $50,000 to $5 million for startups and SMEs working on commercialisation and growth projects in National Reconstruction Fund priority areas. Total funding: $392.4 million over four years. Admin costs: $105 million. Actual grant pool: $287.4 million. By June 2026, analysis showed 90% of the pool was projected to be spent. The government pulled $102 million in uncommitted funding in MYEFO. Applications are now paused while the program undergoes review. ## Why it matters for sales teams If your startup was counting on IGP funding to hire AEs or scale commercial operations, that timeline just shifted. The program was designed to bridge the gap between research and market entry, which means many early-stage B2B companies used these grants to build out their first proper sales function. Grants of $100,000 to $5 million funded commercialisation projects. In practice, that often meant: hire SDRs, stand up a CRM, pay for initial enterprise pilots. Without IGP in the pipeline, those hiring plans get delayed or scrapped. The pause comes the same week the federal budget promoted startup tax incentives and R&D reforms. Mixed message: we want innovation, but the funding tap is off. ## What this means Startups that already received grants are fine. Companies mid-application are in limbo. New applicants need alternative funding sources or longer ramps to revenue. For sales professionals: if you are talking to an early-stage startup about a role, ask how they are funding growth. "We are applying for IGP" is no longer a viable answer. If they were planning to use grant money for your OTE, you need clarity on Plan B. The program targeted advanced manufacturing, critical tech, and National Reconstruction Fund sectors. If your patch includes those verticals, expect some accounts to slow decision cycles while they sort out funding. ## The bigger picture The IGP replaced the Coalition's Entrepreneurs' Programme and became the primary federal commercialisation support mechanism. Pausing it without a clear replacement creates a gap in the market. Startups that need non-dilutive capital to scale now have fewer options. Worth noting: the government says this is a programmatic pause, not a shutdown. That suggests the program could reopen with adjusted parameters or additional funding. Timeline unclear. For now, if you are in sales at an early-stage startup, the question is: what happens to the growth plan if grant funding does not materialise? Real answer, not optimistic projections.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

SaaStr traffic up 96% as AI lifts all B2B channels, direct nearly triples

## The Numbers SaaStr pulled GA4 data for the last 28 days and compared it to the same period in 2025. Active users up 96% YoY. New users up 114%. Direct traffic up 160%. Organic search up 42%. Every channel grew. Email, referral, social, SEO. All up. For context: SaaStr.ai is a bootstrapped SaaS business sitting at roughly $4.5M ARR with no venture backing, per GetLatka. The core SaaStr brand is a media and conference play, not a traditional enterprise software company with a large quota-carrying team. This is a content and community business seeing lift from the AI attention cycle it covers. ## What It Means for Sales Teams If you are selling into B2B software, this data tells you where buyer attention is flowing in 2026. Direct traffic nearly tripling (users +160%, sessions +158%) means brand is doing more work, not less. In a fragmented media environment, the brands that already had distribution got louder. If your prospects are typing your company name into a browser or pasting links from sources you cannot track, that is the cleanest signal of brand pull. SEO did not die. Organic search users up 42%, new users up 46%. The doom predictions about AI Overviews killing publisher traffic have not played out, at least not for sites with original, opinionated content. If your demand gen strategy wrote off SEO in 2024, revisit that assumption. Referral traffic up 116% is the closest thing to word-of-mouth you can track in GA4. Someone read something, decided it was useful, and sent it. If your content or product is not getting forwarded around company Slacks, that is a signal. Email still works. Users up 41%, sessions up 59%. A clean B2B list, sent consistently, with content people want, drives engaged traffic. The "email is dead" takes remain wrong. ## APAC Growth Country breakdown: - US: +96% - Australia: +127% - Singapore: +429% - UK: +55% - Canada: +54% - India: +45% Singapore up 5x. Australia more than doubled. Founders in Sydney, Bangalore, and Singapore are consuming the same content as SF and NYC, often before SF wakes up. If your territory planning ignores APAC in 2026, you are leaving pipeline on the table. ## The Real Takeaway When AI lifts the whole category, brands with real content, a real list, and real direct audience see every channel rise together. Organic up. Direct up. Email up. Referral up. Social up. You do not need a new channel. You need to keep showing up on the ones that work, with content worth reading. AI is lifting all boats, but only the ones already in the water. If your traffic is down, it is not just the algorithm. It is you.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Arkeus Series A: Defence-tech raises $25M, hiring to nearly 100

## The Numbers **Raise:** $25M Series A at ~$100M post-money valuation (7x seed valuation) **Led by:** QIC Ventures **New investors:** R+VC, Folklore Ventures, DYNE Ventures **Existing:** Main Sequence Ventures, Salus Ventures, Beaten Zone **Headcount:** Scaling to nearly 100 (more than doubling current team) **Locations:** Queensland manufacturing facility, plus U.S. and Europe operations ## What They Do Arkeus builds hyperspectral imaging sensors with onboard AI for autonomous platforms. The pitch: detect targets up to 8x farther than existing optical systems in degraded visual environments. Their "Hyperspectral Optical Radar" is integrated with drones from AeroVironment, Textron, TEKEVER and Insitu (Boeing). Founded 2020 in a Melbourne garage by CEO Simon Olsen and CTO Dr Jonathan Nebauer after watching drone operators struggle with false positives during counter-narcotics ops in Colombia. ## The Contracts Active deployments with Australian Department of Defence and U.S. Department of War. Recent wins include the Australian Army Wide Area Airborne Surveillance Program (November 2025) and multiple U.S. DoW contracts, reportedly beating American incumbents in head-to-head evaluations. ## What This Means for Sales Hiring Nearly doubling to 100 people means Arkeus is adding roughly 40-50 roles across three continents. Defence-tech sales typically requires: - Security clearances (Australian and potentially U.S.) - Long sales cycles (6-18 months for defence procurement) - Government contracting experience - Technical fluency (you are selling ISR and autonomy stack components) Defence contractor comp structures differ from SaaS: expect project-based commissions tied to contract wins rather than monthly recurring revenue. OTE ranges vary widely based on deal size and clearance level, but enterprise defence AEs in ANZ typically sit $150k-$220k OTE for platform and sensor sales. Manufacturing expansion in Queensland suggests local sales and customer success roles supporting Australian Defence customers. U.S. and Europe operations likely mean regionally-focused account teams. ## Market Context Arkeus sits in the autonomy-enabling sensor layer, not as a full drone OEM. That positions them as a critical supplier to larger platform makers rather than competing directly with primes. The sovereignty angle (dual ANZ-U.S. deployment, Queensland manufacturing) is a wedge for allied defence procurement. QIC Ventures is on a Queensland deal run: last week they led an $11M Series A for Brisbane's ProcurePro. This is their second local defence-adjacent play in a month. No public revenue figures disclosed. Series A at $100M post suggests either strong contract pipeline or strategic investor appetite for sovereign defence capability. Probably both.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

SaaStr replaced 81% of sponsors in 12 months as AI gutted traditional SaaS budgets

## The Numbers SaaStr AI Annual 2026 drew record crowds. But backstage, the sponsor base got rebuilt from scratch. Of 78 Gold-to-Diamond sponsors at the May event: - 15 (19%) also sponsored in 2025 - 63 (81%) were net-new sponsors - 48 sponsors from 2025 did not return Four out of five sponsors were companies that did not write a check 12 months earlier. Nearly half of last year's sponsors were gone. ## Why Pre-AI SaaS Sponsors Vanished The churn was not evenly distributed. Of the 48 sponsors who left: - 40 (83%) were traditional B2B or legacy services firms - 8 (17%) were AI-native companies Classic SaaS companies that spent $250k on booths in 2023 simply disappeared. Not because the event changed, but because their businesses did. Growth rates dropped from 30% NRR to 10%. CMO seats stayed vacant for months. Field marketing budgets got slashed or moved under demand gen with 40% cuts. Everything that could not show pipeline attribution in 90 days got cut. Some are winding down entirely. ## Where the New Money Came From The 63 new sponsors were overwhelmingly AI-first companies. Replit, Lovable, Harvey, Cohere, Vercel. Many did not exist at sponsor scale in 2024. Some did not exist as companies at all. They are writing $50k to $250k checks because their customers showed up. The sponsors who renewed also tell the story: Google Cloud, Okta, Rippling. Companies with authentic AI positioning or horizontal platform plays. The pure-play "we sell software to mid-market sales teams" sponsor from 2022 is gone. ## What This Means for Sales Teams Your customer base is doing the same thing. If 75% of paying customers turned over in 12 months and revenue still grew, the replacement rate for who will spend money in B2B has gotten brutal. Accounts signed in 2022 are not the accounts that will grow you in 2026. Many are stalling, getting acquired, or cutting your line item. The companies writing checks now are: 1. AI-native startups spending aggressively 2. Old-guard companies that repositioned around AI 3. Infrastructure plays riding the AI capex wave If your 2026 pipeline looks like your 2023 pipeline, you have a problem you might not see yet. SaaStr started prospecting AI-first sponsors 12 months ago. Most were not ready then. Most are now. The lead time is real. If you wait until they are already buying, you are at the back of the line. Worth noting: this is not a SaaStr problem. It is a category collapse. If you are not grabbing AI budget, you are not growing.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Figma hits $1.3B ARR, 46% growth, but trades under 10x revenue

## The Numbers Figma posted Q1 revenue of $333.4M, up 46% year on year. That is $1.3B annualised run rate. Net dollar retention hit 139%, the highest in over two years. Paid customers grew 54% to roughly 690,000. Enterprise customers over $100k ARR grew 48%. This marks the second consecutive quarter of accelerating growth: 38% in Q3, 40% in Q4, now 46% in Q1. That trajectory does not happen by accident in a mature B2B business. The stock moved 12% on the news. Even after the jump, Figma trades under 10x ARR. For comparison: that multiple usually signals distress or stagnation, not acceleration at billion-dollar scale. ## What It Means for Sales Teams The enterprise motion is working. $100k+ customer growth at 48% means land and expand is still the playbook. NDR climbing while the customer base expands 54% suggests upsell and cross-sell are driving pipeline, not just net new. AI monetisation is already contributing. Figma launched credit-based AI pricing in March. By April, over 75% of enterprise users who hit their limit kept buying more credits. That is Snowflake-style consumption revenue layered onto seat-based SaaS. For sales teams, it means larger deal sizes and more stakeholders: design, product, engineering, and now content and marketing functions as Figma expands beyond core design tools. Pro Team conversions jumped 150% year on year, driven by AI feature adoption. The AI tools are not replacing seats or compressing territory. They are upgrading accounts. ## The Valuation Disconnect Rule of 73 quarter: 46% growth plus 27% free cash flow margin. Operating margin at 16%. Guidance raised across revenue and operating income. Q2 guide implies 40% growth, which would be a third straight quarter of acceleration. Yet the market is pricing Figma like a decelerating SaaS company, not one re-accelerating at scale. The thesis that AI would kill Figma's seat model just died. The data says the opposite: AI is expanding seats, not shrinking them. For sales professionals watching public SaaS comps and equity packages: this is what the 2025 valuation environment looks like. Strong execution, clean growth, improving unit economics. Still under 10x revenue. Worth noting when evaluating stock-heavy offers.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Reevo raises $80M to replace sales tech stacks with AI-native CRM

## The Stack Consolidation Play Reevo launched at the end of 2025 with $80M from Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, then added a $52M Series B from GV in August. Total raised: $116M. The thesis: sales teams are drowning in point solutions. Reevo CEO David Zhu calls it the "$10B Frankenstein stack." The platform bundles CRM, native dialer, sequencer, meeting intelligence, and a GTM Co-Pilot for pipeline queries. One login, one data model, one bill. The target: mid-market GTM teams tired of stitching together Salesforce, Outreach, Gong, and whatever else is in the stack. ## The Institutional Knowledge Problem Zhu's pitch centers on a real pain point: when your best AE leaves, their deal intelligence and customer context walk out with them. Reevo positions AI agents as the permanent memory layer for revenue teams. Whether that works at scale remains to be seen, but the problem is real. Pricing includes Core (up to 5 users), Pro (up to 10 users), and Enterprise (10+ users) tiers. Startups can get up to 50% off. No public pricing numbers, no disclosed customers, no ANZ headcount. ## What This Means for Sales Teams The unified platform play is not new. Salesforce tried it. HubSpot tried it. The question is whether AI changes the equation enough to make consolidation actually work this time. For sales leaders evaluating stack consolidation: the promise is compelling, but Reevo is early-stage (launched less than six months ago). No public revenue figures, no disclosed customer base, no visible ANZ presence. The funding is real, the problem is real, the solution is unproven. Worth watching if you are tired of logging into 12 tools to run a sales process. Worth skepticism until they show attainment data from teams actually using it.

Sales Hacker
3 months ago
News

Only 7% of ANZ businesses broadly use AI, gov says

Only 7% of Australian businesses have broad AI implementation across their operations, according to Assistant Minister for Competition Andrew Leigh. That is the number that matters for B2B vendors, not the headline 42% adoption figure. The gap: 42% of SMEs are using AI in some capacity, with another 14% planning to adopt. But the difference between experimenting with ChatGPT and embedding AI across core operations is where the market friction lives. Leigh calls it the diffusion dividend: the difference between invention and actual adoption at scale. For sales teams targeting SMEs, this creates a specific challenge. Research co-authored by Leigh notes low trust in AI quality and safety remains the primary adoption barrier. That means proof-of-concept, risk mitigation messaging, and education are table stakes. You are not just selling software, you are selling confidence. The government angle: Leigh is positioning AI as a competitive tool for underdogs (small manufacturers, regional businesses, local service providers). His policy focus includes supporting SME digitalization, which suggests budget allocation and procurement frameworks may shift. Worth tracking if you are selling into mid-market or enterprise customers with SMB units. Practical outcomes Leigh highlights: hours saved, errors reduced, faster invoice processing, better customer service. Notice what is missing: transformation, disruption, game-changing innovation. The messaging is operational efficiency, not moonshots. Match that tone if you are prospecting into this segment. The agricultural example Leigh uses (zero-till farming reaching 80-90% adoption over 40 years) is telling. Enterprise-wide technology adoption is slow even when the ROI is clear. Farmers learned from farmers. Your champions need peer validation, not vendor promises. What this means for sales: If your ACV targets SMEs, expect longer cycles and more stakeholder education. The market is there (56% current or planning adopters), but closing the gap to broad implementation requires addressing trust issues and proving incremental value, not revolutionary change. Comp note: Government policy roles like Leigh's do not publish OTE, but Assistant Minister positions typically include base $230k-$280k plus allowances. Relevant if you are targeting public sector sales or policy-adjacent roles.

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