The Wire

Real-time updates from ANZ tech sales

3 months ago
News

SaaStr hiring Director of Digital Marketing to report to AI VP

## SaaStr hiring Director of Digital Marketing to report to AI VP SaaStr, the B2B SaaS media and events company, is hiring a Director of Digital Marketing to report directly to an AI agent. The role offers a six-figure salary and is mostly remote. The AI VP, called 10K, was built on Replit and operates as a functional marketing executive. According to founder Jason Lemkin, 10K ships campaigns independently, handles daily briefs, builds audiences, tests copy variants, and manages send sequences. The AI has previously shipped multiple campaigns over a weekend and recommended pricing changes. The reporting structure puts a human marketing director below an AI VP. Humans retain final approval on strategy, but 10K handles campaign execution and tactical decisions. This inverts the typical AI-as-assistant model. SaaStr has documented 10K's performance publicly, positioning the experiment as a test case for agentic AI in marketing operations. The company runs annual SaaS conferences and produces content for SaaS founders and executives. **What this means for sales teams:** The reporting structure matters more than the technology. If your marketing leader is an AI agent, you need clarity on who owns revenue accountability, pipeline targets, and cross-functional decisions. Campaign execution is table stakes. Strategic alignment with sales is not. The market context: multiple companies are hiring senior marketing executives with AI expertise. Prophecy's SVP Marketing role shows typical compensation at $250-325K base for AI-native marketing leaders. That is the human VP benchmark. SaaStr's six-figure Director role sits below that, reporting to AI. The real question: can an AI agent be accountable for pipeline contribution? Campaign output is measurable. Revenue impact requires judgment, context, and cross-functional negotiation. That is where this experiment gets interesting. For now, one data point. Worth watching whether others follow or whether this stays a media company publicity play.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Atlassian drops off Australia employer rankings, 1,600 jobs cut

Atlassian dropped out of Great Place to Work Australia's Best Workplaces in Technology 2026 rankings entirely. Last year, the company placed third in the medium-to-large category. The timing matters. Atlassian recently announced 1,600 job cuts, roughly 10% of its 13,500-person workforce. Reports suggest up to 4,000 ANZ employees could be affected. The company also implemented a hiring freeze. Atlassian shares dropped 66% from $US224.10 to $US75.45, wiping approximately $19 billion in market value. Investor concerns centre on AI commoditisation: competitors like Anthropic and OpenAI could replicate Atlassian's enterprise tools more efficiently. The company also fell off LinkedIn's Best Companies for Career Growth list this month. ## What This Means for Sales Teams Enterprise buyers evaluate vendor stability when making software commitments. Employer brand damage and talent departures create sales headwinds, particularly for high-touch enterprise deals that require continuity. Atlassian runs an enterprise sales model that depends on specialised sales engineering and account teams. Recruiting for these roles gets harder when you drop off employer rankings. Great Place to Work's rankings are based on confidential employee surveys. Companies need a 65% satisfaction score to qualify. Atlassian did not meet that threshold this year. The 2026 rankings focused heavily on AI-native companies. Great Place to Work ANZ general manager Rebecca Moulynox noted: "There's something like a technology AI arms race happening across the region at the moment." Legal practice management platform Smokeball topped the medium-to-large company category with 99% employee satisfaction. ## The Reality Check Atlassian built its reputation on product-led growth and strong culture. Falling off employer rankings while cutting 10% of headcount signals a different phase. For sales professionals considering enterprise software roles, vendor stability and team continuity now require closer scrutiny. The company's challenges reflect broader enterprise software pressures: AI competition, market corrections, and the question of whether traditional SaaS models hold up against faster, cheaper alternatives.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

Pelion VC: Software worth zero, outcome pricing replaces SaaS subscriptions

## The Valuation Reset Tyler Hogge helped scale Divvy from zero to a $2.5 billion acquisition by BILL in 2021. Now a Partner at Pelion Venture Partners, he is calling it: software as a standalone product is worth zero. The math is brutal. What took Divvy engineers months to build in 2019, Hogge now ships in 27 minutes using AI tools. When the code is commoditised, the moat is not the feature set. It is the business model wrapped around it. Per-seat SaaS pricing is collapsing. Outcome-based models are next. The implications for sales teams: if your product becomes free or usage-based, your comp structure breaks. ## What Changed Post-2021, public SaaS multiples reset as interest rates rose. VCs shifted from growth-at-all-costs to efficiency and revenue quality. Generic software struggles to justify seed or Series A pricing. Capital flows to workflow ownership and AI-native advantages. Pelion's strategy reflects this. The firm led Cloudflare early and concentrated capital into winners. Cloudflare alone returned over $1 billion to the fund. When Hogge finds a founder with intensity, he backs them through seed, A, and B. He even signs quota contracts with portfolio CEOs to prove his value as an advisor. ## Implications for Sales Teams If software pricing shifts from subscriptions to outcomes, comp structures need to follow. Usage-based models complicate commission timing. Outcome-based pricing delays payouts until customer ROI is proven. Quota relief becomes harder to justify when the product is free upfront. Startups pivoting to AI-native models may restructure territories and adjust quotas mid-year. Equity compensation gets diluted in down rounds. OTE assumptions based on 2021 multiples no longer hold. For ANZ founders raising from US VCs like Pelion, the bar is higher. Path to revenue and capital efficiency matter more than growth rate. Sales teams need to show retention and payback metrics, not just pipeline. ## The Only Metric That Matters Hogge is clear: founder intensity is the only trait that predicts success in this market. Without it, brutal conditions kill companies. With it, you can still build $2.5 billion exits in four years. For sales professionals, the lesson is similar. The playbook is shifting. Comp structures will follow. Understand the business model, not just the quota.

Sales Hacker
3 months ago
News

Up Bank alumni raise $4m for XMO, AI fintech hiring for Australia launch

Former Up Bank CPO Anson Parker and payments exec Sam Mendelsohn have closed a $4 million pre-seed for XMO (Extraordinary Money), a Melbourne startup building what it calls AI-native consumer finance products. The round was co-led by Airtree Ventures and Triple Bubble, with Arconic Capital and angels participating. The company is applying for AFSL and ACL licences and plans to launch in Australia within 12 months. ## What they're building XMO is betting that AI agents will manage consumer finances, not just analyse spending data. Parker describes the product as a predictive financial model rather than a backwards-looking insights dashboard. "We think of our customers as not just the individuals, but their agents too," Parker told Startup Daily. "Agents create an opportunity to carry cognitive load for consumers and be 'always on'." The team argues existing neobanks rely too heavily on spending graphs that users lose interest in over time. XMO wants agents making purchases and managing bills on behalf of customers. ## What it means for sales The company said the $4 million will fund hiring, AI infrastructure, and regulatory approvals. Parker noted that AFSL and ACL applications "take time and money (not to mention patience)". No word yet on sales team size, CRO hire, or go-to-market structure. For context, consumer fintech sales roles in Australia typically pay $80k-$120k base for early-stage AEs, with OTE structures heavily dependent on user acquisition metrics rather than traditional enterprise ARR. The Up Bank connection gives XMO credibility in the ANZ fintech market. Up was acquired by Bendigo and Adelaide Bank in 2018 and has been a reference point for consumer banking UX in Australia since. XMO is entering a crowded AI fintech space that includes enterprise-focused vendors like Uptiq (which raised US$25m recently) and horizontal AI workflow tools from Salesforce, Microsoft, and ServiceNow. The consumer finance angle is a different play, but distribution and regulation remain the hardest parts of the model. Worth watching: whether XMO builds a traditional fintech sales motion or relies on product-led growth and partnerships. Consumer fintech sales teams look very different depending on that choice.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

SaaStr's Lemkin: Sales Execs Who Can't Outperform ChatGPT Are Already Obsolete

# SaaStr's Lemkin: Sales Execs Who Can't Outperform ChatGPT Are Already Obsolete Jason Lemkin, founder of SaaStr and former EchoSign CEO, has a blunt test for sales leaders: upload your pitch deck and product docs to ChatGPT. Ask it the hard questions your prospects ask. Technical questions. Competitive comparisons. Industry specifics. His claim: that AI will outperform 80% of your sales team right out of the box. "If your prospects can get better answers from an AI that has your data than they can from talking to you, why would they talk to you?" Lemkin wrote this week. He is not theorising. He has seen it play out. ## Three Stories That Should Worry Every CRO **Story one:** Lemkin demoed an enterprise AI product. When he asked about MCP support and Claude integration, the rep had no idea. "My guys will look into it," they said. Lemkin didn't buy. **Story two:** A SaaStr Fund portfolio company was closing a $1M deal. Their CRO, described as experienced in technical selling, asked: "What's an API call?" For the follow-up meeting, the founders left the CRO in the lobby and closed the deal themselves. **Story three:** A $100M+ AI company hired a CRO from a well-known public SaaS company. A prospect wanted to pay $3M per year but refused to talk to the new CRO. They worked directly with the forward-deployed engineer instead. The CRO was still learning the industry. ## The "People Person" Playbook Is Done Lemkin points to research from The Challenger Sale: the "relationship builder" profile, the classic people person, was one of the worst-performing sales archetypes. "Being able to chat about who won the NBA finals doesn't close deals. Knowing your product cold does." His estimate: 70 to 80% of sales executives don't know their product cold. They rely on a tear sheet, six talking points, and the ability to schmooze. That worked when buyers had fewer options and less information. It does not work when they can ask ChatGPT for better answers. ## What "Product Guru" Actually Means in 2026 Lemkin's bar: know your product better than an AI trained on your documentation. That is table stakes. You also need to know edge cases, workarounds, roadmap context that isn't written down, and how deployments actually work in production. "You cannot sell value if you're not a product expert," he said. "Value-based selling means providing value. You cannot provide value in the age of AI if you do not know the product cold." His advice for sales leaders: stop hiring people who say they are "great people persons." Start asking: can this person deploy the product? Can they explain how it works in a prospect's specific environment? Can they teach a buyer something they didn't know about their own business? If the answer is no, AI already does the job better. ## What This Means for ANZ Sales Teams SaaStr has no ANZ presence. Lemkin's advice is US-centric, focused on Silicon Valley SaaS companies. But the dynamic applies here: enterprise buyers in Sydney and Melbourne have the same expectations. They can load your deck into ChatGPT too. The implication for hiring: technical fluency is no longer optional for quota-carrying roles. If your AEs can't explain API architecture, deployment timelines, or competitive trade-offs without looping in an SE, they are adding friction, not value. The comp question: does product expertise command a premium in ANZ? Not yet. Most enterprise AE roles still pay for quota attainment, not technical depth. That may change if buyers keep refusing to talk to sales and closing deals through solutions architects instead. Lemkin's test stands: upload your docs to Claude. If it answers better than your team, you know what to fix.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Australian trust tax hits 350,000 SMEs, forces restructure wave

# Australian trust tax hits 350,000 SMEs, forces restructure wave Treasurer Jim Chalmers dropped a 30% baseline tax on discretionary trust income in the 2026-27 Federal Budget. The move targets 350,000 Australian small businesses that use trusts for income splitting. Trusts let business owners distribute income to family members in lower tax brackets. A business owner might split $200k income between themselves and a non-working spouse, reducing the family's overall tax bill. The new 30% floor kills that strategy. ## What this means for sales teams Pitcher Partners national chairman Brendan Britten says businesses will divert resources from growth to restructuring. That means hiring freezes, delayed territory expansion, and comp reviews. For sales professionals at SMEs: watch your company's structure. If your employer runs through a trust, expect 6-12 months of accounting chaos. Some businesses will convert to companies, others will absorb the tax hit. Either way, it affects cashflow, which affects quota, which affects your OTE. ANZ small businesses generated $500 billion revenue in 2025, with trusts used by 40% of owners. The tax applies to roughly 1-2 million businesses holding around $1 trillion in trust assets. ## The timing matters This hits as small business headcount grew 5% post-2025. The policy could slow that momentum. Larger corporates with different structures avoid the impact, creating a competitive gap. Chalmers frames it as fairness: "aligning the taxes paid on these types of income with the taxes paid on wages." Small business owners see it differently: a tax hike disguised as reform. For sellers: if you cover SME accounts, expect budget scrutiny and longer sales cycles. If you are job hunting, factor in whether your target employer uses a trust structure. That 30% baseline changes the math on comp plans and growth investment. No implementation timeline announced yet, but restructuring takes months. The disruption starts now.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

Budget 2026: Startups back R&D reforms, warn CGT changes could kill equity comp

# Budget 2026: Startups back R&D reforms, warn CGT changes could kill equity comp Australia's startup sector is split on Budget 2026. R&D tax incentive reforms and expanded VC tax settings got solid support. The proposed capital gains tax overhaul has founders and investors concerned about equity compensation. The budget included major changes to the Research and Development Tax Incentive, expanded VC tax settings, startup loss refundability measures, and a permanent $20,000 instant asset write-off. Tech Council of Australia CEO Kate Cornick said there was "much to be commended" in the package. But the CGT changes became the dominant talking point. Startup ecosystem leaders spent days lobbying against the proposal, warning it could weaken equity incentives and discourage investment in high-growth companies. ## What matters for sales teams If you are selling into startups or considering an equity-heavy comp package, pay attention. CGT changes directly affect how valuable those stock options actually are when you exit. The government acknowledged "unique characteristics" of startups and early-stage investment in budget papers. They committed to consultation on how CGT reforms interact with startup equity incentives before the July 2027 rollout. Translation: your Series B offer with heavy equity weighting just became harder to value. If CGT rates increase without carve-outs for startup equity, that stock option package loses appeal compared to straight cash comp. ## The trade-off R&D tax incentive expansion means more runway for tech companies. That usually translates to hiring. But if equity comp gets less attractive due to CGT changes, expect base salary pressure to increase. Watch how this plays out in H2 2026 hiring. If CGT changes land without startup exemptions, companies will need to adjust comp structures. That means either higher base salaries or creative workarounds on equity vesting schedules. For AEs evaluating startup offers: get clarity on how the company is modeling CGT impact on your equity package. If they have not run the numbers yet, that is a red flag on their comp planning. Consultation period runs through Q1 2027. Until then, equity-heavy offers carry more risk than usual.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

Airwallex CEO: CGT reform will drive founders offshore, hurt startup hiring

Airwallex co-founder Kim Teo says Australia's capital gains tax reform will drive startup founders offshore, gutting the equity-based comp that attracts sales talent to early-stage companies. The 2026-27 federal budget scrapped the 50% CGT discount on asset sales and introduced a 30% minimum tax rate. Treasurer Jim Chalmers positioned it as "intergenerational fairness" targeting property investors, but the reform hits all asset classes, including startup equity. Teo's concern: founders will relocate before exit to avoid the tax hit, and early employees (including sales teams) will see their equity packages lose value. Airwallex, valued at US$5.5 billion with 1,500 employees globally, uses equity-heavy comp to compete for talent. The company added 20% sales headcount in ANZ in 2025, targeting 300-400 staff in Australia and New Zealand. Under the old model, investors and employees holding shares for 12+ months paid CGT at half their marginal rate. The new regime taxes real gains above inflation with a 30% floor, regardless of holding period. For a senior AE holding $200k in vested shares from a 2023 grant, that changes the math significantly. Airwallex maintains ~200-300 sales professionals globally (15-20% of headcount), led by CRO James Kay (ex-Stripe, joined 2022). The company processed US$50 billion+ in annualized payment volume in 2023 across 100,000+ customers, holding 20-25% share in ANZ enterprise cross-border FX. The budget included startup support measures, but Teo's point stands: policy does not matter if founders leave before exit. For sales teams considering equity-heavy offers at Australian startups, the reform changes exit value calculations. Worth running the numbers on vested shares under both tax regimes before signing. Airwallex has raised over US$1 billion since 2015, including a US$300 million round in 2023. No IPO timeline disclosed, but the company is positioned for public markets. The CGT reform takes effect in 2026-27, giving current employees time to assess their equity positions.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

Budget 2026: R&D tax offset boosted, refunds extended to $50M startups

## What Changed Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced major R&D Tax Incentive reforms in Budget 2026, effective July 1, 2028. The cap on eligible R&D expenditure rises from $150M to $200M. Refundable offsets, previously available only to firms under $20M turnover, now extend to those under $50M. The catch: refunds are now limited to companies under 10 years old. Older firms above the threshold can still claim offsets, just not refundable ones. Minimum spend threshold jumps from $20k to $50k. Supporting R&D expenditure eligibility is removed entirely. Core R&D offset rates increase by 4.5 percentage points, lifting the offset by 25% to 50%. ## What It Means for Sales Teams ANZ tech startups hiring sales teams just got more runway. Companies like SafetyCulture (raised $60M in 2024) or early-stage B2B SaaS firms can now access refundable tax credits deeper into their growth phase. That means more cash for headcount before profitability. Expect 2026-2027 to see increased Series A and B activity in Sydney and Melbourne. R&D credits fund product development, but they also fund the AEs and SDRs selling that product. When a startup gets $500k back from the ATO, some of that flows into sales hiring. The $200M cap disappoints. Tesla chair Robyn Denholm's Ambitious Australia review called for removing it entirely. Larger scaleups like Canva (3,000+ headcount, $26B valuation) or Atlassian (10,000+ employees, $4B+ revenue) hit that ceiling. Their growth won't accelerate from this. ## Market Context Australia's R&D spend sits at 1.8% of GDP, below the OECD average of 2.7%. This reform aims to close that gap. The US restored 100% immediate R&D deductibility in 2025 via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Ireland raised its R&D tax credit rate to 35% and increased first-year SME refunds to €87,500 in Budget 2026. ANZ is playing catch-up, but the direction is clear: more cash flow for pre-profit innovation. Sales teams at tech startups benefit when finance teams have more breathing room. Changes don't kick in until mid-2028. Plan accordingly.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

Xero down five days during tax season, accountants call it a disaster

Xero's accounting platform went down for five straight days starting May 7, hitting accountants and small businesses during Australia's tax return crunch. CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy sent a personal apology email to customers May 11, calling the situation "unacceptable." One accountant told SmartCompany the outages were "nothing short of a shit show." They reported continued platform issues Monday night, after receiving the CEO's apology email. Xero blamed the disruptions on internal systems and third-party platform integrations. The company's status page claims issues are resolved. Reality check: customers were still reporting problems after that announcement. ## Why this matters for sales Xero dominates ANZ cloud accounting with 75% market share among SMBs. The company has 4.2 million paying customers globally, with ANZ accounting for 45% of revenue ($NZ2.25 billion ARR in FY25). That is a lot of unhappy customers during the most critical time of year. The sales impact cuts two ways. First, Xero's partner ecosystem drives 70% of subscriptions. Accountants and advisors sell Xero to clients. When the platform crashes during tax season, those partners look bad. That erodes the trust that generates new subscriptions. Second, competitors are watching. MYOB, QuickBooks, and Sage all compete in ANZ. Five days of downtime during peak season is a gift to competitive sales teams. "Xero went down for a week during tax returns" is a sales objection that writes itself. Xero maintains 97% gross retention, but reliability incidents like this create switching opportunities. For sales teams selling accounting software, CRM integrations, or fintech tools that connect to Xero, this outage represents both risk and opportunity. Risk: If your product depends on Xero's API, you inherited their downtime. Opportunity: If you compete with Xero or sell alternatives, every affected accountant is now reconsidering their stack. Singh Cassidy said Xero is "working hard right now" to prevent future incidents. The real test: whether the sales team's pitch about platform reliability holds up next tax season.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

NZ consultancy Humankind acquires Blackbird-backed manager training platform The Mintable

## The Deal Humankind, a Wellington-based People & Culture consultancy, has acquired The Mintable, a Sydney management training platform backed by Blackbird Ventures. Deal terms were not disclosed. The Mintable raised AU$6.8M in seed funding in June 2022, led by Blackbird, after a AU$1.3M pre-seed in 2021. Total raised: approximately AU$8M. This acquisition marks a Blackbird portfolio exit three years after the seed round. ## What The Mintable Does The Mintable runs cohort-based manager training programmes: Manager Foundation and Manager Mastery. The platform targets HR, L&D teams, and executives trying to upskill first-time managers using what they call the "5 Dimensions" framework. Clients include Tracksuit, Sharesies, Lion Food and Beverage, and Notion. The platform was built for distributed teams, a positioning that made sense during 2021-2022 but is now table stakes. Founded by Lauren Humphrey and Melissa Miller in 2021, the startup aimed to fix the chronic gap in practical training for first-time managers. The problem statement: people get promoted because they are good at the work, then expected to manage without preparation. ## What This Means For Humankind: they get a structured software product to bolt into their consultancy services. CEO Kalyn Ponti positioned it as adding leadership training to their People & Culture offering. For The Mintable: the platform continues under new ownership. Existing customers keep getting support. No mention of team changes or product sunset. For the market: this is a mid-tier HR tech consolidation play. Humankind is not a household name outside NZ, and The Mintable had not broken out beyond ANZ despite Blackbird backing. The deal suggests the standalone path was not scaling as expected. ## The Context Blackbird's Michael Tolo, who led the seed round, framed this as a successful handover. The Mintable trained managers across Blackbird portfolio companies, making this a friendly exit rather than a distressed sale. No revenue figures, headcount, or customer metrics were shared. No word on whether the founding team is staying or exiting. Worth noting: acquisitions without disclosed terms or team retention details usually mean modest outcomes. Humankind has no public data on prior acquisitions, revenue, or team size. As a consultancy buying international assets, they likely run a mid-sized operation serving enterprise clients, but this is their first noted M&A move. ## What We Don't Know - Deal size ("undisclosed" usually means sub-$20M in ANZ HR tech) - Whether Humphrey and Miller are staying - The Mintable's ARR or customer count - Humankind's revenue or how they funded the acquisition - What happens to The Mintable brand and product roadmap For sales professionals: if you are in HR tech or L&D sales in ANZ, this is a market signal. Management training platforms are getting acquired by consultancies, not scaling to standalone exits. The path from seed to Series A in this category remains narrow.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

ProcurePro raises US$11M, hiring 100 across product and GTM

Brisbane-based ProcurePro closed US$11 million Series A led by Queensland government-backed QIC Ventures. The round values the construction procurement software startup at over US$80 million. Bouygues, a Fortune 500 construction contractor and top-10 global player, moved from customer to backer via Paris-based VC ISAI. Existing investors AirTree and Glitch Capital participated. ## Hiring 100, opening US office ProcurePro is hiring 100 people over the next 24 months across product, engineering, and go-to-market. The company will open its first US office while scaling existing operations in Brisbane, London, and Dubai. For sales professionals: this is a Series A scaling playbook. Customer becomes investor, headcount doubles, international expansion accelerates. Worth noting: ProcurePro already processed over $50 billion AUD in construction project value and hit 50% market penetration in Australia. The Bouygues partnership validates enterprise market fit before US expansion. ## What they sell ProcurePro digitises subcontractor procurement for main contractors: scheduling, tendering, bid analysis, subcontracting in one platform. Replaces spreadsheets and email chains. Current customers process approximately 1,000 contracts monthly through the platform. According to founder and CEO Alastair Blenkin, the company is investing in AI to enable construction firms to estimate project costs using historical purchasing data instead of manual estimates. ## Market context The timing aligns with Queensland's infrastructure programme ahead of the 2032 Olympics. QIC Ventures Investment Director Nick Capell noted the opportunity "upstream of construction" where 80% of project costs are locked in at procurement stage. ProcurePro previously raised $2.6 million in seed funding backed by Geoff Tarrant, co-founder of construction fintech Payapps, plus Australian and US investors. The company has been deployed across over 6,000 projects globally. For GTM teams: construction tech is infrastructure-adjacent. Long sales cycles, enterprise deal sizes, multi-stakeholder approval processes. This raise signals market validation and competitive moat in a traditionally underdigitalised vertical.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

ProcurePro raising $15M, hiring 100 across product and GTM

## The Numbers ProcurePro raised $15M Series B at a $110M valuation. QIC Ventures led, with existing backers AirTree and Glitch Capital participating. French construction firm Bouygues, already a customer, invested via Paris-based VC ISAI. The company is hiring 100 people over the next 24 months. Roles span product, engineering, and go-to-market. They are standing up a US office while scaling existing presence in Brisbane, London, and Dubai. ## What They Actually Do ProcurePro sells procurement software to construction head contractors. The platform consolidates scheduling, tendering, bid analysis, and subcontracting into one system. Replaces spreadsheets, email chains, and disconnected documents. They claim 6,000+ projects deployed globally, powering over $70 billion in construction value. The company says they have reduced procurement time by 50% and saved 300+ years of admin time. Target market: ANZ leadership, expanding into UK (with $600M in signed projects as of 2024) and now the US. ## The AI Play Founder and CEO Alastair Blenkin says the funding goes toward AI development. The pitch: use historical purchasing data to estimate new project costs instead of relying on guesswork. "After years of supporting procurement across thousands of projects, we now have a rich foundation of real-world procurement data," Blenkin said. "This funding allows us to invest further in AI, where we'll enable construction firms to estimate new project costs backed by their historical purchasing data." ## Market Context ProcurePro competes in construction management software alongside Procore, Coupa, and SAP Ariba. The procurement software sales market is heating up: companies are hiring for remote and entry-level roles, with salary ranges varying widely based on enterprise vs SMB focus. This is their second funding round after a $6.15M Series A in January 2024 led by Airtree Ventures and Saniel Ventures. No public revenue figures available, but the valuation and project volume suggest strong traction in ANZ and UK markets. ## What It Means for Sales Teams If you are in construction tech sales or looking at procurement software roles, ProcurePro is scaling fast. 100 hires over 24 months means roughly 4 new people per month, likely weighted toward GTM as they push into the US. No specific comp data released, but ANZ construction tech AE roles typically sit at $100k-$140k base depending on segment. The US expansion matters: American construction procurement software sales jobs tend to pay 20-30% higher OTE than ANZ equivalents. If they are opening a US office, expect roles to post in the next 6-12 months.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

BuildPass hits 20% US revenue in 6 months, adds venture debt for Austin hiring

## BuildPass hits 20% US revenue in 6 months, adds venture debt for Austin hiring Melbourne construction software startup BuildPass opened an Austin office six months ago. The US market now accounts for 20% of revenue, up from zero in July 2025. The company is running 50% month-on-month growth in the US and over 100% year-on-year globally. Total customers surpassed 1,000, with 400,000 users and 100,000 subcontractors across Australia, New Zealand, the US, and one additional market. CEO Matt Perrott relocated to Austin with his family in July 2025. Six months later, the US is the fastest-growing segment despite Australia and New Zealand still driving 80% of revenue. "Teams don't trial this on a single site, they standardise it across their portfolio," Perrott said. "That's what's driving the pace of growth we're seeing." BuildPass secured venture debt from Sydney-based Mighty Partners to fund US hiring and go-to-market spend. The structure avoids diluting shareholders from the $7.5M seed round led by Carthona Capital in late 2024. That round included Aconex co-founder Leigh Jasper's Saniel Ventures and GitHub founder Tom Preston-Werner's fund. Mighty Partners provides growth credit up to $5M on terms up to 36 months. The lender rebranded from Fundabl last year and counts Lyka, WeMoney, and Amber Electric in its portfolio. BuildPass competes against Procore (NYSE-listed, over $1B annual revenue) and Autodesk Construction Cloud in the US market. The platform handles compliance, contractor management, and site operations with AI tooling from OpenAI and Anthropic. The company opened a 3,084 sq ft Austin office at 1005 W. 38th St. Team size has grown from 2 to over 40 employees globally since founding in 2021. BuildPass raised at least $5.5M prior to the 2024 seed round. ### What this means for sales teams US expansion at this pace means BuildPass is likely hiring AEs and potentially SDRs in Austin. The company has not posted specific sales roles or comp data publicly. Construction tech sales typically involves longer cycles and enterprise deals, but BuildPass's land-and-expand motion ("standardise it across their portfolio") suggests strong expansion revenue potential. Venture debt instead of equity means the sales team gets funded growth without the pressure of a new valuation milestone. That can mean more realistic quotas and longer ramp periods, or it can mean aggressive targets to justify the debt servicing. Worth watching if Austin-based sales roles appear with transparent OTE data.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

$20k instant asset write-off now permanent, affects B2B equipment sales

## The Numbers The $20,000 instant asset write-off is now permanent. Small businesses with aggregated turnover under $10 million can immediately deduct the full cost of eligible assets under $20k, instead of depreciating over multiple years. Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced the measure Saturday, ending years of temporary extensions. The previous deadline was June 30, 2026. Now there is no deadline. ## What This Means for B2B Sales If you sell equipment, software, or services to SMBs, this matters. The permanence removes the urgency around the June 2026 deadline, but it also removes the uncertainty that kept businesses from committing to larger purchases. Businesses with tax certainty are more likely to invest in tools, technology, and training. The Housing Industry Association has been pushing for this, specifically citing how the write-off supports equipment investment and safety systems during labor shortages. For enterprise AEs selling into construction, trades, professional services: your buying cycle just got more predictable. No more "wait until we know if the write-off gets extended" objections. ## The Compliance Angle Chalmers says this saves small businesses 376,000 hours per year in compliance. That is administrative overhead that previously ate into decision-making time. Less time wrestling with depreciation schedules means more time evaluating purchases. ## Territory Impact This covers the entire SMB segment: 400,000+ businesses. If your patch includes trades, equipment buyers, or professional services firms, the tax treatment of capital expenditure just became simpler and permanent. Worth noting: the write-off applies to assets first used or installed ready for use. That means sales teams need to factor in delivery and installation timelines when positioning end-of-financial-year deals. ## What Has Not Changed The $20k threshold. The $10m turnover eligibility. The requirement that assets must be used in the business. This is the same write-off, just without the expiry date uncertainty.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

SaaStr's AI agent costs $254/month, handles analyst work, cannot do strategy

# SaaStr's AI Agent Costs $254/Month, Handles Analyst Work, Cannot Do Strategy SaaStr's AI marketing agent, nicknamed '10K', runs on `gpt-4o-mini` and costs about $254/month in OpenAI tokens. Jason Lemkin says it helped drive SaaStr to $10m ARR this year. The agent does not replace a VP of Marketing. It replaces the bottom half of four roles: marketing analyst, ops coordinator, junior content marketer, and the reporting layer of a VPM job. That is roughly 1.5-2 FTEs of execution work, which would cost $250k-$400k fully loaded at a real B2B company. SaaStr pays $700/year instead. Every morning before 6:45am, 10K refreshes ticket sales, updates dashboards with net revenue (not gross, which it calls a vanity metric), compares week-over-week performance, drafts the daily newsletter, writes tweets, logs comp tickets, and snapshots financials. It pulls from Bizzabo, Salesforce, Marketo, WordPress, X, and YouTube. It writes to Slack, Resend, and internal dashboards. What it cannot do: strategy, hiring, cross-functional politics, brand judgment, net-new channel invention, crisis response, or stakeholder management. It will not pick an ICP. It cannot tell when someone is about to quit. It has no opinion on whether SaaStr should expand into a developer audience. It optimizes inside the box but does not redraw the box. The agent is banned from using the word 'SaaS' in anything it generates (it defaults to 'B2B' instead) because every model trained on 2018-2022 marketing copy makes that mistake. That is not taste. That is a regex Jason wrote. The cost arbitrage is real. The latency advantage is real (6:45am reports versus Monday morning analyst work). The limitation is equally real: execution only, no judgment calls. A human marketing analyst pulls the YoY chart on Monday morning. 10K has it ready every morning with the fun-fact pre-written and queued for Slack. What this means for sales teams: the analyst and coordinator roles are vulnerable, but the people-facing, strategic, and crisis-response parts of the job are not. If your role is 80% reporting and dashboard maintenance, that math is changing fast. If your role is hiring the right AE or reading the room in an exec meeting, you are fine for now. SaaStr is bootstrapped, lean headcount (estimated under 50), and US-focused with no ANZ presence. The 10K agent replaced work, not people. No layoffs reported. The agent cost $254 last month. Historical marketing analyst comp in similar B2B media companies sits around $65k-$85k base in the US, $55k-$70k in ANZ markets. The real question: how much of your role is data synthesis versus judgment? The former is getting automated. The latter is not.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Twilio, Datadog hit 20%+ growth. HubSpot, Shopify miss. Market split on AI revenue.

## The Numbers Five public B2B companies just proved reacceleration is real, if selective. Twilio went from 4% growth in Q2 2024 to 20% in Q1 2026. Revenue $1.41B, up 20% reported. Voice grew 20% (fastest in 19 quarters), messaging hit 25%, NRR climbed to 114% from 107% YoY. The driver: AI voice workloads. Conversational AI and agent-to-human handoffs moved from feature to revenue line. Datadog crossed $1B in quarterly revenue for the first time, up 32% YoY. Customers over $100K ARR grew 21% to ~4,550. More than 50% use 4+ products. Anthropic signed an 8-figure deal. GPU monitoring, LLM experiments, AI agent observability: product lines that did not exist 18 months ago are now material. Stock popped 28%. Atlassian hit 32% growth (revenue $1.79B), fastest in six quarters. Cloud revenue $1.13B, up 29%. Cloud NRR above 120% for three consecutive quarters. Rovo crossed 5M monthly active users. Customers using Rovo are expanding ARR at 2x the rate of those who are not. Stock jumped 30% in a day. Worth noting: $50M of the beat was pull-forward Data Center license revenue tied to end-of-life. Strip that out and growth sits closer to high-20s. Still a clear acceleration. Cloudflare grew 34%, added 37K net new customers in Q4 2025 (332K paying customers total, 120% NRR). Also announced 1,100 cuts (~10% of headcount) to "go AI-first." Palantir grew 85%, fastest ever as a public company, driven by AIP bootcamps. HubSpot and Shopify reported solid quarters but missed forward acceleration targets. Markets punished HubSpot down 20%. The bifurcation is clear: AI-driven revenue growth gets rewarded. AI-in-progress gets sold. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If you are carrying a bag at a company with measurable AI product revenue, your comp just got more predictable. Twilio, Datadog, Atlassian are expanding teams into 2026. If your company is still in the "we have AI features" phase without usage or expansion data, expect quota pressure and territory optimisation. Cloudflare's 1,100 cuts while growing 34% signal a shift: headcount efficiency matters again. High-growth companies are not immune to layoffs if margin expansion is the priority. Comp plans in 2026 are tracking more closely to product-led growth and usage metrics, less to seat expansion. For ANZ sales professionals: Twilio has a Sydney hub (~50-100 headcount, sales and engineering). Cloudflare runs sales teams in Auckland and Sydney (~20-30). Atlassian Sydney HQ employs ~2K, led by CRO Tom Evans. Datadog has Melbourne sales presence. If these companies are hiring into ANZ in H2 2026, expect enterprise AE and sales engineer roles tied to AI infrastructure and observability. Comp will likely track to US benchmarks adjusted 15-20% down for ANZ market rates (based on historical enterprise AE OTE data). Historical attainment matters here. Twilio's NRR jump to 114% suggests existing book expansion is real. If you are interviewing, ask for cohort data on customers adopting AI products versus legacy-only. That split will predict your ramp and quota relief in 2026-2027. The reacceleration is real. It is also uneven. Know which side of the split your company is on before you sign the offer.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Agent Operator: New GTM role hiring at xAI, Notion, Zapier

## The role Three companies are hiring for what amounts to the same position. xAI calls it Head of GTM, Systems and Agents. Notion calls it GTM AI and Innovation Manager. Zapier calls it Director of GTM Innovation. The title varies, but the job description converges: run AI agents in GTM at scale. The work sits somewhere between RevOps, sales enablement, and product. You define what agents do, evaluate if they did it well, handle edge cases, and optimize the system. You are not writing code. You are writing prompts, building workflows in Clay or n8n, and making sure the fleet of agents behind your SDR team does not go off the rails. ## Why now Agent capabilities expanded 10x in 18 months. The tooling stack hit production grade: Clay for data, Lindy for vertical agents, orchestration on top of Claude and GPT. Buyers expect personalized outreach at scale. The unit economics of human-only teams do not work anymore. The unit economics of agent-only teams do not work either, because agents hallucinate context without supervision. The math that works: humans plus agents, with someone running the seam. That someone is the Agent Operator. ## What it pays None of the listings include comp. xAI is a $24B+ valuation company with ~50 to 70 GTM headcount. Notion is public, $15B market cap, ~150 to 200 in sales. Zapier is self-funded, ~100 in GTM. The role sits at Director to VP level based on scope. Comparable GTM ops or enablement roles in ANZ run $140k to $180k base, but this role has more leverage. Expect OTE closer to $200k to $250k at mid-market tech, higher at frontier AI companies. ## The shadow version Most teams already have someone doing this work: a high-agency RevOps lead, a curious AE, or the marketer who turned their personal Claude workflow into the team standard. They are doing the job without the title, the budget, or the tools to do it properly. That is changing. ## What this means If you are in RevOps or sales enablement and you have been building agent workflows on the side, this is your next role. If you are hiring, the Agent Operator is not a cost line. It is the multiplier on every other GTM hire you make. Without one, your three-person SDR team has three people. With one, your three-person SDR team has three people and a fleet of agents doing research, list building, and first-touch outreach behind them. The work did not disappear. It moved upstream. The leverage concentrated. The role is real.

Sales Hacker
3 months ago
News

Palantir hits 145% Rule of 40, Coinbase kills manager-of-managers role

## The Numbers That Matter Palantir delivered a 145% Rule of 40 score this quarter: 39% revenue growth plus 106% operating margin. That puts them in historical company with Nvidia, Micron, and SK Hynix. Nobody else. Remaining Performance Obligation jumped 134% to $4.45 billion. U.S. commercial revenue grew 71% year-over-year. CEO Alex Karp said every stakeholder now shows up to commercial buying meetings, a level of deal compression he has never seen. The reason: enterprises are finally writing $100 million checks to transform entire business units with AI. Palantir can take that bet. Most SaaS vendors are still selling $200k feature purchases. ## What This Means for Sales Orgs The implications reach beyond Palantir's numbers. When deals jump from $200k to $100 million, the entire sales motion changes. You need fewer reps carrying bigger numbers. Territory design breaks. Quota models reset. Comp plans that worked at mid-market scale do not work at this deal size. Meanwhile, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong made explicit what many founders think privately: the manager-of-managers layer is dead weight. His new policy: if you cannot ship code and manage simultaneously, you are out. Anyone on LinkedIn talking about "my team" instead of their own output gets cut. This hits sales organizations directly. The traditional SaaS sales hierarchy runs: reps report to managers, managers report to directors, directors report to VPs. That structure assumes management is a full-time job. Armstrong is saying it is not, or it should not be. ## The Reacceleration Context Palantir is not alone. Atlassian up 29%, Twilio up 20%, Five9 up 23%. The B2B SaaS reacceleration is real, but survival requires two things: monetize your existing base with AI AND attract net new customers. One without the other is a slow decline. Atlassian nailed existing base monetization. Twilio got both. HubSpot just announced AI agents on par with humans in their next release, late but not too late. For sales teams, the lesson is clear: the playbook that worked in 2022 does not work now. Deal sizes are compressing upward or staying flat. Buyers expect AI-driven transformation, not feature additions. And the org chart is flattening whether you are ready or not. ## What to Watch Palantir's go-to-market model at $100 million deal sizes. How many AEs can actually carry that quota? What does territory assignment look like when three deals hit your annual number? Coinbase's management purge and whether other tech companies follow. If the manager-of-managers role disappears, compensation structures will need to adjust. An IC sales leader carrying quota pays differently than a people manager. The broader SaaS reacceleration and whether it holds through Q2. Growth is back, but only for companies that can prove AI value and land new logos simultaneously.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Harvey AI hits 50% DAU/MAU, proves engagement drives B2B AI growth

## Harvey AI Engagement Numbers Show New B2B Reality Harvey AI CEO Winston Weinberg posted April metrics that connect three data points most B2B companies still treat separately: net new ARR up 6x year over year, DAU/MAU approaching 50%, and average users spending 12 hours per month in the product. That 50% DAU/MAU ratio matters. Most B2B tools sit at 10 to 20%. Public SaaS companies historically buried this metric because the numbers looked bad. Harvey users are logging in daily, spending 25 to 30 minutes per session. That is workspace behaviour, not occasional tool usage. The company crossed $190M ARR in January 2026 and raised at an $11B valuation in March (total funding exceeds $500M from Sequoia, OpenAI Startup Fund, Kleiner Perkins). Revenue estimates put ARR at $50M+ as of late 2025, driven by enterprise deals with AmLaw 100 firms. Over 40% of top law firms use Harvey. ## Why This Matters for Sales Teams Traditional B2B sales tracked ARR, NRR, and logo retention. Engagement was a customer success metric, usually called "license utilisation" to sound more enterprise. That model breaks in AI products where usage predicts renewal better than contract value. For AEs selling AI tools: daily active users now forecast churn risk months before renewal conversations. A customer with 15% DAU/MAU will churn regardless of contract size. A customer at 45% DAU/MAU will expand. Sales enablement platforms face the same dynamic. If your reps log in twice a month, the platform churns at renewal. If they are in it daily for content, coaching, or deal reviews, that is sticky revenue. Investors price this in. Harvey's 20x+ ARR multiple reflects engagement driven premiums over traditional B2B SaaS. When boards ask about usage metrics, they are asking about valuation risk. ## ANZ Implications Harvey has minimal ANZ presence (likely under 5 employees via remote), focused on US and UK markets. Asia Pacific expansion is nascent post 2025 funding. No public ANZ partnerships or deals disclosed yet, though firms like King & Wood Mallesons are potential targets. For ANZ sales professionals in AI or SaaS: if your comp plan still pays on bookings without usage gates, that structure is outdated. Usage based compensation models are coming.

SaaStr
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