The Wire

Real-time updates from ANZ tech sales

about 1 month ago
News

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

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

SmartCompany
about 1 month ago
News

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

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

SmartCompany
about 1 month ago
News

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

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

Startup Daily
about 1 month ago
News

WiseTech founder White quits chair, shares rally 9%

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

Startup Daily
about 1 month ago
News

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

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

SaaStr
about 1 month ago
News

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

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

SaaStr
about 1 month ago
News

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

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

SaaStr
about 1 month ago
News

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

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

SmartCompany
about 1 month ago
News

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

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

SmartCompany
about 1 month ago
News

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

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

SaaStr
about 1 month ago
News

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

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

SaaStr
about 1 month ago
News

Vercel cut SDR team from 10 to 1, costs $5k yearly

## The Numbers Vercel reduced its SDR function from 10 people to 1.25 full-time equivalents using an AI agent that costs $5,000 annually to run. The agent handles lead qualification across all time zones. One person manages US coverage, 0.25 FTE covers Europe and APAC. Engineering maintenance requires 20% of a single engineer. COO Jeanne DeWitt Grosser, who ran go-to-market at Google and Stripe before joining Vercel, calculates this as a 32x ROI. Nine salaries eliminated, replaced with compute that runs 24/7 at 90th percentile performance. The displaced team moved into higher-value sales roles. SDR quotas increased 30% the quarter after deployment. ## How They Built It A GTM engineer shadowed Vercel's top-performing SDR for days, documenting every browser tab, every qualification step, every data source she touched. LinkedIn, BuiltWith, CRM, Slack history. Each action became a workflow step before any AI entered the process. The agent ran in shadow mode for six weeks. The best SDR reviewed every output, fed corrections back until she could not improve it anymore. Production deployment followed. The same framework then scaled across 30 different SDR workflows: event follow-up, product-qualified accounts, time-based campaigns. First prototype took one engineer a weekend. Six weeks to production. ## What This Means for Sales Teams Vercel also automated 93% of technical support cases and 96% of content updates. This is not a demo: production scale, with costs included. The pattern repeats across functions. The architecture matters for anyone selling into companies building agents. If your product lacks accessible APIs, composable webhooks, or developer-friendly integration points, you are invisible to agentic workflows. Vercel would rip out tools that could not support this automation. For sales professionals: the deterministic parts of the job are moving to agents. Vercel's approach moved humans up the stack, not out the door. The question for your org is whether leadership frames this as headcount reduction or role evolution. Worth noting: Vercel hit $200 million ARR in 2025, up 80% year over year. They closed a $300 million Series F at a $9.3 billion valuation. This automation happened during hypergrowth, not contraction.

SaaStr
about 1 month ago
News

Drift co-founder calls $1.2B exit his biggest failure, builds Agency around customer obsession

## Drift co-founder calls $1.2B exit his biggest failure, builds Agency around customer obsession Elias Torres sold Drift for $1.2 billion. The product got shut down. The team was let go. He calls it his biggest failure. The Drift co-founder joined GTMnow to explain why the headline number felt hollow, and what he is building next: Agency, an AI company that runs customer operations end-to-end. The pitch is bold: $1B in revenue with fewer than 100 employees, where 80-90% of the team are engineers and everyone talks to customers. Torres is clear about what went wrong at Drift: losing control meant the mission died. "Success isn't the headline number," he said. "It's building something enduring that keeps delivering value to customers." The exit taught him that money changes nothing about identity, and that letting down customers and team is the real failure worth learning from. ### The Agency thesis: constraint as strategy Agency is backed by Sequoia's Pat Grady and HubSpot's Brian Halligan. Torres runs the entire company on Agency itself, no CRM. The constraint is deliberate: headcount cap at 100 forces efficiency. "Necessity forces creativity," Torres said. "Abundance breeds bloat." He points to coding agents advancing fast enough that even 25 engineers may be more than needed. The customer obsession piece is non-negotiable: every hire talks to customers, regardless of role. ### What this means for sales teams Torres believes sales will be the last role AI eliminates, but the function is changing. Distribution is harder than product in the AI era. Customer obsession is the only sustainable moat. His advice for sales leaders: constraint protects clarity, bloat kills speed, and the title matters less than the work. Agency is bootstrapped in approach despite backing, focused on North American market, with no confirmed ANZ presence. Torres has spent 20+ years building with David Cancel (Performable, HubSpot, Drift), and the partnership endures through this next build. The pitch is ambitious. The track record is proven. The lessons from the $1.2B exit are specific: enduring value beats exit headlines, customer obsession beats feature velocity, and constraint beats scale.

Sales Hacker
about 1 month ago
News

LaunchVic shuts down, merged into Innovation Victoria after 8 years

LaunchVic shut down after eight years, merged into Breakthrough Victoria to create Innovation Victoria. The consolidation is part of broader cost cuts as Victoria faces $194 billion state debt. **What happened:** LaunchVic, Victoria's startup support agency since 2017, completed 190+ investments across hundreds of startups before being dissolved. Its equity investment functions moved to Breakthrough Victoria (a $2 billion government fund focused on later-stage deals), while grant programs shifted to Invest Victoria. **Leadership changes:** Former LaunchVic CEO Dr Kate Cornick left for Tech Council of Australia. Breakthrough Victoria CEO Rod Bristow now leads Innovation Victoria. Former LaunchVic chair Leigh Jasper exited, with board director Geoff Tarrant (Payapps cofounder, acquired by Autodesk in 2024) stepping up as chair. **The numbers:** LaunchVic helped push women-led ventures from 20% to 33% of Victorian startups between 2020 and now. Victoria pulled $2.2 billion in VC funding in 2025 (2.9x increase from 2024), claiming top ANZ spot. **What it means:** Victoria is consolidating startup support under fewer agencies. Innovation Victoria positions itself as a "single front door" for founders, researchers, and investors. Translation: one agency instead of multiple touchpoints, ostensibly simpler for startups navigating government programs. **Worth noting:** The merger comes as Victorian Labor trails in polls ahead of the November 28 state election. The government is selling this as streamlining, but it is also cost-cutting during a budget crisis. Whether that improves or damages Victoria's startup ecosystem depends on execution, not the rebrand. For founders and sales teams at Victorian startups: your government contact just changed. The programs might look different. The money is still there (Breakthrough Victoria has $2 billion), but the early-stage focus LaunchVic championed is now under a bigger tent with later-stage priorities.

Startup Daily
about 1 month ago
News

SaaStr runs sales with 3 humans, 20 AI agents, collapses finance into marketing AI

## SaaStr runs sales with 3 humans, 20 AI agents, collapses finance into marketing AI SaaStr is running its entire operation with 3 humans and more than 20 AI agents in production. Their latest move: an AI VP of Finance that does not exist as a standalone tool. It runs inside 10K, their AI VP of Marketing built on Replit. The setup flips the prevailing narrative. Most vendors are selling you 100 specialized agents, one per function, each with its own login. SaaStr is going the opposite direction: fewer agents, each going deeper, all pulling from shared context about the business. The trigger was collections falling six figures behind. When you are lean, late payments are not rounding errors. They are the difference between paying commissions on time or not. Their part-time finance team fell behind, someone went on vacation, the backlog never recovered. Collections is work people avoid because it is awkward. Asking a real company to pay $45k to $400k for a sponsorship 60 days after the event slips to the bottom of the list. It stays there until you write it off. So they built an AI VP of Finance. Not because it sounded cool. Because they had a high-pain use case worth solving. ### What this means for sales ops SaaStr connected four finance systems to 10K: bill.com (under 10 minutes), Mercury (straightforward), Stripe (easy), and QuickBooks (the painful one). The agent sits on top of the APIs and sees the whole picture. The architectural choice matters. One consolidated agent with deep context versus a dozen narrow agents that cannot talk to each other. It is closer to a monorepo than an app store. Customer success is already seeing this. QBee, their AI VP of Customer Success, cut human hours by 70%. Not 70% faster. 70% fewer human hours required. ### The outbound reality check Sam Blond, founder of Monaco (one of the 20 agents SaaStr runs), joined their podcast. His take: outbound is not dead, but the bar is higher. AI SDRs can handle volume, but the strategy still requires humans who understand the market. SaaStr is not running a traditional sales team. They are proving you can automate go-to-market functions without replacing strategic thinking. The AI handles execution. Humans handle strategy and oversight. Amelia Lerutte, Chief AI Officer at SaaStr, built 10K and QBee. She now has a human marketing exec reporting to 10K. That reporting structure is the story: AI leads execution, humans manage the agent. ### The takeaway for ANZ sales teams This is not vapourware. SaaStr is a real business running real revenue operations with this stack. They are based in San Francisco with no reported ANZ operations, but the model is relevant everywhere. If you are evaluating AI SDR tools or sales automation, the question is not whether to use agents. It is whether you want 100 disconnected tools or a few that actually know your business. Collections going on autopilot is table stakes. The real shift is agents collapsing into each other, not multiplying. Fewer logins, deeper context, less overhead. That is what agentic selling looks like when you strip out the vendor pitch decks.

SaaStr
about 1 month ago
News

Visa, Stripe back Open USD stablecoin: zero-fee B2B payments launch 2026

## What it is Open USD (OUSD) is a new US dollar stablecoin governed by Open Standard, an independent consortium launched June 2026. 140+ backers include Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, Google, Shopify, BlackRock, and Ripple. Launch expected later in 2026. Key difference: zero-fee minting and redemption with no volume caps. Most stablecoins charge fees and limit supply. OUSD scales on demand. ## Why it matters for B2B Target market is businesses, payment processors, banks, and fintechs needing efficient cross-border settlement. The pitch: lower costs than traditional payment rails, faster settlement than wire transfers, more transparent economics than existing stablecoins. Reserve income gets shared across ecosystem partners instead of captured entirely by an issuer. This is the consortium governance model: no single entity controls the network. ## Who is running it Zach Abrams, founding CEO of Open Standard, previously co-founded Bridge (stablecoin infrastructure, acquired by Stripe late 2024). Stripe integration likely matters for ANZ adoption. Worth noting: Open Standard itself has no public ANZ headcount or local sales team. But founding partners Visa, Stripe, and Mastercard have significant ANZ operations. Stripe employs hundreds across Australia and New Zealand in sales, engineering, and customer success. ## Market position Not positioned as a competitor to USDC (Circle) or USDT (Tether), but as shared network infrastructure. The model: collaborative asset versus issuer-led token. Tether and Circle are notably absent from the backer list. Early coverage frames this as a challenge to their yield-driven economics. ## Enterprise stablecoin adoption context Stablecoin transaction volume hit record levels in 2024. B2B fintech adoption is accelerating, particularly for cross-border payments where traditional methods remain slow and expensive. Visa Direct already supports stablecoin settlement in select markets. Open USD extends this infrastructure play: making digital dollars work like native internet money for business payments. ## What to watch Launch timing (later 2026), initial adoption metrics, and whether the zero-fee model actually scales. Also: how ANZ businesses access it given no local Open Standard team. Likely route is through existing Stripe, Visa, or Mastercard relationships. The bigger question: does consortium governance work at scale, or do decisions bog down when 140 partners have input? Enterprise payment infrastructure needs to ship fast and stay reliable.

SmartCompany
about 1 month ago
News

Australian Medical Angels raising $40m fund, hires ex-Startmate CEO as venture partner

## The Move Australian Medical Angels, a Sydney angel syndicate run by doctors, is raising a $40 million fund and hired Michael Batko as venture partner. Batko ran Startmate for eight years, backed 220 companies, and built a portfolio worth $3.5 billion. He stepped down in early 2026 and joined Medical Angels in March to handle the raise, investor relations, and operations. The fund hit $4 million in commitments in 10 weeks. It is structured as an Early Stage Venture Capital Limited Partnership (ESVCLP), targeting digital health, MedTech, healthcare SaaS, and low-risk medical devices. ## What It Means for Sales More funded health tech startups means more med device and health tech sales roles in ANZ. Medical Angels has backed 30 companies since 2017, all still operating, including Smileyscope (VR-based pain management) and Coviu (telehealth platform running 300,000 monthly consultations). If you are tracking med device sales opportunities, watch Medical Angels portfolio companies. They focus on rural health and healthcare equity, which means selling into underserved markets, not just metro hospitals. ## The Comp Context VC-backed med device startups typically hire sales reps during or after seed rounds. Entry-level med device sales reps in Australia earn $60k to $80k base, with OTE around $100k to $120k. Senior sales directors at established med device companies pull $180k to $250k OTE. Early-stage health tech companies often sit below these benchmarks but offer equity upside. Operating partners at VC firms, Batko's new role, typically earn $150k to $300k base depending on fund size and scope. Medical Angels is smaller than funds like Medtronic Ventures or SV Health Investors, but Batko's part-time arrangement and startup equity (he co-founded Hourglass AI) suggests comp is structured around carried interest and portfolio performance. ## Why This Matters Australian Medical Angels is doctor-led, which means clinical validation before investment. That matters for sales teams pitching to hospitals: portfolio companies have built-in clinical credibility. The $40 million fund is small compared to US players like Versant Ventures, but in ANZ early-stage health tech, it is a meaningful capital source. Batko's network from Startmate adds distribution. If you are hiring or job hunting in ANZ health tech sales, track this fund's portfolio announcements.

Startup Daily
about 1 month ago
News

Emesent raises $25M debt, no sales hiring details disclosed

## The Round Emesent, a Milton-based drone autonomy startup, closed $25M: $10M venture debt from National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC's first debt deal), plus $15M in SAFE notes from Main Sequence Ventures, QIC, NGS Super, Hostplus, and Orion Resource Partners. Total raised to date: $60M across seed (2018), $32M Series A (2022), and this debt round. ## What They Actually Do Emesent makes Hovermap, a LiDAR mapping system for GPS-denied environments like underground mines. The tech maps spaces where traditional surveying fails: collapsed tunnels, active stopes, hazardous industrial sites. Customer list includes Rio Tinto, BHP, Glencore. They claim 200+ mine sites globally, which suggests decent enterprise traction in a sector notorious for long sales cycles. ## The Sales Angle Here is what we do not know: sales team size, hiring plans, territory structure, or comp. The funding announcement mentions expanding manufacturing in Wacol, Queensland and developing their Cortex AI platform. No mention of adding AEs, building out enterprise sales, or scaling go-to-market. For a company serving 200+ mine sites with $60M raised, that is notable silence on the commercial side. ## Market Context Mining tech sales typically means: - 12-18 month enterprise cycles - Technical sales requiring domain expertise - Territory covering multiple countries (ANZ mines operate globally) - Comp structured around long-term deals, not transactional velocity Competitors in autonomous mapping include Autodesk Map3D, Waypoint, HighGround. Emesent's CSIRO heritage gives them tech credibility, but commercial execution is what scales revenue. ## What This Means Venture debt usually signals one of two things: extending runway without dilution, or bridging to a larger equity round. At $60M total raised, Emesent is beyond early-stage but has not disclosed ARR or revenue metrics. For sales professionals eyeing mining tech or autonomous systems roles: Emesent is cashed up and serving blue-chip customers, but they are not publicly hiring sales. Worth monitoring for future expansion, particularly if they open North American or European offices to support those 200+ mine sites. The NRFC investment adds government backing, which can help with enterprise credibility in regulated sectors like mining. That matters when your buyer is a multinational pulling resources from sensitive locations. ## Bottom Line Funded, enterprise customers, no disclosed sales hiring. If you are selling into mining or industrial automation, Emesent is a competitor to watch. If you are looking for mining tech sales roles, this capital raise did not come with job postings.

SmartCompany
about 1 month ago
News

Big 4 consulting firms face forced splits, caps after KPMG, EY scandals

## Regulatory Hammer Coming for Big 4 Australian regulators are weighing forced splits of the Big 4 consulting firms after KPMG misused confidential audit documents and mishandled a whistleblower who flagged the problem. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese: "The behaviour of some of these big accounting firms has been completely unacceptable, and they need to be held to account." Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino confirmed the government is looking at separating consulting from audit functions and reducing partner counts at Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG. ## What Actually Happened KPMG's audit team accessed confidential client documents without authorisation. When the firm's former COO raised concerns internally in 2024, KPMG bungled the response. ASIC opened a formal investigation. This follows EY's audit failures in the Thomas Cook collapse and the 1MDB scandal, which touched three of the Big 4. Worth noting: the Big 4 collectively generated $219 billion in revenue in 2025. They dominate global auditing, tax, and consulting. That scale is now the problem. When your audit division reviews companies your consulting division advises, regulators see conflicts of interest. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If forced splits happen, expect structural chaos at these firms. Consulting divisions would spin out as separate entities. That means new org charts, new comp structures, potentially new territories. For sellers at the Big 4: your book of business might get carved up. For sellers targeting the Big 4: budget cycles will be a mess during restructuring. The firms are also facing hiring scrutiny. Government contracts are under review. Enterprise buyers are asking harder questions about conflicts of interest. ## ANZ Context ASIC is leading the regulatory push. ANZ operations are central to the investigation, though specific local headcount changes have not been reported yet. Industry peers reportedly view KPMG as a "joke" after repeated scandals. That reputation damage shows up in deal cycles. Enterprise buyers remember. Regulators want audit independence. The Big 4 built empires on cross-selling audit and consulting. That model is now under threat. The comp plans, territories, and quota structures built on that model are about to get rewritten.

SmartCompany
about 1 month ago
News

US export controls cut Australian access to Anthropic, OpenAI top models

## US pulls the plug on AI access On a Friday in June, Anthropic received an order to suspend foreign access to its most powerful models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Australian users lost access within hours. Days later, OpenAI announced GPT-5.6 but limited the release to about 20 "trusted partners" pre-approved by the Trump administration. The pattern is clear: when US export policy shifts, Australian businesses find out after the fact. ## What this means for sales teams If your sales stack runs on frontier AI models (think: prospecting tools, email generation, call analysis), you are exposed to US export controls. That is not a hypothetical risk anymore. Anthropic's suspension hit users mid-workflow. No advance notice. No local alternative ready. OpenAI's controlled release means the newest capabilities will reach approved US partners first, then maybe ANZ later. For sales leaders evaluating AI tools: ask your vendors about jurisdiction risk. Where are the models hosted? What happens if export rules change? Do they have fallback options? ## The sovereign AI question Australia talks about sovereign AI capability but does not control access to the models most companies actually use. That gap showed up clearly in June. Neural Concept, a Swiss engineering AI platform, just closed $100 million Series C led by Goldman Sachs. They are not hiring in ANZ. The AI tooling market is concentrating in the US and Europe, with ANZ as a downstream customer. That is fine until export policy shifts and your sales team loses access to the tools they rely on. Then it is a business continuity problem. ## Worth noting OpenAI said it does not want government pre-approval to become the default. But it is accepting the process for GPT-5.6. That sets a precedent. For ANZ sales teams: build contingency plans. When the next export control drops, you will find out on a Friday afternoon, mid-quarter.

SmartCompany
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