The Wire

Real-time updates from ANZ tech sales

2 months ago
News

How Databricks sells across 30 industries without building vertical products

## The Framework Databricks sells a $4.8 billion run-rate data platform to CDOs, CTOs, and CIOs across 30+ industries. They do not build vertical products. They build what they call imperatives: the intersection of customer priorities, industry trends, and product capabilities. Most B2B teams stop at personas and ICP. Databricks goes further. Personas tell you who buys. ICP tells you which accounts fit. Neither tells you what the buyer is actually held accountable for this quarter. ## How It Works in Practice Take retail. Databricks maps three imperatives: - Personalisation and monetisation of customer experience - Employee productivity improvement - Supply chain optimisation Each imperative breaks down to business priorities (the OKRs the exec owns), use cases (specific product applications), and proof (customer references with metrics). Sales gets a one-page placemat: here is what retail CIOs care about, here is how our platform maps to it, here is the data. The product stays horizontal. What changes is the conversation entry point. You start from their world (tariffs, regulation, industry consolidation) then connect back to your capabilities. As Madelyn Mullen, Sr. Industry Solutions Manager at Databricks, put it: you are not fitting square pegs into round holes. You are starting from their problems. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If you are selling a horizontal platform into multiple industries, stop asking product to build vertical editions. Start mapping imperatives: 1. What are buyers in this vertical actually accountable for? 2. What industry trends are moving their market right now? 3. Where does your product deliver differentiated value against those priorities? The overlap is where deals happen. One caveat: SMB and enterprise imperatives are different. An SMB construction company and a global construction enterprise have different strategic priorities. You cannot use the same conversation framework across segments. ## The Comp Angle Databricks is hiring industry solutions managers and industry marketing managers to run this motion. These are not AE roles. They sit between product marketing and sales: building the frameworks, mapping the imperatives, enabling the field. Worth noting for sellers looking to move into solutions or enablement roles at platform companies. The company closed a $4+ billion Series L at $134 billion valuation in December 2024, up 34% from their August round. That kind of growth funds GTM expansion. Expect more hiring in industry-specific enablement roles over the next 12 months.

SaaStr
2 months ago
News

Melbourne startup Spoony shuts down, blames AI funding shift

Spoony, a Melbourne-based social app for disabled and neurodivergent communities, will shut down by end of May after failing to raise its planned October 2025 round. Co-founder Nicholas Carlton told media the funding environment changed dramatically during the startup's two-year run. Investors now prioritise profitability over the grow-first model Spoony followed. The company raised $1 million early on and reached 65,000 users, but that was not enough. "The sands have shifted," Carlton said. "There's an expectation now from investors that you are monetising much, much earlier." Spoony explored revenue through referrals to speech pathologists and ADHD assessment services. Traditional advertising, Carlton noted, only makes sense past a million users. The startup never got there. ## The AI funding shift This shutdown sits within a broader trend. While AI-focused startups like Firmus raise hundreds of millions, non-AI ventures struggle for capital. The message from investors is clear: AI or nothing. For sales professionals, this matters. Startups that cannot raise are not hiring. The Melbourne team at Spoony, likely under 10 people based on structure and stage, will not be adding AEs or SDRs. Multiply that across dozens of similar shutdowns and you see why ANZ sales hiring slowed in 2025. ## Sales automation reality check The irony: Spoony shut down partly because investors want AI startups. Meanwhile, sales automation companies face backlash for replacing human roles. Artisan AI's "stop hiring humans" campaign sparked controversy, and multiple AI SDR tools launched promising to replace outbound teams entirely. The data tells a different story. AI tools handle repetitive tasks well. They do not close enterprise deals or navigate complex buying committees. Companies that gutted sales teams for AI automation are quietly rehiring. Spoony's closure is not a sales story directly. No CRO departing, no territory restructure, no quota changes. But it shows what happens when funding dries up for non-AI plays. Fewer startups means fewer sales roles, tighter hiring, lower OTEs as competition decreases. Worth noting: Carlton did not mention considering AI tools for growth or operations. For a community-focused app serving neurodivergent users, that makes sense. Some products need human touch. The shutdown date is end of May 2026. 65,000 users will need to find new platforms. The Collingwood office at 54 Wellington Street will go quiet. Another Melbourne startup story ends before Series A.

SmartCompany
2 months ago
News

SaaStr runs 20+ AI agents, 3 humans: daily reports ship on Sundays

## The Setup SaaStr, the B2B SaaS events and media company behind SaaStr Annual, now runs on 3 humans and 20+ AI agents. Founder Jason Lemkin posted Sunday: two detailed reports waiting in Slack before he woke up. One from the 10K Daily Bot (attendee count, ticket revenue, year-over-year comps). One from the Sponsor Portal Bot (100+ sponsors tracked, at-risk accounts flagged). Nobody asked the bots to work weekends. They just ship. ## The Numbers SaaStr cut headcount from 20+ employees to 3. The agents handle daily dashboards, sponsor check-ins, SDR follow-ups, lead scoring, content drafts. SaaStr Annual 2026 is tracking 20% ahead of last year's attendance at the same point. The AI SDRs are generating pipeline that closes. The AI concierge converts web traffic around the clock. ## What This Means for Sales Teams Lemkin's argument: the unlock is not cost savings, it is consistency. Agents do not have bad weeks, vacations, or burnout. The Sunday report is as thorough as the Monday report and every report after. For a lean operation running a major event, that reliability beats any individual hire. The catch: agents need oversight. They can get out of sync or confused. You have to spot-check their work. But they do not forget tasks, skip follow-ups, or deprioritize because something else came up. The at-risk sponsor gets flagged today, tomorrow, and every day until the status changes. ## The Question for Sales Leaders If you are running a B2B company and have not deployed at least a few AI agents, Lemkin says you are leaving reliability on the table. Start with the boring stuff: the daily report someone forgets, the lead follow-up that slips on Fridays, the sponsor check-in that gets deprioritized during crunch time. Give it to an agent. Watch it never miss. ## The Reality Check SaaStr is a media and events company, not a typical sales org. The agents Lemkin describes (daily dashboards, sponsor tracking) are not the same as replacing quota-carrying AEs. But the model shows where AI sales agents are proving out: repetitive tasks, consistent follow-up, data pulls, lead scoring. The agents that ship every day, including Sundays, while your team is off. Worth noting: SaaStr has no public data on sales team structure or comp. Lemkin runs a lean, high-impact operation tied to event sponsorships and subscriptions. This is not a 50-AE sales floor. It is 3 people and a fleet of bots running a multimillion-dollar event. Your mileage will vary.

SaaStr
2 months ago
News

Triple Bubble hits $10m first close, targets $50m fintech fund

# Triple Bubble hits $10m first close, targets $50m fintech fund Triple Bubble closed $10 million in its first nine months, one-fifth of its $50 million target. CommBank's x15ventures came in as cornerstone investor. Final close planned for Easter 2028. The fund backs ANZ fintech across three stages: early-stage private markets, secondary equity, and pre-IPO/public companies. Stage-agnostic model addresses what founders Dom Pym, Brian Collins, and Judy Anderson-Firth call a structural gap in Oceania fintech capital. Investor list includes fintech operators: WeMoney's Dan Joveski, Caligra's Grant Bissett, Tractor Ventures cofounders Matt Allen and Aprill Enright. Worth noting the operator-heavy cap table: these are people who have built sales teams and know what scaling fintech GTM actually costs. Pym (Up Bank, Euphemia) said it is one of the toughest capital markets in a decade. The fund's thesis: Australian and New Zealand fintechs produce global outcomes but lack local VC support. Fintech Australia data shows four in five Aussie fintechs have no VC on their cap table. Australian VCs own less than 4% of the local fintech market. **What this means for sales professionals:** More fintech funding typically means more sales hiring. If Triple Bubble deploys across 15-20 companies over three years, expect SDR and AE roles as portfolio companies scale. The x15ventures partnership could accelerate enterprise sales cycles for portfolio companies selling into banks. Pym says first investments will be announced in coming months. The firm maintains ANZ-only focus, no offshore expansion noted. **The context:** Fintech funding rounds have contracted globally through 2024, but ANZ produced exits (Airwallex valuation growth, Judo Bank IPO). A dedicated fintech fund with bank partnerships changes the capital equation for early and growth-stage companies that need to hire sales teams to hit next-stage metrics. Triple Bubble's three-asset-class model is unusual for ANZ: most local VCs pick a stage and stay there. Multi-stage approach could mean follow-on capital for strong performers, which matters when you are building a sales org and need 18 months of runway, not 12.

Startup Daily
2 months ago
News

Australia Post acquires Rendr, adds same-day delivery to 90% coverage

Australia Post acquired Rendr, a last-mile delivery orchestration platform, bringing same-day delivery to nearly 90% of Australian coverage. The deal gives Australia Post access to Rendr's algorithm-based platform that matches merchants with optimal couriers in real time based on location, speed, and delivery windows. Rendr will operate independently before integration into Australia Post's sending platforms. Financial terms were not disclosed. Rendr was founded in 2020 by Greg Leibowitz and James Fisher. The startup raised $2.1 million in 2021 from investors including former Australia Post boss Ahmed Fahour and Global Retail Brands executive chairman Steven Lew. Current CEO is Sonney Roth. The acquisition expands Australia Post's e-commerce capabilities against global marketplace competition. Businesses will gain access to same-day, three-hour, evening, and weekend delivery options without operational complexity. This builds on Australia Post's Metro next-day service launched in major cities including Perth and Adelaide. Gary Starr, executive GM for parcel, post, and e-commerce services at Australia Post, said the investment helps Australian businesses compete. The government-owned corporation is scaling delivery options while managing reforms to letter services, including every-second-day regular delivery rollout through 2026. **What this means for sales teams:** Rendr's sales org details are unknown: no public data on team size, CRO, or recent hires. Australia Post has not disclosed sales leadership or hiring plans post-acquisition. The move signals consolidation in ANZ last-mile logistics, with implications for anyone selling into or competing with on-demand delivery providers. Rendr operated with national ANZ focus, no international presence. No prior acquisitions or additional funding rounds beyond the 2021 raise.

SmartCompany
2 months ago
News

Chime Labs raises $900k for AI receptionist targeting tradies

# Chime Labs raises $900k for AI receptionist targeting tradies Sydney startup Chime Labs closed $900,000 pre-seed funding led by 500 Global with angel participation. The company builds an AI receptionist for tradies: plumbers, electricians, and service businesses that lose revenue on missed calls. Founded in 2025 by former Googlers Alexis Griveau (CEO) and Mathew Pretel, Chime Labs answers inbound calls 24/7, qualifies leads, and books appointments directly into calendars. According to Griveau, a single missed call costs tradies up to $12,000 monthly in lost revenue. ## Market context: AI receptionists for SMBs Chime Labs enters a crowded field. US-based Beside hit $4M ARR with 20,000+ customers before raising $32M total funding. Canadian startup Handshake runs a six-person team with a voice agent handling 20 simultaneous calls in 50 languages. LA-based Steno raised $49M addressing similar admin gaps. Chime Labs differentiates by focusing exclusively on ANZ tradies, a niche underserved by global players. No revenue, headcount, or customer numbers disclosed. The company is early: founded last year, first institutional raise, minimal public data. ## What the money funds The $900k goes toward product expansion (quoting, invoicing, lead generation tools) and hiring. Current customers are requesting features beyond call handling. The company positions itself as a one-stop admin solution for service businesses, not just a receptionist. ## Sales angle: What this means for the market AI receptionist tools are proliferating in the SMB space, but few target specific verticals. Chime Labs is betting that tradie-specific workflows (quoting a bathroom reno differs from booking a SaaS demo) justify a focused product. Whether that thesis supports venture scale remains to be seen: tradies operate on tight margins, and willingness to pay for software tools varies widely. No word on pricing, ACV, or go-to-market strategy. For sales teams selling into SMBs, the tradie vertical represents a hard sell: high volume, low ACV, long sales cycles. Chime Labs will need strong product-led growth or a scalable inbound model to make the unit economics work. Worth watching: whether they can convert early traction into repeatable revenue, and whether the ANZ tradie market supports a venture-backed business.

Startup Daily
2 months ago
News

OpenAI buys tech podcast TBPN: balance sheet marketing play

OpenAI bought TBPN, the daily tech talk show hosted by Jordi Hays and John Coogan. First media acquisition for the AI company. The show goes to OpenAI's strategy team under Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane. Editorial independence stays, ads phase out. The financial logic: OpenAI is sitting on cash but is unprofitable. Spending cash tanks earnings. Buying an asset and converting it to goodwill? Different story on the balance sheet. TBPN was doing $5 million in ad revenue, projected to hit $15-30 million. Now it becomes 20+ hours weekly of OpenAI brand exposure. This mirrors how public companies obsess over getting their CROs and CEOs on long-form podcasts. Joe Rogan, TBPN, 20VC: these are now viewed as primary channels for reaching tech decision-makers. Comms teams block executive calendars around these appearances. Buying one outright gives you the channel without the pitch process. TBPN stays mostly as-is. OpenAI gets constant exposure. The hosts get resources and reach. No deep integration plan disclosed, which tracks: let it run, see what happens, world changes fast anyway. Penn Entertainment tried similar logic with Barstool Sports. That deal unwound, but the thesis held: turn balance sheet cash into owned distribution to your target audience. Worth noting for sales leaders: this is a strategy play, not a GTM hire. OpenAI's enterprise motion remains licensing-focused. No disclosed sales team expansion tied to this deal. The value is brand and influence, not pipeline generation. Relevant if your company is sitting on cash and wondering how to stay top-of-mind with buyers without burning through marketing budget. Media acquisitions are back on the M&A menu for scale tech companies with trapped capital. TBPN operates US-only. No ANZ presence or sales ops disclosed for either party. OpenAI remains US-centric despite global AI expansion.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

SaaStr AI graded 4,000 pitch decks: growth rate worth 55 of 100 points

SaaStr AI has graded 4,000 VC pitch decks since launching its free analyzer tool last year. The data shows what founders miss before they pitch, and what VCs actually care about. The tool spits out four scores. Traction Score (0-100) is the big one: growth rate alone is worth 55 of 100 points. Not raw growth. Growth relative to what's expected at your ARR tier, benchmarked against Carta, Iconiq, Emergence, and Bessemer data. Deck Quality Score (0-100) grades how well you communicate team, market, and competitive advantage. Most decks land between 55-70 here. Investment Grade combines both (traction weighted 75%, deck quality 25%). You need an A- (85+) to realistically pitch top-tier VCs. Funding Odds benchmarks you against companies that actually closed rounds recently. What 4,000 decks revealed: deck quality clusters at "fair." Not terrible, not fundable. Common failures are weak competitive differentiation (the "why can't a big player copy this" slide is always thin), vague market sizing (top-down TAM without bottoms-up logic), and team slides that bury the important credential. The gap between traction and deck quality is usually large. Good businesses with weak decks are common. Less common: beautiful decks with metrics that don't support them. The 75/25 weighting is intentional. A great deck does not rescue weak numbers. Funding odds are sobering. Series A founders right now compete with AI-native companies growing 300-500%+ at similar ARR. The tool tells you this before you burn three months pitching. "Not Ready" does not mean your company is bad. It means your deck does not yet make the case for institutional VC. The Priority Improvement section tells you what to fix. Team slide is thin. Competitive moat is not demonstrated. Financials are missing. Fix it. Upload again. This matters for sales teams at two points: when your startup is fundraising (these benchmarks determine whether your comp stays stable or gets restructured), and when you are evaluating offers (a company with weak fundraising odds might not make payroll in 18 months). The tool is free. No account required. SaaStr AI also offers VC matchmaking with 400+ investors for decks that score well. It draws from proprietary data on 5,000+ funding rounds and exits like Salesloft ($2.3B) and Pipedrive ($1.5B). For sales professionals evaluating startup offers: ask to see the deck. If they will not show you, that tells you something. If they show you and it scores below 70, factor that into your decision. Quota is hard enough when the company is well-funded.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

AI Budget Shift: CIOs Pull 9% for Price Hikes, Winners Get 61x ARR

## The Numbers That Matter Global IT spending hits $6.08 trillion in 2026, up 9.8%, per Gartner. Software grows 15.2%. AI spending alone: $2.52 trillion, up 44% year over year, according to Redpoint's 2026 Market Update. Here is the problem: CIOs are setting aside 9% of their total IT budget just to cover price increases on existing software. Overall budget growth runs at 1.8%. The math only works one way: money is being pulled from low-ROI tools and redirected toward AI winners. Private AI companies trade at 61x ARR. Public SaaS companies sit at 4x ARR. That is two completely different markets. The companies getting 61x are capturing AI budget in their categories and growing accordingly. The ones at 4x got left out. ## What This Means for Sales Teams ICONIQ's January 2026 survey of 150+ GTM executives shows what is working. Sales generates 62% of new logo pipeline at high-growth companies. Marketing generates 19%. The companies growing fastest are radically growing net new customer accounts, not relying on upsells and price increases. Median NRR for public B2B companies sits at 108-110%. Top quartile hits 123%+. If your NRR is below 100%, you have a retention problem that no amount of new logo activity fixes. Average initial contract lengths are declining across the board. Buyers want shorter commitments everywhere. The answer is not to fight it. The answer is to deliver enough value in the first 90 days that the renewal is never in question. ## The AI Agent Race Companies growing 100%+ year over year allocate 57% of R&D to AI, versus 38% for average-growth peers. That gap compounds every quarter. AI-native companies are reaching $100M ARR in 1 to 2 years. Historical benchmark: 5+ years. Top-quartile AI-native companies achieve 360% new logo velocity year over year versus 71% for non-AI peers. CIOs are actively evaluating which vendors to replace, by category, right now. The vendors getting replaced share a common characteristic: they do not have a credible AI story that delivers measurable ROI. The vendors winning replacement decisions have production deployments, not roadmaps. ## What This Means for Your Patch If you are selling for a company that is not growing, your territory is shrinking whether leadership admits it or not. Budget is being pulled toward AI winners. Contract lengths are compressing. Buyers are more willing to switch than they were 18 months ago. The good news: if your product has a credible AI agent in production, with measurable ROI, you are selling into the fastest-growing budget category in enterprise software. The bad news: if you are carrying a bag for a company that is stalling out, no amount of hustle changes the trajectory. Worth noting: Jason Lemkin co-founded EchoSign, scaled it past $100M ARR, and sold it to Adobe. He founded SaaStr, the largest B2B SaaS community globally. This is not theory. This is pattern recognition from someone who has seen what separates winners from everyone else.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Boldstart VC: AI agents killing old sales playbooks, bottleneck now distribution

Ed Sim has backed Clay, Snyk, and Front over 30 years in VC. Right now, he says this is the most terrifying moment he has seen in enterprise software. The thesis: engineering bottlenecks are collapsing. AI agents ship code faster than your roadmap. The new constraint is distribution. Specifically, how you reach customers before they know they need you. Sim runs Boldstart Ventures, a New York micro-VC writing first checks into developer-first SaaS. Recent fund: $250M doubling down on AI founders from day zero. Portfolio includes Snyk (valued at $7.4B) and Protect AI (acquired by Palo Alto for $700M+). His framework: the Five Ps (people, potential, product, process, price). But potential and TAM are moving targets now. Markets that did not exist 18 months ago are already crowded. The companies winning are inside the "AI jet stream," not chasing it. **What this means for GTM teams:** Old playbooks are dead. The Clay model (agencies, community, attribution before scale) is replacing traditional SDR-led growth. Clay went from $600K to $100M ARR staying lean. No massive SDR team. No enterprise AE army at Series A. Sim's board meetings all sound the same now: "How are you using AI agents?" If the answer is vague, the company is behind. AI-native leadership is survival. Predictive CS, dynamic segmentation, outcome-based engagement. If you are waiting for a ticket, you already failed your customer. **The autonomous enterprise thesis:** Companies will rebuild entire industries, not sell software to them. The question is not "what tool do we buy?" It is "what process disappears entirely?" Incumbents adapting: Intercom, Snowflake. They are embedding agents, not bolting them on. The ones that survive will look unrecognisable in 24 months. **Bottom line:** Distribution is the new moat. Engineering is commoditising. If your GTM motion still assumes humans do prospecting, you are playing the wrong game.

Sales Hacker
3 months ago
News

Anthropic signs Australian government AI deal, includes workforce usage data

Anthropic signed a memorandum of understanding with the Australian government that differs from previous AI partnerships in one key way: usage data transparency. The deal, closed during CEO Dario Amodei's Canberra visit, commits Anthropic to share Economic Index data with the government. That means actual metrics on how Claude is being used across the economy, broken down by task, sector, and occupation. Natural resources, agriculture, healthcare, and financial services are flagged as priority sectors. This structured usage tracking has not been a visible part of Australia's AI partnerships to date. OpenAI and Microsoft signed earlier deals. Neither included comparable data-sharing commitments in their public agreements. ## What the deal includes Beyond usage data, Anthropic will collaborate with Australia's AI Safety Institute on model evaluations and risk testing. The company committed $3 million for research support to Australian institutions. The MOU positions AI as a driver of economic growth and public services, part of Australia's National AI Plan. Anthropic agreed to uphold Australian laws and maintain social licence for its investments. Technical exchanges with the Safety Institute follow similar models in the US and UK. The goal: shared understanding of emerging capabilities and risks. ## Why usage data matters The Economic Index tracks AI adoption in practice. It classifies activity by task, sector, and occupation using large volumes of model interactions. For government: insight into job displacement, productivity shifts, and skills gaps. For Anthropic: data to shape product development and market positioning. Worth noting: this happens as Anthropic faces headwinds in the US. The company lost a $200 million Department of Defense contract. The US Treasury and federal housing agency terminated Claude usage following a Trump administration directive. Anthropic is challenging a Pentagon supply-chain risk designation in federal court. The Australian deal suggests Anthropic is prioritising international partnerships as US government relationships deteriorate. The usage data component could become a template for future government AI deals, assuming the government can actually use the data to inform policy. No word yet on Anthropic's ANZ headcount, local sales leadership, or enterprise sales plans beyond government contracts.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

FWC scraps junior rates for 18-21s in retail, fast food, pharmacy

## The Ruling The Fair Work Commission killed junior pay rates for workers aged 18-21 in three major awards: General Retail, Fast Food, and Pharmacy. If you are 18 and have six months with the same employer, you now get 100% of adult pay. Previously, you would have earned 70-90% depending on age. The Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association pushed for this. The FWC agreed, saying they cannot assume young adults are "materially less productive" than older workers, especially in lower classifications. ## Who This Hits Over 500,000 young workers across retail, fast food, and pharmacy. That means Coles (120,000 staff, $43.6B revenue FY24), Woolworths (200,000 staff, $67.9B revenue FY24), McDonald's Australia (100,000 indirect jobs), and every pharmacy chain in ANZ. For B2B sales teams at these organisations: your cost base just went up. Wholesale margins get tighter. Vendor negotiations get harder. If you are selling into retail or QSR, expect pushback on pricing. ## The Timing This comes after a 3.5% minimum wage hike in July 2025, with another 3.25-4% increase predicted for 2026. Employer groups like the Australian Retailers Association and Franchise Council of Australia already flagged concerns about hiring in regional areas. Those concerns just got louder. ## What It Means for Sales Teams If you are in B2B sales targeting retail, fast food, or pharmacy: - Budget scrutiny increases. Every line item gets questioned. - Procurement cycles slow down as finance teams reassess labour cost impact. - Value conversations shift: ROI timelines compress, cost-saving features move up the priority list. - Regional expansion slows. Hiring freezes in smaller markets mean fewer new accounts. Coles and Woolworths both have sales teams in the hundreds focused on wholesale and supplier partnerships. Expect those teams to lean harder on margin protection. If you are a supplier, your next renewal conversation just got more interesting. ## The Reality Check Adult wages for 18-year-olds sounds fair. The FWC made the call based on productivity data. But for sales professionals working these accounts, fair does not change the fact that your buyer's cost structure just shifted. Adjust your pitch accordingly.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

SaaStr cut sales team from 20 to 3, replaced with 25 AI agents

# SaaStr cut sales team from 20 to 3, replaced with 25 AI agents SaaStr, the B2B SaaS community founded by Jason Lemkin, slashed its go-to-market team from 20+ humans to 3 humans plus 25+ AI agents. The agents now handle outbound, inbound, support, and ops. They generated over $1M in direct revenue and sent 60,000+ emails. The shift accelerated in May 2025 when two high-paid sales reps quit during SaaStr Annual. Lemkin scaled from 1 agent to 20+ by June. Desks now have agent names like "Arty" and "Repli." Chief AI Officer Amélie Lerutte spends 30% of her time managing them. ## The "easier" calculus Lemkin's argument: agents are not better at everything, but they are easier to deploy than humans. No recruiting fees, no equity refreshes, no notice periods, no disengagement. They require daily management (90+ minutes of meetings, constant iteration), but the operational overhead is lower than hiring cycles, onboarding, and performance reviews. Quote: "A truly great human is still better than any AI agent at most complex work. But most hires aren't great hires. A good AI agent beats that average hire on consistency, cost, availability, and management burden." SaaStr's AI deployment added $4.8M in pipeline and $2.4M in closed-won revenue across go-to-market. Response rates hit 5-7% versus industry standard 2-4%. The company predicts AI agents will manage 40-60% of B2B interactions by end of 2026. ## What this means for sales teams If you are an SDR or AE doing structured, repeatable tasks, the math is shifting. Companies looking at open headcount are asking: "What does this person do day-to-day?" If the answer is templated outreach, lead qualification, or follow-up sequences, agents are in the conversation. The roles that survive: complex enterprise deals, strategic account management, anything requiring judgment and relationship depth. The roles under pressure: high-volume transactional work, especially in SMB and mid-market. Lemkin is not alone. Salesforce, HubSpot, and other platforms are embedding agentic AI into sales workflows. The question is not whether this happens, but how fast your company moves and what that means for headcount planning in 2027. Worth noting: SaaStr still employs humans for high-value work. This is augmentation with aggressive replacement of repeatable tasks, not full elimination. But the direction is clear, and the comp impact is coming.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Redpoint survey: 54% of CIOs cutting vendors, 45% funding AI by slashing SaaS

## The Numbers Redpoint Ventures released a 70-slide market report in March 2026 based on surveys of 141 CIOs representing $765 billion in capital expenditure. The core finding: enterprise software budgets are not growing, they are shifting. And the shift is accelerating. 54% of CIOs are actively pursuing vendor consolidation. 45% say their AI budgets come directly from existing software line items, not new budget. Only 3% expect AI to increase their total vendor count. Public SaaS multiples are at 4.1x next twelve months revenue, down from a 2021 peak of 22x. That is an 80% contraction. Year to date, software stocks are down 20% while energy is up 32%. Horizontal SaaS is down 35% over twelve months. Vertical SaaS is up 3%. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If you are selling horizontal SaaS, your deals are getting longer and your win rates are dropping. CIOs are not adding seats, they are cutting vendors. When Redpoint asked which categories CIOs would replace with AI-native alternatives, CRM ranked first at 83%. Customer service management was second at 56%. The comp implication: if your quota was set assuming net new ARR growth in a category where buyers are now consolidating or replacing with AI tools, your attainment is going to suffer. Territory planning built on expansion assumptions no longer holds when the expansion motion is vendor reduction. Private AI-native companies are trading at 61x ARR at Series B and C stages. Public high-growth software trades at 9.7x. The market is pricing in the view that AI startups will grow at rates legacy SaaS never will. Cursor generates $6.1M in ARR per employee. Salesforce generates $540k. ## The Enterprise Buyer Reality 58% of CIOs say AI feature additions are the top driver of software spend increases. But that spend is zero-sum: it is coming out of something else. If you are an AE at an incumbent platform, you are now competing with AI-native vendors your champion has budget approval to trial because the CFO views it as cost neutral. Worth noting: the categories least likely to be replaced are finance operations (14% open to replacement), DevOps (19%), and project management (19%). Deeply embedded workflows with complex integrations are harder to rip out. If you are selling into those categories, your moat is integration lock-in, not feature velocity. Redpoint's data shows the market expects long-term SaaS growth rates to drop from 4.7% to 1.1% in perpetuity. That is the public market pricing in structural compression of the entire category. For quota-carrying reps, that means longer sales cycles, more executive scrutiny, and deals that stall in legal because procurement is running parallel evaluations of AI alternatives. The takeaway: if your sales motion assumes budget expansion, recalibrate. The budget exists. It is just going somewhere else.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Koala raises $20m ahead of ASX IPO, $305m valuation

Koala, the Byron Bay-founded DTC furniture brand, raised $20 million ahead of its ASX debut this week. The company priced shares at $3.40, valuing the business at $305 million. The $20m raise is part of a $68m IPO. Existing investors sold $48.1m of their holdings, including co-founder Mitch Taylor, who offloaded $8.3m in stock. New investors now own 20.65% of the company. ## Where the Money Goes Half the fresh capital, $10.1 million, retires debt. The remainder funds growth. Worth noting: Koala scaled from zero to $175m in revenue over six years through email marketing and viral ads mocking IKEA. No showrooms, 4-hour delivery, 120-night trial. ## Who Owns What CEO Dany Milham returned in 2024 after his grocery delivery startup Milkrun folded 19 months in. He holds 20.7% of Koala and earns $630k annually. Perennial Partners is the largest shareholder at 22.7%, post-dilution. Alium Capital owns 5%. Steve Smith, the cricketer, invested $100k in the 2015 seed round for 10%. That stake hit $10m within four years, a 100-bagger. His current holding post-IPO is not disclosed. ## Sales Context Koala built a $175m business on DTC email and paid social, no field sales team. The IPO prepares them for public company scrutiny: quarterly earnings, investor relations, governance overhead. For hypergrowth DTC brands eyeing IPO, this is the playbook: scale fast, prove unit economics, then prep for the compliance and reporting requirements of public markets. No word on sales team headcount, VP Sales, or CRO in the prospectus. The business runs lean on performance marketing, not enterprise sales motion. That model works until it does not. Public companies need predictable revenue. Watch whether Koala adds a B2B arm (corporate, hospitality, bulk orders) to smooth out DTC volatility. $305m valuation on $175m revenue (last reported) implies 1.7x ARR multiple, if revenue held flat. That is conservative for a growth story, signalling investor caution or company maturity.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

NSW SMEs win $8.3bn in govt contracts, 20% of $40bn total

## The Numbers NSW SMEs won $8.3 billion in government contracts in 2024-25, representing 20% of the state's $40 billion annual procurement spend. That is up from $8.7 billion in 2021-22, despite overall procurement cuts for fiscal discipline. Regional SMEs increased their share from 16% to 18% (plus $25 million). Aboriginal businesses went from 2.2% to 3.3% (plus $72 million). ## What Changed The Minns Labor Government raised the direct procurement threshold from $150,000 to $250,000 in 2023. Result: over 1,500 contracts in that range, 51% to SMEs, no full tender required. Insurance requirements were reduced. Contracts over $3 million now require SME reporting. Innovation streams up to $1 million allow trials without standard procurement processes. ## Why It Matters for Sales If you sell B2B to enterprise and have avoided government contracts because of tender complexity, that barrier just got lower. The $250,000 threshold means mid-market deals can bypass full procurement processes. NSW has 870,000 SMEs, 97% of all businesses, employing 1.7 million people. The government is deliberately routing more spend their way. That creates competitive pressure: more SMEs chasing government contracts means tighter deals and longer sales cycles. Federal trends mirror this. SMEs hit 20.7% ($14.7 billion) of federal contracts under $1 billion in 2024-25. The playbook is shifting from large integrators to smaller, nimble suppliers. ## The Reality Check Government sales cycles are still long. Compliance requirements remain heavy. Payment terms can stretch 60-90 days. These reforms make it easier to get in the door, but winning and delivering government contracts requires patience and process discipline. Finance Minister Courtney Houssos framed SMEs as "the backbone of the community." That is policy speak for: this is not changing. If you are building a government sales motion, the trend is in your favour. Total procurement spending decreased under fiscal discipline measures, with consultant and contractor spending down $300 million. The pie is smaller, but SMEs are getting a bigger slice.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

FAL hit $100M ARR in 2 years, broke SaaS margin math

## The margin problem is not going away FAL (fal.ai) hit $100M ARR in under two years serving 2M+ developers and 300+ enterprises including Adobe, Canva, and Shopify. Co-founder and CTO Gorkem Yurtseven says the company learned what most AI infrastructure businesses are figuring out the hard way: your margins are worse than SaaS, and they are not improving. Every new user costs real money to serve. GPUs are expensive. Inference is expensive. The assumption was that model costs would drop and save everyone. They have not. As older image models got cheaper to run, customers moved to new video models that cost dramatically more. Software advances faster than hardware. Net result: lower margins than before, and no relief coming. Yurtseven's advice: build pricing that reflects real cost to serve from day one. Do not assume you can fix it later. ## High-usage customers can wreck your economics In traditional SaaS, your biggest users were your best customers. More usage meant more value, more expansion, better NRR. In AI infrastructure, high-usage customers are high-cost customers. If your pricing does not account for that, you are subsidizing your largest accounts. FAL tracks wallet share: the percentage of a customer's total generative media spend flowing through the platform. The metric reframes expansion. It is not just about growing accounts. It is about growing the right accounts in the right way. ## Annual quotas broke during the hiring process FAL tried to hire a head of sales. The candidate wanted a quota and commission structure. The team calculated what doubling in a year would look like as an OTE target. During the interview process, they grew roughly 50% of that annual target. The quota became meaningless before the hire was made. At 50% quarterly growth rates, annual targets are guesswork. FAL now runs shorter-term quotas (monthly or quarterly) where they can course-correct when the business moves. For now, the team operates on target earnings without hard quotas. It is not a permanent solution. It is an honest response to an unpredictable environment. Worth noting: FAL has one public sales listing (Senior Account Executive), suggesting a small but growing sales function focused on enterprise adoption. No CRO or VP Sales is named. The company is backed by Sequoia Capital. ## What actually matters FAL watches three metrics closely: logo quality and diversity (big names across different verticals), wallet share (not just usage), and cost per inference (the number that determines if the business model works). The positioning play mattered. FAL committed to "generative media platform" specifically, not general AI infrastructure. The buyers for image models are completely different from the buyers for language models. Different use cases, different budgets, different decision makers. Being the clearest answer to one specific thing beats claiming to do everything. FAL was founded in 2021 by Burkay Gur (ex-Coinbase ML) and Gorkem Yurtseven (ex-Amazon), with Head of Engineering Batuhan Taskaya (Python core developer). No ANZ presence or operations mentioned.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Mangomint VP Sales hits 7.2x ARR-to-OTE with 8 demos per day, $4K ACV

## The Numbers Marshelle Mooney, VP of Sales at Mangomint, is running a remote SMB sales org that hits 7.2x ARR-to-OTE. For context: 3-5x is typical in SMB SaaS. Anything above 6x is rare. The setup: $4K initial ACV, five-day sales cycles, eight demos per AE per day. Fully remote team. Customer base is salons and spas, classic high-volume SMB. The company is at 150 people total. That ratio means reps are booking seven times their on-target earnings in ARR. If an AE has $100K OTE, they are closing $720K in ARR. The math works because Mooney knows her unit economics cold: four hours of selling time per deal, 30 focused hours per week, and she can see exactly when a rep's pace is off because all calendars are public. ## The Operating Model Mooney spent two years running what she calls "the AI kitchen sink." More tools, more dashboards, more call intelligence layers. It made things worse. Information lived in six places. Reps did not know where to look. Managers lost visibility. The fix was subtraction, not addition. She consolidated the entire revenue org into two surfaces: Slack and Notion. Everything else either feeds into those or gets cut. The model has three layers. **Clarity:** every playbook, objection handler, comp detail, and product update lives in Notion. If a rep has to Slack someone for an answer, this layer is broken. **Cadence:** every functional leader posts a weekly update, minimum bar is one main thing. Reviews and one-on-ones run on predictable schedules. **Co-pilot:** this is where AI actually lives, but it only works if the first two layers are solid. Most teams skip straight to layer three. That is why most AI implementations fail. ## The Automation Layer Mooney pushes data to reps instead of waiting for them to pull it. Card failures route instantly to the account owner. Win rate changes surface in Slack before the weekly review. Call summaries from Momentum (their call intelligence tool) push automatically into Notion and Salesforce. The principle: if information requires effort to find, most reps will not find it until there is a problem. By then it is too late. The stack is Momentum for call intelligence, Snowflake for data warehouse, Sigma for dashboards. But the tooling is not the story. The story is that automation only drives efficiency after you fix fragmentation. ## What This Means for SMB Sales Low ACV, high volume, constant rep churn: that is the standard SMB playbook, and it is inefficient by design. Most orgs throw bodies at the problem when pipeline slows. Mooney's approach is different. She knows the math, she built the operating model first, and she cut tools instead of adding them. The 7.2x ratio is the output, not the goal. The goal is a system where reps spend 30 focused hours per week on revenue activities and leadership knows within days when something is off. Worth noting: Mangomint is U.S.-focused salon and spa software. This is not enterprise SaaS. This is high-velocity SMB with short cycles and low ACV, which makes the efficiency metrics even more notable. Most SMB orgs accept 3-4x ratios as the ceiling. Mooney is proving that is a choice, not a constraint.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Why B2B SaaS companies under 20% growth are quietly dying

## The Numbers That Matter Jason Lemkin, founder of SaaStr and former EchoSign CEO, posted a reality check for B2B SaaS growth. Two thresholds matter: under 20% YoY growth puts you in the Danger Zone. Under 10% is the Dead Zone. The Danger Zone is not about total revenue. It is about where that revenue comes from. Companies growing sub-20% are typically extracting value from existing customers through retention, price increases, and upsells. New logo acquisition has stalled. Pipeline is weak. The business feels fine internally because revenue still ticks up, but the new business motion has stopped working. Okta is the example. Revenue up 11-12% YoY, but they added only 85 net new $100k+ customers in Q3 FY2026. For a company at their scale, that is standing still on new logos. UiPath is similar: revenue up 16%, ARR growing 11%, with net new ARR declining for several quarters. Both companies have strong net revenue retention from their existing base. Expansion is carrying the load while new business dries up. ## What This Means for Sales Teams When companies hit the Danger Zone, sales teams see it first. Territories shrink. Quota gets adjusted down or includes more expansion targets. Comp plans shift from new logo accelerators to upsell and cross-sell. Ramp periods get longer because there are fewer deals to close. Historical quota attainment data shows that companies in the Danger Zone see attainment rates drop from 70-80% to 50-60% as pipeline generation slows. SDR teams get cut or reassigned to account development. AE headcount freezes. The CRO starts talking about efficiency instead of growth. The Dead Zone (sub-10% growth) is worse. This is not a sales problem. This is a product-market fit problem. Dropbox is the example: paying users flatlined at 18M, revenue declining YoY. CEO Drew Houston is betting on Dash as a re-founding play. Asana is knocking on the door: 9% growth in Q4 FY2026, guidance for 7.5-8.5% in FY2027, NRR at 96%. When NRR drops below 100%, the existing base is contracting. No amount of sales optimisation fixes that. ## The SMB Trap Lemkin calls out the SMB tax: low average MRR per customer means you need thousands of net new logos every quarter just to maintain baseline growth. If your average customer pays $200/month and you need 20% growth, the acquisition volume required is enormous. Churn feels painless per logo, but the replacement burden is brutal. CAC does not drop just because the ticket is smaller. For ANZ teams, this maps to the local mid-market and SMB SaaS plays that looked smart in 2021 but are now grinding against the math. Median B2B SaaS revenue growth in 2025 sits at 28%, down from 47% in 2024, per OpenView and Bessemer benchmarks. Bootstrapped SaaS companies average 20% growth at $3M-$20M ARR. VC-backed firms face higher expectations and are hitting the Danger Zone harder. The fix for the Danger Zone: rebuild the new logo motion. The fix for the Dead Zone: re-found the company. Most sales teams do not get that second option. They get layoffs instead.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Two years of declining growth: what actually works to turn it around

## The Market Split The B2B SaaS market has bifurcated hard. Top quartile companies at Series A stage are growing 515% year over year, per ICONIQ data. AI-native startups are hitting 360% new logo velocity compared to 71% for non-AI peers. Some are reaching $100M ARR in 1-2 years instead of the historical 5+. Meanwhile, 35% of B2B companies are declining year over year, the highest rate since 2020. Public B2B SaaS growth settled at 11% CAGR in 2024, down from 30%+ in 2021. Private companies are doing better at 25-26% median growth, but two years of linear decline means you are sliding toward the bottom. ## What Actually Works **Product-market fit reality check:** Two years of decline usually means the market shifted or your product did not keep up. Visit your top 10 customers in person this quarter. They will show you a path to growth. **Net new customer velocity:** This is the number founders mask first. You can cover declining new customer acquisition with price increases and expansion revenue for a while, but sustained slowdown in net new logos means your product is losing market relevance. Get more customers now. Raise prices later. **NRR compression:** Median net revenue retention for private B2B companies has fallen to 101%, down from 2021 highs. Top performers maintain 111%+. Best-in-class public companies sit at 120-125%. If you are below 100%, that is your most urgent problem. But do not harvest your existing base while new logo growth dies quietly. **New leadership energy:** After two years of slow growth, morale follows the revenue chart down. One exceptional new VP who has seen a turnaround breaks the pattern. One VP of Sales, one VP of Marketing, or one CRO who knows what getting back to growth actually requires. ## The Sales Team Reality Industry-wide, sales efficiency metrics declined across ARR bands in 2023. Median B2B SaaS growth for $50M-$100M ARR firms hit 12% in 2023 versus planned 21% for 2024. Companies over $100M ARR grew 12% against planned 29%, per Pavilion benchmarks. The worst thing you can do is blame macro headwinds and wait. The companies accelerating right now did not get there by waiting it out. Go talk to customers, fix net new customer velocity, bring in fresh leadership, and decide which side of the bifurcation you are going to be on.

SaaStr
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