The Wire

Real-time updates from ANZ tech sales

about 2 months ago
News

SaaStr's Lemkin: 90% of VP candidates fail one question

# SaaStr's Lemkin: 90% of VP candidates fail one question Jason Lemkin, founder of SaaStr and investor in nearly $90m of B2B software deals, has a straightforward executive hiring filter. After a VP+ candidate completes 8 to 10 interviews with the team, Lemkin asks: 'Tell me what you've learned.' More than 90% cannot answer it well. They can repeat the pitch deck. They say the company is exciting. They liked the CEO. But they cannot articulate the real risks, the unit economics, the burn rate, or the retention numbers. After 10 meetings, they have vibes. Not knowledge. 'If you're not curious enough to learn the business in 10 interviews, how will you run it?' Lemkin wrote. ## What the question filters for The best candidates reverse-engineer the revenue model from the pricing page. They ask about churn in every conversation. They talk to customers unprompted. They figure out where the org chart has gaps. They brief Lemkin on the state of the company. That is maybe 1 in 10. Lemkin's view reflects a broader SaaS hiring standard: executive candidates must demonstrate market insight, risk awareness, and commercial judgment, not just enthusiasm. The question is not trivia. It tests whether a candidate digs past the sell job to understand the business they are betting their career on. ## The training programme story Early at one fast-growing startup, a candidate kept mentioning a 'really extensive training programme.' Lemkin asked if the candidate knew what the programme looked like at a six-person company. The candidate did not know. There was no training programme. That candidate had done 10 interviews without surfacing the most basic operational reality. 'A VP or CRO who joins without having seen the board pack, without knowing the real retention numbers, without understanding the actual stage of the company... that tells you how they'll operate once they're in the seat,' Lemkin said. ## Why it matters for ANZ sales teams Lemkin's philosophy aligns with his broader view that a VP Sales should join after a repeatable sales process exists, not before. The role should scale a working machine, not invent one. For ANZ sales leaders evaluating VP+ candidates, the implication is clear: curiosity is the filter. If they are not asking hard questions as a candidate, they will not ask hard questions as an executive. Lemkin's advice: be the last interview when you can. Ask what they have learned. You will know in 90 seconds whether you are talking to someone genuinely curious about the business, or someone who is just interviewing well.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Metigy founder jailed 9 years after misleading investors, misusing $7.7m

David Fairfull, founder and CEO of Sydney AI marketing startup Metigy, was sentenced to nine years in prison by the Federal Court for misleading investors and misusing company funds. Fairfull pleaded guilty in November 2025 to one count of making false or misleading statements to investors and one count of dishonestly using his position as director. He received seven years and six months for the misleading statements charge, three years for dishonest conduct (18 months concurrent), with a non-parole period of five years and four months. The dishonesty charge involved borrowing $7.7m from Metigy for personal use: a $10.5m house in Mosman and a $7.7m property in Kangaroo Valley. He had repaid $3.7m before the company collapsed. Liquidators sold both properties in December 2022, making a $1.5m profit on the Mosman house and taking a $1.45m loss on the country property. The misleading conduct covered three capital raises between 2018 and 2020 (raising $23m), a secondary share sale in 2021 ($15.7m), and a planned $50m raise before collapse. ASIC originally charged Fairfull with five counts; he pleaded guilty to one. Metigy raised between AUD$14.6m and AUD$28m (sources differ) from investors including Regal Funds Management, Five V Capital, and Thorney Investments. The company was positioned as an AI-driven marketing platform for small businesses in the crowded SMB martech segment. ASIC alleged Fairfull gave false revenue and income information to investors. The case underscores governance and disclosure risks in venture-backed ANZ tech: institutional investors backed Metigy based on growth claims that became the subject of federal charges. Fairfull was originally charged by ASIC in 2024. The conviction turns what appeared to be a growth story into a cautionary tale about fundraising controls and director conduct in the ANZ startup ecosystem.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

Snowflake CMO ditched dashboards, talks to data in plain English

## The Dashboard Died at Snowflake Denise Persson runs marketing for Snowflake. That is a 700-person organisation, new-business pipeline accountability, and the kind of data compliance most B2B teams never touch. She does not start her day with a dashboard anymore. She interrogates her data in plain English. Nobody on her team gets Slack messages asking why pipeline moved in US West. She asks the data. It answers. The sales-marketing data war is over because there is one source of truth now. No more burning hours arguing whose dashboard is right before you discuss the actual business. ## The Numbers That Matter Snowflake posted $1.39 billion revenue last quarter, up 33% year over year. They are not a flat-growth software company. They are still scaling hard, which makes Persson's mandate interesting: deliver 40-50% growth with flat or fewer resources. She shipped a 30% reduction in cost per opportunity over six months. The unlock was pulling fragmented media channels into one place and letting the system recommend daily optimisations instead of waiting until a campaign ended to learn it failed. ## What Changed for Sales-Adjacent Teams Dashboards only answered what happened. They never answered why. So you would ping someone, schedule a meeting, sit with the sales team, and argue about what the numbers meant. Persson now asks her data the why directly and gets recommendations back in real time. The morning brief goes past pipeline. Org health. Who joined marketing this week, who left, whether there is an attrition issue forming. Intelligence that used to live only with finance now surfaces before her first meeting. ## The Hiring Profile Flipped The old job spec was a list of certifications: Marketo, Salesforce, the platforms. Now soft skills matter more than the stack. Adaptability, curiosity, self-leadership, change management. Snowflake hires for what they call the GTM engineer. Business analysts, much less so. If you ask for more headcount in 2026 planning, leadership will look at you like you do not understand where the company is. The expectation is that AI absorbs the growth, not new hires. ## The Part Most Teams Underestimate Building AI fluency across 700 people was the single biggest investment of the last year. Weekly skills training. Weekly AI challenges where someone records a video on an agent they built. Function-level hackathons. An AI council. Quarterly company-wide AI day. A usage leaderboard. Every person sets an AI goal in quarterly OKRs. It can be small. The point is everyone moves. The top of the leaderboard was not the people you would predict. Persson's top three power users came off the brand team. They are now running into other functions to help with hackathons. ## What This Means for Sales Leaders The pattern here applies beyond marketing. If you run a large sales organisation and still spend mornings in dashboards, you are about to get lapped. The teams that win are asking their data why quota shifted, why close rates dropped in enterprise, why ramp periods extended. Not scheduling meetings to guess at it. Bad data plus AI does not give you bad decisions. It gives you bad decisions faster and at scale. The Salesforce hygiene lesson from 15 years ago, except the cost of getting it wrong compounds far faster now. Persson's advice to anyone starting: invest in your data estate first. Skip it and it bites you a year from now.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Everlab raises $65m Series A, 11 months after Seed round

## Everlab raises $65m Series A, 11 months after Seed round Melbourne healthtech startup Everlab has closed a $65 million Series A led by Airtree Ventures, with participation from Europe's Plural and existing backers Left Lane Capital and b2venture. The round comes 11 months after the company raised $15 million in Seed funding. Founded in 2023, Everlab runs an AI-driven preventative care platform that combines full-body diagnostics, clinician networks, and wearable device data into a single patient record. The company's approach: catch disease risks early by analyzing complex health data with proprietary AI. The capital will fund global expansion into the UK, Europe, US, and Asia-Pacific in 2026, while growing Everlab's clinic network and AI platform. CEO Ian Clarke (previously flagged as a standout early-stage medtech leader) is running point on the international push. ### What this means for sales teams Rapid funding cycles like this (Seed to Series A in under a year, total raised now $76.8 million) typically signal aggressive hiring. While Everlab has not publicly detailed headcount plans, global expansion across four regions points to significant sales and clinical operations growth. The company operates in the preventative care and longevity market, competing with players like PeopleOne Health (which raised $32.3 million Series B). Everlab's differentiator: an AI-first approach to early disease detection, integrated with real-time wearable data. For sales professionals watching the ANZ healthtech space, Everlab represents a well-backed expansion play. Series A rounds of this size usually mean the sales team is about to scale. If you are tracking Melbourne-based SaaS or healthtech opportunities, this one is moving fast. ### The numbers - **Total raised:** $76.8 million across three rounds - **Series A:** $65 million (Airtree Ventures lead) - **Previous Seed:** $15 million (Left Lane Capital lead, July 2025) - **Founded:** 2023 - **HQ:** Melbourne - **Expansion markets:** UK, Europe, US, APAC (2026) Everlab is positioning itself as a shift from treatment to prevention in primary care. The AI platform integrates physician, specialist, and pathologist data, enhanced with wearable tech inputs, to build comprehensive patient records aimed at early risk detection. No public comp data yet, butwatch this space. When a Melbourne startup raises this much capital and targets four international markets, the sales hiring announcements usually follow within quarters.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

Labor's CGT changes hit startup equity, founders warn talent will leave

# Labor's CGT changes hit startup equity, founders warn talent will leave Australia's proposed capital gains tax overhaul will make it harder for startups to attract and retain talent, even after the government announced carve-outs for early-stage companies. Labor's May budget replaced the 50% CGT discount with inflation indexation and a 30% minimum tax on real gains, effective July 1, 2027. After backlash from founders and investors, the government carved out startups: unlisted companies under $50 million turnover, operating for under 10 years, can preserve the 50% discount for founders, employees, early investors and VC partners. Eligibility requires shares held for at least five years. The discount caps at $10 million in lifetime gains per person. Companies, foreign investors and super funds are excluded. ## The talent problem Startups rely on equity to compete for talent against enterprises that pay higher base salaries. Under the new rules, the maximum effective tax rate on equity gains for those outside the carve-out nearly doubles to 47%. One founder, speaking anonymously, said Australian startups already struggle to match offshore comp. The CGT changes make that gap worse. Early employees at high-growth companies now face higher taxes on equity that may take years to vest and liquidate. The government expanded small business concessions, lifting the 50% active asset reduction from $2 million to $10 million in turnover. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said this covers 2.7 million small businesses and around 98% of active businesses. ## What this means for sales teams If you are evaluating startup offers, run the numbers on equity comp under the new rules. That $200k equity package looks different when you factor in a five-year hold period and potential 47% tax on gains. For sales leaders at startups, expect harder conversations around equity comp. The math just got worse for candidates weighing your offer against an enterprise role with higher base. The carve-out helps, but it does not fix the core issue: Australia is making equity-heavy comp packages less attractive while competing with markets like the US where equity taxation is more favourable. That matters when you are trying to hire an enterprise AE who could take their skills to San Francisco. Final rules are still in consultation. The talent exodus argument is not hypothetical: it is what happens when comp math stops working in your favour.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

SaaStr replaced sales team with 20 AI agents, now warns others to audit them

## The Setup SaaStr, Jason Lemkin's B2B software community, replaced its sales team with around 20 AI agents managed by roughly 1.2 humans. The company is running an AI-heavy GTM motion across sales, marketing, and outreach. Then a PR agency, acting on behalf of a hot AI startup, sent SaaStr a sharp email: never contact their client again. One of the startup's execs supposedly had a "terrible experience" with SaaStr. Lemkin and his team were confused. They thought the engagement went well. They reached out to the executive directly. Turns out: he had no idea what his own PR firm had sent. He said the experience was great and he wanted to do more with SaaStr. The PR firm had been fired. ## The Lesson Lemkin's takeaway: audit your agents. Both AI and human. Most B2B teams are deploying agents at scale now. AI SDRs running sequences. Human vendors managing outreach. BDRs working territory. AI agents responding to inbound. The volume is up, but real-time oversight is down. Lemkin cites examples from SaaStr's own stack: one AI SDR invited a prospect to "meet next week" at an event that was happening that week. Another vendor's AI agent pitched SaaStr a product they were already paying for. A human would have caught both in 30 seconds. No human was watching. The rule: if they are speaking for you, you are responsible for what they say. The prospect does not distinguish between a bad email from an AI agent and a bad email from your company. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If you are running AI agents (or human vendors acting as agents), you need: - Regular audits of actual output, not just approved scripts from six months ago - Spot checks on emails, calls, and sequences going out today - A process for catching drift and hallucinations before they burn relationships SaaStr got lucky: the executive came back directly. Most of the time, they do not. The damage is done before you know it happened. Lemkin has publicly said the AI-agent model requires daily training and QA to avoid drift. That is the cost of running GTM at scale with agents. The alternative is burning relationships you wanted to keep.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Salesforce pushes lead scoring for SMBs, but most teams still spray and pray

Salesforce published a lead scoring playbook for SMBs this week, walking through audience scoring mechanics: engagement points (opens, clicks, page visits) tracked separately from fit points (job title, company size, industry match). The approach is solid. Start with your ten best customers, find the common patterns, build scoring criteria from there. Use negative scoring to subtract points when contacts go cold or unsubscribe. Separate window shoppers from real buyers. The problem is execution. Salesforce's own State of Marketing Report says 84% of marketers still run generic campaigns. Same email to 847 contacts, three conversions, 844 silent. That is the reality most SMB sales teams are working with. Lead scoring has been table stakes in Salesforce and HubSpot for years. Einstein Lead Scoring, Account Engagement lead scoring, predictive models built into the platform. The tools exist. Teams are not using them, or they are using them poorly. For SDRs at small businesses, this matters. If marketing is not scoring leads properly, you are calling cold on contacts who opened one email six months ago. If fit scoring is not configured, you are chasing logos that will never close because they are two people in a garage, not the 50-person company you thought. The framework Salesforce outlines works. Engagement score plus fit score, negative points for decay, build from existing customer patterns. But a framework without adoption is just another PDF no one reads. Worth asking: does your CRM have lead scoring turned on? Do your SDRs actually look at the score before calling? Is it tied to routing rules, or is it vanity data sitting in a field no one checks? The gap between platform capability and actual usage is where deals die. Salesforce can publish all the scoring templates and frameworks it wants. Until teams stop batch-blasting the database, the score does not matter.

Salesforce Blog
about 2 months ago
News

Stripe, Google, Canva data: AI companies now hit enterprise GTM in year one

## The Numbers That Matter Stripe's Maia Josebachvili runs enterprise product for the fastest-growing AI companies. The data she shared at SaaStr AI 2026 shows how radically GTM timelines have compressed. Top AI companies grew 175% in 2026. Lovable hit $100M in eight months, then $400M eight months later. Cursor reached $1B run rate in under two years, then $2B three months after that. The install base is real: Stripe's Link data shows AI buyer count doubled to 14M, with top buyers spending $371 on AI tools, more than the average American spends on internet, streaming, and phone combined. ## Four Patterns Across Stripe, Google, Canva **Speed to first customer:** Companies embedding Stripe now reach first paying customer in under six weeks. iOS app releases jumped 24% month over month once agentic coding went mainstream. The share of technical founders increased seven points in a year. **Global from day one:** AI companies hit 42 countries in year one and 120 by year three. Gamma reported $100M in year one, majority from outside the US. Across top AI companies, 48% of revenue now comes from outside home market, up from 33% three years ago. Localized pricing drives 18% higher cross-border revenue. **Usage-based pricing is the new standard:** Two in three Forbes AI50 companies now run some form of usage-based pricing, up from under 50% last summer. Most run hybrid: subscription to anchor the relationship, credits that scale with value. Replit layered credits on top of flat subscriptions and reached $1B run rate. **Enterprise sales in year one:** The old decade-long journey to enterprise is dead. Cursor launched self-serve in 2023 and added sales-led motion to land enterprise contracts in year one. Channel sales through cloud providers went from niche to core. Agent traffic to Stripe docs 10x'd in a year. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If you are building sales at an AI company, the comp expectations and quota models from 2022 do not apply. Teams are expected to go global and enterprise faster, which means territory planning needs to account for international from quarter one, not year three. The agent-as-buyer trend is real. Stripe reports agents now read more docs than humans by end of year. That changes how you structure onboarding, support, and sales-assist motions. Pricing conversations are getting harder because value is elastic. The engineer running agents overnight and the casual user get completely different value from the same product. If your comp is tied to seat count and your product is moving to consumption, expect quota relief conversations. Canva's public case study with Stripe shows enterprise performance marketing scaled 20x using Canva Enterprise, which signals Canva's own GTM is enterprise-led with PLG at the base. Google is showing up as a distribution channel for AI commerce through the Stripe partnership, enabling businesses to sell inside Google AI Mode while keeping checkout on Stripe rails. The pattern: build and sell in parallel. Do not wait to layer in enterprise motion. The fastest companies are doing it in year one.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Australia VC ecosystem grew 13.7x faster than any hub, report shows

## The Numbers Australia's venture ecosystem grew 13.7 times faster than any major hub over the past decade, according to the new Australia Venture & Startup Report 2026 from Side Stage Ventures and Dealroom. The market now creates more $10 billion companies per dollar invested than anywhere else globally. Venture funding in 2026 is tracking to be the strongest year since 2022. Total capital deployed in 2025 hit $5.48 billion across 390 deals, up 31% year on year and the third-largest funding year on record. AI led at $1.0 billion, followed by fintech at $868 million and biotech/medtech at $829 million. ## What It Means for Sales More venture capital means more venture-backed buyers with budgets. But the distribution matters. Early-stage investment has fallen every year since 2021, which means fewer seed and Series A companies with the cash to buy your product. The recovery has been selective, driven by a small number of large rounds. Median seed valuations now sit 50% below the US, though AI mega-rounds offshore are the primary reason that gap doubled in 12 months. Australian founders now raise 41% of their early-stage capital from overseas, double the share in Europe or the US. That is both a compliment and a warning sign: international investors see opportunity, but domestic capital is thin at the early stage. ## The Hiring Angle The report credits Canva, Atlassian, Afterpay, and Eucalyptus as ecosystem builders, alongside a growing community of exited operators reinvesting into the next generation. That usually means more sales hiring at the companies that do raise, but concentrated funding means concentrated hiring. If you are selling to or looking to join venture-backed startups, the market is more selective than the headline growth number suggests. Worth noting: the local market is still relatively concentrated and later-stage funding remains a constraint, which affects expansion hiring and enterprise buying power across the startup base. Australia's geographic isolation and smaller domestic market push startups to be globally oriented and capital-efficient earlier, which shapes how they buy and how they staff up compared with US or European counterparts. The federal government expanded the VCLP and ESVCLP venture programs, though the report notes ongoing debate about recent tax changes and their impact on the ecosystem.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

Taiwan AI trip shifts VC view: people over hype

# Taiwan AI trip shifts VC view: people over hype A venture capitalist returned from Taiwan with a changed perspective on AI investment. The week-long visit exposed an ecosystem focused on human-centred AI deployment rather than pure automation, a contrast to the replacement-focused narrative dominating Western markets. Taiwan's AI landscape includes active investors like Darwin Venture Management, CDIB Capital, and Taiwania Capital Management Corporation. AI Fund recently opened a Taiwan hub to build startups with local entrepreneurs. The maturity of the ecosystem, backed by government-supported funds, is attracting global investors looking beyond the usual hubs. The trip came during the Wisdom and Action conference, which centred on Trust in the Age of AI. Audrey Tang, Taiwan's first digital minister, led discussions on technology serving public participation rather than replacing it. Her framing: AI as a tool for better human collaboration, not workforce displacement. That positioning matters for go-to-market strategy. If AI tools sell better when positioned as enabling humans rather than replacing them, sales narratives need adjusting. The conference referenced Taiwan's 2014 Sunflower Movement, where half a million people organised around small-group conversations to produce coherent policy demands. Tang called it a "campfire versus wildfire" model: small enough to gather around, not large enough to consume everyone. Taiwan's hardware-AI integration strength positions it as a critical node in the global AI supply chain. For ANZ sales teams evaluating AI vendors or building AI-enabled products, Taiwan's people-first approach offers validation for solutions that augment rather than automate away customer roles. The investor's shift reflects broader questions about AI adoption paths. Enterprise deals close faster when tools make existing teams more effective, not when they promise headcount reduction. Taiwan's model validates that thesis with government backing and venture capital flowing to human-centred AI applications. Worth noting: 91% of US VC transactions into Chinese AI companies between 2015 and 2021 occurred at early VC stages. Taiwan's ecosystem maturity and policy environment position it differently, attracting later-stage capital alongside seed funding.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

Flyweel raises $2.41M pre-seed, no ANZ sales hires announced

## Flyweel raises $2.41M pre-seed, no ANZ sales hires announced Queensland fintech Flyweel closed $2.41 million in pre-seed funding led by Ten13, with backing from Antler, QIC, and fintech operators including Mollie CEO Koen Köppen, Zip cofounder Larry Diamond, and Stake cofounder Matt Leibowitz. The company embeds lending into ad spend: businesses fund campaigns upfront, repay as revenue lands. Flyweel connects ad platforms, CRM, and accounting in real time. They have managed $110 million in ad spend across nearly 1,000 businesses since launching in 2025. Founded by Reuben Scheckter (CEO, former lead gen business owner who managed $40M in ad spend) and Matteo Calo (ex-Adyen, Mollie, Semrush payments lead), Flyweel is going direct to the US market first for its financial products: Performance Capital, spend cards, and bill pay. **What we do not know:** Team size, sales headcount, comp structure, or hiring plans. The funding announcement mentions US customer traction but no details on ANZ expansion or local sales roles. **Context for sales teams:** Fintech pre-seed rounds in ANZ typically fund 2 to 5 early hires, often including a founding AE or head of growth. US-first GTM usually means remote roles or NYC-based positions for enterprise fintech sales, with OTE ranging $140k to $180k for early AEs at this stage. Entry-level SDR roles at similar companies typically sit at $60k to $75k base, $90k to $110k OTE. Flyweel is solving cash flow timing for ad spend, positioning ads as capital investments rather than expense lines. That matters as AI accelerates in-house ad scaling and new platforms (ChatGPT is piloting ads in Australia) multiply spend channels. Worth noting: The company name is Flyweel, not Flywheel Digital (the Baltimore-based commerce company acquired by Omnicom for $835M in 2023). Different businesses, different markets. **For sales professionals:** No hiring announcements yet. If they scale, expect US-focused roles first, likely remote or NYC-based given the market focus.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

Top rep quits despite $600k OTE: SaaStr breaks down why change drives attrition

## The Pattern Jason Lemkin from SaaStr has tracked this across portfolio companies: the number one or two rep quits despite top 1% to 5% earnings, respect, and a dialled-in motion. They often move to roles where they will earn less, start over, and face unclear upsides. The common thread is not pay or culture. It is change. ## Why Top Performers Leave Lemkin identifies three primary triggers: **New VP of Sales arrives.** The top rep loses their shelter. Even if treated well, the dynamic shifts. A mediocre VP accelerates the exit. A great VP knows how to manage this transition, but hire wrong and you lose your best producer. **VP of Sales departs.** Anxiety spikes. The top rep was often protected by that leader. When that shield disappears, so does their confidence in the environment. **Comp looks harder to achieve.** Lemkin cites a rep at a $20m ARR startup who made $800k, then quit for a public company role as one of hundreds. Reason: next year looked harder. This is the number one driver. Top performers can read the territory. When the path to quota gets steeper, they leave before the pain starts. ## What Actually Works Lemkin's advice for retaining top AEs during change: **Align the new VP and top rep from day one.** The VP may not know the product or motion as well as their new report. Manage that dynamic. **Involve top AEs in VP hiring.** Shows respect. Lets them vet who they will work for. **Give them space.** Spending more time with your top rep during transitions does not help. Let them work. **Do not ask them to do more than sell.** Top individual contributors often resist team lead roles, SDR mentoring, or strategy work. Forcing it breeds resentment. Let them be elite closers, nothing more. **Leave the door open.** Tell them they can return. Many realise 12 months later they left a perfect environment. Make sure they know the desk is waiting. **Hire a VP who retains top performers.** Mediocre VPs keep low performers. Great VPs make sure top AEs stay when they join. ## ANZ Context This pattern hits ANZ startups particularly hard. Brand strength is still building, leadership benches are thin, and comp plan volatility is higher during growth phases. When a Sydney or Melbourne scaleup hires a new CRO or adjusts territory, top reps read the signals fast. SaaStr's community includes executives from emerging ANZ SaaS firms. The Q&A format delivers real-time retention advice for sales leaders managing volatile environments with limited brand power. ## The Core Insight Change is constant in startups. Top reps know the current environment made them successful. Any shift, even neutral or positive, introduces risk to their $600k run rate. They leave not because the new situation is objectively worse, but because the old one was objectively perfect for them. Comp transparency matters here too. If your top rep is making $600k and you cannot articulate how they hit that again next year, they are already interviewing.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Everstage CEO: 90% of comp plans punish the behavior they reward

**Siva Rajamani, CEO of Everstage, sees 300+ enterprise sales comp plans every year. He says 90% make the same mistake: they reward one thing in the slide deck and punish it in the spreadsheet.** The pattern is consistent. Companies start with a simple plan. Then they patch in exceptions until the comp structure has ten parameters and optimizes for nothing. "If explaining your plan takes longer than 60 seconds, it's broken," Rajamani said. "If your comp plan needs an FAQ, it's not a plan, it's a tax code." ## The hidden math problem Here is the trap: a company adds an accelerator for multi-year deals. Sounds smart. But the discount reps must give to land those contracts outweighs the accelerator. So reps rationally avoid multi-year deals, the exact behavior the company wanted to encourage. "Your comp plan is the real instruction manual, not your 1-on-1s," Rajamani said. "If reps aren't doing what you want, don't question the rep. Audit the plan." ## What actually works Everstage, a sales performance management platform that has raised roughly $45M, runs its own comp plan on three levers: overall quota, a multi-year accelerator, and one-time revenue. That is it. The benchmarks Rajamani recommends: - **Base-to-variable split:** 50/50 for most roles - **Quota-to-OTE ratio:** 4x to 5x (for every dollar of OTE, rep should deliver $4-5 in quota) - **Visibility:** Reps need to see potential earnings before they act. "What do I make if I close this?" is what drives behavior. The company serves hypergrowth and enterprise clients, automating commissions, quota planning, and incentive execution. Rajamani previously scaled RevOps at Freshworks from 1 to 25 people before starting Everstage in 2020. ## AI is widening the gap The performance gap between top and average reps is accelerating, especially as top performers use AI to scale their leverage. Rajamani sees the $1M+ sales rep coming, and he argues it is better on margins: paying big commissions to a few A-players beats hiring a stack of mid-level reps, because you carry far fewer base salaries for the same revenue. "Optimize for your top reps' earning potential," he said. "Counterintuitively, it's cheaper." ## The simplicity test If your comp plan requires a 20-page deck and a RevOps analyst to interpret it, you have already lost. The best plans are simple enough that reps know exactly what they will earn for the deal they are about to close. Everything else is friction. Everstage competes in the sales performance management space alongside Xactly, CaptivateIQ, Spiff, and Performio. The company operates out of Delaware, with presence in New York and Chennai, and employs roughly 350 people with estimated annual revenue around $75M. **Worth noting:** If your reps are avoiding the deals you want them to close, the comp plan is the first place to look. Not the CRM. Not the sales deck. The comp plan.

Sales Hacker
about 2 months ago
News

Everlab raises $65m Series A, Airtree leads Melbourne healthtech expansion

## Everlab raises $65m Series A, Airtree leads Melbourne healthtech expansion Melbourne healthtech startup Everlab has closed a $65 million Series A led by Airtree Ventures, with participation from Plural, Left Lane Capital, b2venture, and Australian Test cricket captain Pat Cummins. The round comes less than a year after the company raised $15 million in seed funding. Founded in 2023, Everlab runs an AI-driven preventative care platform that consolidates diagnostics, specialist referrals, prescriptions, and wearable data into a single system. The company is positioning itself as consumer-facing longevity infrastructure rather than a traditional clinic operator. Multiple sources report the company has tens of thousands of users on its waitlist. ### What this means for sales teams Rapid funding velocity usually means accelerated headcount growth. Everlab's Series A will fund international expansion, clinic network development, and team scaling. That typically translates to roles across clinical operations, tech, and go-to-market: account executives for B2B partnerships (pathology labs, corporate wellness), SDRs for enterprise outreach, and account managers for provider relationships. Healthtech sales in ANZ has seen consistent hiring over the past 18 months, particularly in platforms that sit between clinical and consumer. Companies in this category (preventative diagnostics, care navigation, longevity) tend to hire AEs with healthcare or SaaS experience, often at OTEs between $140k and $180k depending on segment and deal size. The broader context: healthcare sales roles at funded startups in ANZ have shifted toward platforms that aggregate fragmented systems (exactly what Everlab is building). If you are an AE or AM with experience selling into pathology, diagnostics, or corporate health, this is the category to watch. Series A companies in this space typically hire 4 to 8 go-to-market roles within six months of a close. Worth noting: Everlab has not publicly disclosed revenue, sales leadership, or specific headcount. That information typically surfaces within 60 to 90 days of a funding announcement as hiring ramps.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

Everlab closes $65M Series A, no sales team disclosed

**Everlab closed a $65 million Series A** led by Airtree Ventures, with Plural, b2venture, and Left Lane Capital participating. Australian test captain Pat Cummins joined as an angel investor. The Melbourne startup sells AI-powered preventive health assessments direct to consumers and through corporate programs. Individual tests range from $299 for basic health checks to $3,499 for MRI body scans. Packaged assessments run $900 to $2,700. **Corporate customers include BCG, BHP, and Bain & Company.** The company has processed 20,000 clients across Australia and New Zealand since launching publicly in January 2024. More than 25% of clients had previously undetected health issues identified during testing. Founded in 2023 by Marc Hermann, Dr. Steven Lu, Sam Kothari, and Anshul Jain, Everlab previously raised $3 million pre-seed and $15 million seed. Total funding now sits at $83 million across three rounds in under two years. **The Series A will fund UK expansion and clinical infrastructure.** The company integrates with 1,850+ health provider locations and 180+ clinicians, processing 200,000+ health reports monthly. Worth noting: public sources do not disclose sales team size, sales leadership, or revenue figures. The go-to-market appears to be direct-to-consumer subscriptions plus enterprise health programs, competing in the preventive care segment alongside Superpower and Compound. CEO Marc Hermann previously co-founded Foodspring, acquired by Mars in 2019. The company describes a subscription model with annual memberships plus individual tests, with a waitlist previously reported in the tens of thousands. **What this means for sales:** If Everlab is hiring for its UK expansion, expect enterprise account roles selling into corporate health programs, plus potential inside sales for direct-to-consumer. The $65M raise suggests significant headcount growth ahead, but no hiring announcements yet.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

Victoria mandates two days WFH for casuals, part-timers from September 2026

Victoria is legislating a two-day-per-week work-from-home entitlement for regular casuals and part-time employees, effective September 1, 2026. The bill hits state parliament this week. ## Who it covers Regular casuals qualify if they have worked systematically for 12 months with reasonable expectation of ongoing work. Part-time staff with similar tenure also qualify. Pro-rata guidance drops before September. This expands on existing flexible work rights, which required specific eligibility criteria like pregnancy, disability, or caregiving. The new law removes those barriers and makes WFH a baseline entitlement, not a request. ## How it works Employers can only refuse after consulting the employee, attempting agreement, and demonstrating reasonable business grounds. They must also consult on work-from-home safety issues: hazard identification, risk controls, the full WHS checklist. Small businesses get until mid-2027 to update HR policies and compliance processes. No exemptions for company size after that deadline. ## What it means for sales teams If you run an SDR floor or manage field AEs in Victoria, this changes workforce planning. Territory coverage, team collaboration, onboarding logistics: all need rethinking if half your team can work remotely two days a week. For recruiting: candidates now have a legal baseline. "Flexible work available" is no longer a perk you offer. It is a right they can enforce. Comp discussions should account for this shift in expectations. Retention angle: staff with caregiving responsibilities or long commutes now have statutory backing. That could reduce churn, but only if you build remote work into your culture rather than treating it as compliance theatre. ## Implementation reality Victoria embedded this in the Equal Opportunity Act to avoid constitutional challenges with federal workplace law. Whether that holds up in court remains to be seen. The government acknowledges legal questions but believes this is the lowest-risk path. No other ANZ jurisdiction has gone this hard on legislated remote work. Victoria is testing whether mandating flexibility works better than leaving it to employer discretion. Bottom line: update your remote work policies, prep your WHS documentation, and factor this into 2026 headcount planning. The law lands in 15 months.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

Anthropic scaled to $965B with one marketing hire, product-led sales

## The Strategy Anthropic, the AI safety company behind Claude, scaled to a $965 billion valuation with almost no traditional marketing function. Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives Dario and Daniela Amodei, the San Francisco company raised $30 billion Series G in 2025, then $65 billion Series H in 2026, while operating like a research lab instead of a SaaS vendor. The approach: founder-led enterprise sales backed by product credibility. No demand gen team. No LinkedIn campaigns. No sales development reps cold-calling procurement. CEO Dario Amodei positioned himself as the anti-CEO, focusing on AI safety messaging while the product sold itself to enterprise buyers evaluating Claude against OpenAI and Google. That restraint became the brand. ## What This Means for Sales Teams For B2B teams watching marketing budgets get slashed, Anthropic proves a point: enterprise deals close on product trust and founder credibility, not marketing qualified leads. The execution matters. Anthropic competes in a saturated AI market where every competitor runs aggressive feature launches and paid campaigns. They went the opposite direction: sparse messaging, safety-first positioning, and letting enterprise customers discover Claude through technical credibility. That works when your product solves a real enterprise problem and your founder can sell. It does not work if you are selling mid-market SaaS without differentiation. ## The ANZ Angle No confirmed Australia or New Zealand headcount in public sources, though Claude is being evaluated by ANZ enterprise buyers. If Anthropic does expand locally, expect direct sales through senior AEs, not SDR-led outbound. For ANZ sales leaders comparing notes: this is not a playbook for most companies. Anthropic had $95 billion in funding, frontier AI tech, and a founder who could sell safety narratives to Fortune 500 CIOs. Your Series A SaaS company probably needs SDRs. But the core lesson holds: if your product is strong enough and your founder can sell, you can scale enterprise revenue without traditional marketing. Just do not confuse minimal marketing with no go-to-market strategy. Anthropic still sold. They just did it differently.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

Dashdot collapse: $16.5M owed, Meta ad costs blamed for liquidation

## The Numbers Property buyers agency Dashdot collapsed in late May owing $16.5 million. The creditor list includes 695 customers owed $10.6 million, the ATO ($916,000), startup lender Mighty Partners ($1.5 million), and Meta ($134,000). Liquidators estimate at least 700 clients are caught up in the collapse. Many paid large up-front fees for services never delivered. ## What Happened Co-founder Goose McGrath blamed sharp rises in customer acquisition costs after changes to Meta's advertising platform. The business also faced weaker consumer confidence, tighter lending, and federal tax-policy changes affecting property investors. That $134,000 owed to Meta tells the story: Dashdot was built on paid social acquisition. When the unit economics broke, the business broke. ## Why It Matters for Sales Teams This is what happens when your growth model depends entirely on paid channels and those channels reprice against you. Dashdot had scale: enough clients to generate a $16.5 million creditor pool. Not enough resilience to absorb CAC inflation. Property-related businesses in Australia are under pressure. ASIC data shows 426 insolvencies in rental and property categories this year. The pattern: investor tax reform, lending constraints, low confidence. For lead-gen-heavy service firms in property and adjacent verticals, the lesson is simple: diversify acquisition or build enough margin to absorb platform changes. Dashdot apparently did neither. ## The Broader Context Dashdot competed in a crowded buyers agency segment: property investment advisers, buyers agents, real-estate service firms. All fighting for the same investor clients in a market where demand is softening and acquisition costs are rising. No confirmed funding history or revenue figures are available. What is clear: the business had scale but not sustainability. That gap is expensive. Worth noting: the preliminary liquidator report identified only one entity under voluntary liquidation (Dashdot Pty Ltd). The structure and any related entities remain unclear from public reporting.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

US blocks Australians from Anthropic's frontier AI models

## US export controls cut Australian access to Anthropic models Australian organisations lost access to Anthropic's most advanced AI models over the weekend after the US government ordered the company to suspend foreign access. The decision affects Fable 5 and Mythos 5, Anthropic's frontier models positioned to compete with OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's Gemini. Mythos 5 had only been available to select Australian enterprises since early June through the company's Project Glasswing program. Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers Dario and Daniela Amodei, is backed by multibillion-dollar investments from Amazon and Google. The company focuses on enterprise sales rather than consumer distribution, making the Australian suspension particularly notable for organisations that had integrated the models into workflows. ### What the models do Fable 5 is Anthropic's flagship general-purpose model, designed for software engineering, research, and business analysis. Mythos 5 is the more advanced system, aimed at complex reasoning tasks with minimal human guidance. Both models are now classified as strategic technologies under US export controls, similar to restrictions applied to advanced semiconductor technology. ### What this means for ANZ enterprises The suspension affects any Australian organisation using Anthropic's advanced models for product development, research, or operations. Companies with early access through Project Glasswing will need to migrate to alternative providers or downgrade to less capable models. The broader signal: frontier AI models are now subject to the same geopolitical constraints as other dual-use technologies. Access can be revoked without notice based on foreign policy considerations, not just commercial terms. For sales and go-to-market teams evaluating AI tooling, the risk is clear. Vendor lock-in on frontier models now includes regulatory risk, not just technical or commercial dependencies. Anthropic has not stated when or if Australian access will be restored. The company's enterprise focus means this affects large organisations and government agencies more than SMB or consumer applications. Worth noting: this is not about billing or commercial disputes. It is about export controls treating advanced AI the same way the US treats weapons technology or advanced chips.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

A Cloud Guru founder says CGT changes push Australian founders offshore

Sam Kroonenburg built A Cloud Guru from a Melbourne bedroom to a US$2 billion Pluralsight acquisition in six years. Now he is warning that federal CGT changes will push the next generation of founders offshore. In a submission to the Senate Economics Committee, Kroonenburg says the proposed tax changes undermine the case for staying in Australia. The committee holds public hearings in Canberra today and Sydney tomorrow, with findings due Friday, June 19. "I love this country. I did not leave when I could have. I stayed, I built here, and when our company was acquired I reinvested here," Kroonenburg wrote. He backed that with action: he cofounded Glitch Capital, joined SecondQuarter Ventures as a partner, and launched Cuttable, an automated ad agency that raised $5.7 million earlier this year. The timing matters. A Cloud Guru was one of Australia's most prominent startup exits, backed by Airtree and Summit. Kroonenburg is not speculating about founder incentives from the outside. He has lived the full cycle: build locally, exit at scale, reinvest in the ecosystem. His argument is economic, not sentimental. Higher CGT rates mean less capital flowing back into early-stage companies. For sales teams at Australian startups, that matters. Fewer well-funded local companies means fewer enterprise AE roles, smaller patches, and more founders building overseas from the start. Kroonenburg is now focused on "convincing Australia's brightest" to build here. The submission suggests that job just got harder. Worth noting: Cuttable already opened in New York alongside its Australian base. The pattern is visible. For context: capital gains tax applies when founders sell equity. The proposed changes would increase the rate, reducing net proceeds available for reinvestment. Kroonenburg's point is that this shifts the calculus for where founders choose to build, and where capital gets deployed next.

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