The Wire

Real-time updates from ANZ tech sales

28 days ago
News

Australia's innovation problem: commercialisation, not capital

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

Startup Daily
29 days ago
News

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

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

SaaStr
29 days ago
News

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

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

Startup Daily
30 days ago
News

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

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

Startup Daily
30 days ago
News

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

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

SaaStr
30 days ago
News

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

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

Startup Daily
about 1 month ago
News

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

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

SaaStr
about 1 month ago
News

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

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

SaaStr
about 1 month ago
News

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

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

Sales Hacker
about 1 month ago
News

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

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

Startup Daily
about 1 month 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
about 1 month 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
about 1 month 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
about 1 month 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
about 1 month 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
about 1 month 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
about 1 month 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
about 1 month 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
about 1 month 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
about 1 month 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
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