The Wire

Real-time updates from ANZ tech sales

about 2 months ago
News

AI agents hit 4.3% of sales tool calls, engineering leads at 49.7%

Anthropic published deployment data from nearly 1 million production AI agent tool calls. Software engineering accounts for 49.7% of activity. Sales and CRM sits at 4.3%. Finance at 4.0%. Legal at 0.9%. The numbers look like engineering won and sales barely registered. That is the wrong read. Engineering got agents first because the use case is simpler: defined tasks, clear success metrics, deterministic outputs. Code either runs or it does not. Sales is messier: context shifts by prospect, success depends on timing and relationship dynamics, outcomes take weeks to measure. The 4.3% figure tells you where agents are today, not where they cap out. Anthropic's 2026 State of AI Agents Report shows 57% enterprise adoption of multi-step agents, with 46% expecting ROI gains in sales and marketing. That expectation drives the next deployment wave. Current agent use cases in sales skew tactical: lead enrichment, CRM data entry, meeting prep, follow-up sequencing. The low percentage reflects caution, not technical limits. Sales leaders are testing before scaling. Worth noting: Anthropic's data shows 77% of API calls are pure automation versus consumer use, which means enterprise buyers are already committed to agents in production. Anthropic itself scaled from 500 to 1,000 employees in 2024, raised over $18 billion including a $4 billion Series E, and hit a $60 billion valuation by late 2025. Their sales org supports enterprise deals across software engineering (49.7% of tool calls), sales/CRM (4.3%), and finance (4.0%). No disclosed CRO or VP Sales hires, CEO Dario Amodei runs strategy. The pattern: engineering leads adoption, sales follows once the ROI case solidifies. That 4.3% is not the ceiling, it is the starting line. Agents handle the repetitive work (list building, data hygiene, research) so AEs focus on closing. The quota stays the same, the workload shifts. For sales teams evaluating AI agents: test on low-risk workflows first, measure time saved versus accuracy trade-offs, and track whether reps actually close more deals or just move faster on admin tasks. The hype is real, but so is the learning curve.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Canva acquires two startups, adds chief algorithms officer

## Canva acquires two startups, adds chief algorithms officer Sydney-based Canva acquired US marketing algorithm startup MangoAI and UK animation platform Cavalry, bringing total acquisitions to six in two years. MangoAI, a 10-month-old San Francisco startup, was still in stealth mode. Co-founders Nirmal Govind (former Netflix VP of data science, ex-Fable CTO) and Vinith Misra (former Roblox and Netflix ML scientist) built machine learning tools to optimize video ad performance. The platform will integrate into Canva Grow's marketing intelligence suite. Govind joins Canva as chief algorithms officer. Misra becomes reinforcement learning lead at Canva's Research Lab. Worth noting: this is Canva's first C-suite addition focused specifically on algorithms and data science. Cavalry, a UK-based 2D animation platform, counts Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, and Nike as subscribers. Co-founders Chris Hardcastle, Ian Waters, and Adam Jenns are joining Canva. The acquisition expands Canva's professional design suite, particularly for motion designers. ## What this means for sales Canva is at $4 billion in annualized revenue, up 36% year-over-year, with 31 million paid subscribers. The company has completed six acquisitions since 2024: Affinity, Leonardo.Ai, MagicBrief, and now MangoAI and Cavalry. Previous deal was Leonardo (2024, reportedly worth at least $320 million based on team size and tech stack). The acquisition pattern is focused: AI-driven marketing tools (MangoAI, MagicBrief) and creative capabilities (Leonardo, Cavalry, Affinity). This signals Canva is building out enterprise marketing and creative workflows, which typically means expansion of their B2B sales org. Canva's ANZ headquarters is in Sydney. The company has scaled from design tool to Visual Suite for marketing teams, though specific sales team size and recent hiring numbers are not public. Affinity alone hit 4 million downloads post-acquisition in 2024. Seven of Canva's acquisitions have been Europe-based companies (including Flourish, Kaleido, Smartmockups, Pexels, Pixabay). Geographic expansion usually precedes sales team expansion in those markets. No comp details disclosed for incoming execs. Standard for acquisitions at this stage: retention packages tied to integration milestones, not public OTE structures.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

Canva hits $4B ARR, growing 35%. Worth $44B or $20B?

## The Numbers Canva reported $4B in annual recurring revenue, up 35% year-over-year. That is $23M in 2018 to $4B in 2025: 173x in seven years. The enterprise segment (25+ seats) hit $500M ARR, growing at 100%. That is 12.5% of total revenue, doubling while the overall business grows at 35%. Two engines: one healthy, one on fire. 265 million monthly active users. 31 million paid users. A 12% conversion rate from MAU to paid. Most PLG companies would kill for that number. ## What It Is Worth Canva's last secondary valuation was $42B in August 2025. Is that right? Two public comps tell the story: Figma and Adobe. **Figma**: IPO'd at $33 in July 2025, hit $142, now trades around $24. Market cap roughly $11B to $12B on approximately $1B ARR growing at 40%. That is 11x to 12x ARR. The market re-rated it hard. Apply that multiple to Canva's $4B ARR and you get $44B to $48B. The secondary valuation of $42B looks conservative, not aggressive. Canva at 35% growth is nearly on par with Figma at 40%. **Adobe**: $107B market cap on roughly $24B revenue, growing at 10%. That is 4.5x revenue. The market has decided AI is a structural threat to seat-based design platforms. Adobe's stock is down 44% over the past year. If the market decides Canva faces the same AI disruption risk, the valuation drops to 5x to 6x ARR: $20B to $24B. That is the bear case. ## The Range **Bear case (5x to 6x ARR)**: $20B to $24B. Requires believing AI disrupts design platforms broadly and 35% growth stalls. **Base case (11x to 12x ARR)**: $44B to $48B. The honest comp is Figma at similar growth rates. This lands above the $42B secondary. **Bull case (15x to 18x ARR)**: $60B to $72B. Requires believing the B2B segment re-rates the entire business and Canva IPOs into momentum. ## What It Means for Sales Teams Canva's enterprise motion is working. $500M in B2B ARR doubling year-over-year means they have figured out how to sell into companies at scale. If you are selling design or productivity tools into enterprise, this is the comp your prospects are using. The AI risk is real. Adobe's valuation collapse shows the market is pricing in disruption to seat-based models. If your product is seat-based and faces generative AI pressure, expect valuation compression. IPO timing matters. Canva's COO said they will go public within a "couple of years." At 35% growth with 8 years of profitability, they can choose their timing. Most companies do not have that luxury.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

AI vendors hit $100M ARR in 12 months while legacy SaaS NRR collapses

## The Numbers That Matter ElevenLabs closed a $500M Series D at $11B valuation this week. Founded in 2021, they hit that valuation in under five years. For context: that is the pace that used to take a decade of grinding through quota, burning through $100M+ in sales and marketing spend, and building 200-person AE teams. They are not alone. AI-native B2B companies are hitting $100M ARR in 12 months, not 4-5 years. When that happens, they do not just take market share. They take budget. CFOs want to spend on tools that show immediate ROI. That means dollars are moving away from legacy vendors. ## What Changed for Sales Teams The old B2B playbook was predictable: lock up a category by $20M ARR, outspend competitors to $100M, then ride 130% NRR on seat expansion and module upsells. Product updates were quarterly at best. Customers renewed because switching costs were brutal. That model is broken. Here is what replaced it: **Expansion revenue is collapsing.** Customers who used to automatically add seats are now asking why they would buy more from a vendor that has not shipped real innovation in two years. A new AI-native tool can replace $500K in headcount for $50K/year. Every CFO knows this. Your renewal is no longer automatic. **AI-native competitors are architecturally superior.** They are not bolting AI features onto a 2015 codebase. They are building agentic-first products that do the work, not just assist with it. When your competitor's product closes the loop and your product still requires manual input, your AI chatbot does not matter. **The category lock-up window is gone.** A technical founder with Claude can build in a weekend what used to take a 10-person eng team a quarter. That means hundreds of new entrants in every category. The oxygen does not run out at $20M ARR anymore. ## What This Means for ANZ Sales ElevenLabs has no reported ANZ presence: no Sydney office, no Melbourne headcount, no local sales team. That is the pattern with AI-native vendors. They scale through product-led growth and land enterprise deals without the traditional territory-based AE model. If you are carrying a bag for a legacy B2B vendor, watch your comp plan. When NRR drops from 130% to 100%, your expansion commission disappears. When budget shifts to AI-native tools, your pipeline shrinks. When product velocity matters and your vendor ships once a quarter, you lose deals. The market is still growing. Enterprise software spend is accelerating in 2026. But the dollars are moving to vendors who ship real capability improvements weekly, not quarterly bug fixes dressed up as features. Your quota did not change. The game did.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

EatClub raises $27m Series B, valuation hits $200m

# EatClub raises $27m Series B, valuation hits $200m Melbourne-founded restaurant booking platform EatClub closed a $27 million Series B, less than a year after its $18.2 million Series A in May 2025. Marbruck led the round, with participation from existing investors EVP and CoAct. Valuation is now north of $200 million, up from the $75-100 million range at Series A. ## What EatClub does Founded in 2017 by Pan Koutlakis, EatClub allows restaurants to offer time-based discounts up to 50% through its app. Dynamic pricing fills empty tables during off-peak periods. Celebrity chef Marco Pierre White is an early investor. He brings credibility but no operational role is specified. ## UK traction Since launching in London nine months ago, EatClub signed over 1,000 UK restaurants. The platform now has 5,000+ venues globally. Order volumes tripled over the past nine months. Manchester is the next UK city launch. ## What the money funds Expansion into more UK cities and the EatClub Earn loyalty programme. Customers accumulate dining credits through participating retailers and redeem them at restaurants on the platform. ## What we don't know No disclosure on: sales team size, recent hires, revenue, ANZ headcount, or whether UK expansion means new ANZ-based sales roles. The company maintains a low public profile outside funding announcements. For a Series B with aggressive UK expansion, the lack of team growth details is notable. Most B2B platforms scaling internationally hire account executives and partnership managers in volume. Whether EatClub is hiring for those roles, and where, remains unclear. Worth noting: moving from $18.2m to $27m in nine months with a 2-3x valuation jump suggests strong unit economics or competitive tension in the round.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

Canberra putting $500m into defence tech fund, wants VCs to match it

The federal government wants venture capital firms to help deploy $1 billion into Australian defence tech startups. Defence opened a Request for Expressions of Interest on AusTender for private investors to establish and manage the Advanced Capabilities Investment Fund. The structure: up to $500m government co-investment, seeking equal private capital match. Target companies are SMEs and startups building capabilities in cyber, AI and autonomy, electronic warfare, quantum technologies, undersea warfare, and what Defence calls "kinetic and kinetic-enhancing capabilities." That is missiles, bombs, artillery, armoured vehicles. Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy pitched it as a way to catalyse sovereign industry growth and export potential. The REOI closes April 30. No fund manager selected yet. ## What this means for sales If you are selling into defence tech or considering it, watch which VCs land this mandate. Those firms will have pipeline visibility into which startups are scaling, where the procurement dollars are flowing, and which capabilities Defence actually wants to buy versus fund as R&D. Defence tech sales cycles are long, compliance is heavy, and buyers move slowly. But when they buy, contracts are large and multi-year. Companies landing ACIF money will likely add sales headcount, especially if they have export ambitions beyond ADF procurement. Worth noting: this is venture funding, not procurement. Startups getting ACIF capital still need to navigate Defence's buying process. The fund aims to bridge the gap between VC-stage companies and procurement-ready capabilities, particularly for AUKUS Pillar Two tech sharing with US and UK. Australia is pushing for 80% domestic defence spending and sovereign capabilities. The 2025-26 defence budget is $59 billion, rising to 2.3% of GDP by 2032-33. If ACIF works, expect more sales roles in defence tech over the next 24 months, particularly for companies building dual-use tech with export potential. Startups already in the space include Advanced Navigation, which has US Defence contracts for GPS-jamming countermeasures. The fund targets similar companies pre-scale.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

SaaStr replaced human sales team with AI agents, went from -80% to +132% growth

## The Numbers SaaStr AI 2026 is tracking 132% of last year's performance at this point. Tickets up, sponsors up, May 12-14 in San Francisco. But founder Jason Lemkin says without rebuilding their entire sales motion around AI agents, they would have cratered: -80% sponsor revenue, -50% attendees, roughly -46% overall. The delta between +132% and -46% is the story. ## What Changed SaaStr went from 20+ humans in 2020 to 3 humans plus 20 AI agents by 2025. Planning 5 humans and 30-35 AI agents in 2026. The AI sales stack: SDRs sending 15,000+ messages at 5-7% response rates. BDRs booking meetings autonomously. AI syncing calls to Salesforce, handling community chats, managing sponsor outreach. No traditional sales team structure disclosed. No separate CRO or VP Sales. AI manages most of the go-to-market pipeline. ## The Buyer Shift Lemkin's blunt on what happened: "We basically lost 100% of our non-AI sponsors from the 2018-2023 era. Almost all of them." Traditional B2B software vendors cut event budgets to nothing as growth slowed 2023-2025. The sponsors still writing checks are AI-first companies: Google Cloud, Artisan, Monaco, Replit. Attendees are up, but fewer from older B2B companies. Growth is coming from AI-native startups, developers building on AI infrastructure, operators trying to survive the transition. ## The Budget Hunt SaaStr had to find the "AI budget" at sponsor companies. That meant: - Different buyer: Chief AI Officer, transformation team, sometimes CEO directly. Not the marketing or events budget holder. - Different value prop: Reaching people building and deploying AI in B2B, not reaching SaaS buyers. - Different qualification: Is this company flush with venture capital? Do they have a dedicated AI transformation budget? Lemkin's take for sales teams: "We didn't just sell harder. We sold differently, to different people, for different reasons, against different budgets." ## What It Means If your traditional B2B buyer pool is shrinking and your 2023 playbook is not working, the answer might not be hiring more AEs. It might be rebuilding your entire motion around where budget actually lives now. SaaStr's eight-figure annual revenue now runs on conferences, content, and tools like SaaStr.ai (500K users in 45 days). Tripled content output to 12-15 pieces per week with the AI team. No ANZ presence or headcount disclosed. Focus remains US and Europe markets. SaaStr Annual 2026 expects 10,000+ attendees, 68% VP+ executives, 800+ VCs. Different crowd than 2022. Should be.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Gartner down 71%, Forrester worth $105M: enterprise budgets are frozen

## The Numbers **Gartner (NYSE: IT)** reported Q4 revenue of $1.8B, up just 2.2%. Full year $6.5B, decelerating from 9.6% annualized growth over five years. Consulting revenue: $134M, down 12.8% year on year. Stock down roughly 71% from November 2024 peak of $552 to around $155. Market cap dropped from $45B to $12B. **Forrester (NASDAQ: FORR)** posted Q4 revenue of $101.1M, down 6%. Full year $396.9M, down 8% from $432.5M in 2024. Market cap sits at $105M for a company doing $400M in revenue. They cut 8% of staff in February, exited strategy consulting entirely, and posted a $119M GAAP net loss including goodwill impairment. These are not random software vendors. These are the companies that enterprise VPs pay to advise on technology and marketing spend. When they get crushed, it means their customers stopped buying advice, which means those customers froze budgets. ## What This Means for Sales **Deal cycles are longer.** Gartner CEO Gene Hall said executives are "slowing and deferring everything possible." More stakeholders, more scrutiny, more approval layers. If your enterprise deal closed in 90 days last year, plan for 120-150 now. **Consulting revenue is the real signal.** Gartner consulting down 12.8%. Forrester consulting down 16% in Q4, exiting the business entirely after bookings dropped 50%. When companies cut consulting, they are not doing new initiatives. They are executing on what they have. If your sale requires a "transformation project" or "strategic initiative," your deal just got harder. **ANZ context:** No specific ANZ data disclosed, but Gartner operates globally and Forrester has been pulling back internationally. Enterprise budgets in Australia and New Zealand follow the same patterns: longer cycles, higher scrutiny, fewer new projects. **AI is compressing value.** Both firms produced thousands of AI research pieces, but clients now have access to LLMs that compete with subscription research. Forrester launched AI Access, a self-service product that shortened sales cycles by 50%, which tells you the old model was bloated. If research firms are getting commoditised by AI, so is your product. **One bright spot:** Gartner conferences grew 13.9% with 51% margins. People still show up in person. Forrester's events collapsed 29% because they ran multi-day conferences nobody wanted. Format matters. ## The Bottom Line When the companies selling into enterprise budgets report numbers like this, that is your market signal. Budgets are frozen. Deal cycles are extended. Consulting is dead. Plan your pipeline accordingly.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Eucalyptus exits for $1.6B: Hims acquisition brings US sales playbook to ANZ

## The Deal Hims & Hers Health is acquiring Sydney-based Eucalyptus for US$1.15 billion ($1.6 billion AUD), with $240 million upfront and the rest tied to performance milestones. That is 3x the $560 million valuation Eucalyptus hit in April 2023. Founded in 2019, Eucalyptus operates five telehealth brands: Pilot (men's health), Juniper (weight management), Software (dermatology), Kin (reproductive health), and Compound (preventative health). The company posted $120.9 million revenue in FY24, with 60% from international markets including UK, Germany, Japan, and Canada. ## What This Means for Sales Teams Hims runs a different sales model than most ANZ healthtech companies. They hire aggressively in the US, pay above-market comp for top performers, and run a high-velocity inside sales operation alongside digital acquisition. Eucalyptus has been building out its own sales function across five markets. Post-acquisition, expect: **Headcount changes.** US acquirers typically consolidate or restructure within 6-12 months. Sales leadership often gets replaced or reports into US-based CROs. **Comp structure shifts.** Hims pays competitively in US markets. Whether that translates to ANZ rates or gets benchmarked to local standards will determine retention. **Process integration.** Different CRM stacks, different sales methodologies, different quota-setting approaches. The ramp period just got longer. Worth noting: Eucalyptus raised $148 million across four rounds from Blackbird, Airtree, Woolworths VC fund W23, OneVentures, and Mary Meeker's BOND Capital. Those investors just made strong returns. The sales team that helped build that valuation now waits to see what their comp looks like under new ownership. Deal closes mid-year. If you are on the Eucalyptus sales team, start asking questions about territory assignments, quota relief during integration, and whether your OTE changes.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

Breaker raises $9m seed, hiring for defence AI platform

## Breaker raises $9m seed, hiring for defence AI platform Sydney-founded defence startup Breaker closed $9 million in seed funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with Australian VC Main Sequence following on from their pre-seed lead 12 months prior. The company builds AI voice-control software that lets military operators coordinate up to 100 autonomous systems (drones, ground vehicles, maritime platforms) using natural language commands. The platform runs entirely onboard each robot, no cloud dependency, designed for comms-denied environments. **What this means for sales teams:** Defence tech deals move slowly, but when they close, they are large. Breaker has demonstrated technology with Rheinmetall Defence Australia, US Special Operations Command, and Singapore's Defence Science and Technology Agency. That customer list suggests enterprise motion with long sales cycles and deep technical validation. The company originated in Sydney (UNSW Founders Defence 10X program, 2023) but relocated US headquarters to Austin in 2025. Founders Matthew Buffa, Michael Irwin, and Vanja Videnovic came from Anduril, Droneshield, and Hargrave Technologies. **The hiring angle:** No specific sales roles announced, but $9 million seed in defence tech typically funds 12-18 month runway. Engineering team includes ex-Anduril and Droneshield staff. Worth watching: defence software companies at this stage usually hire technical account managers or solutions engineers before traditional AEs. Government sales requires security clearances and deep product knowledge. **Comp context:** Defence tech sales roles in ANZ typically sit 10-20% below equivalent SaaS enterprise positions, but quota cycles are longer (18-24 months for major contracts) and deal sizes are larger. US defence tech AEs at seed stage companies typically see $140-180k OTE, ANZ equivalent would be $120-150k OTE. Main Sequence's follow-on investment indicates continued Australian market engagement despite US headquarters shift. No revenue figures disclosed, typical for defence startups pre-revenue or under NDA with government customers.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

Eucalyptus sells for $1.6B: What the Doximity rival deal means for ANZ healthcare sales

## The Deal Eucalyptus, the Sydney-based telehealth startup, is being acquired by NYSE-listed Hims & Hers Health for US$1.15 billion ($1.6B AUD). That is a 3x return on its April 2023 valuation of $520 million. **Deal structure:** $340M cash at close, deferred payments over 18 months (cash or stock), plus earnouts tied to financial targets through early 2029. Founder Tim Doyle stays on to run the business. ## The Numbers Eucalyptus runs at $640M ARR (US$450M) and posted triple-digit year-on-year ARR growth in 2025. The company is not yet profitable: it reported a $15.2M after-tax loss in FY2024. Revenue growth at this scale matters more than profitability for acquirers chasing market share. Founded in 2019, Eucalyptus raised $142M total across four rounds: $8M Series A (2020), $30M Series B (2021), $60M Series C (2022), and $50M (2023). Investors include Blackbird, Airtree, Woolworths' W23, OneVentures, Athletic Ventures, and BOND Capital. ## What It Means for Sales Teams Eucalyptus operates five DTC brands: Pilot (men's health), Juniper (weight loss and menopause), Kin (fertility), Software (skincare), and Normal (sexual health). The multi-brand model works: over 500,000 consultations since 2019. For healthcare sales professionals, this acquisition validates the DTC telehealth playbook in ANZ. US acquirers are paying premium multiples (roughly 2.5x ARR) for proven growth in regulated markets. If you are selling into healthcare tech, these are the metrics buyers care about: ARR growth rate, customer acquisition cost, retention, and verticalized brand strategy. Doximity, the US medical network platform, has been active in healthcare M&A and sales hiring. While this deal involves Hims & Hers, the broader trend is clear: US healthcare platforms are acquiring ANZ growth engines. That creates opportunities for sales teams in Sydney and Melbourne who understand both the local regulatory environment and how to scale DTC health brands. Worth noting: Eucalyptus briefly launched a premium men's health offering in 2024 before suspending it. The core portfolio proved strong enough without it. ## The Context This follows a pattern of ANZ telehealth exits. The sector saw consolidation through COVID and is now seeing strategic M&A from US public companies looking for international growth. For sales professionals in healthcare tech: the comp is there, the roles are growing, and US acquirers are willing to pay for ANZ market expertise.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

24 Australian startups raised $91 million this week, Fluent Commerce takes $46m

## The Numbers 24 Australian startups raised $91 million this week. Fluent Commerce took half of it: $46 million led by Bain Capital for its AI-powered retail order management platform. The rest came from a mix of early-stage rounds, including 19 companies in Startmate's latest cohort, plus deals in legal tech and defence tech. ## What Fluent Commerce Does The Sydney company helps retailers like JD Sports, L'Oréal, and LVMH track inventory and deliveries. Enterprise clients, global names, seven-year gap since their last raise in 2019. That gap matters: it signals they were not burning cash to hit vanity metrics. Bain Capital led the round. Arrowroot Capital led their $33 million Series B back in 2019. ## Sales Implications Fluent Commerce sells to enterprise retail. That means long sales cycles, complex implementations, and likely a small but experienced AE team focused on strategic accounts. AI-powered order management is not a quick close. The $46 million will fund scaling, which typically means hiring. For enterprise SaaS in Sydney, expect AE comp in the $140k-$180k OTE range, possibly higher for senior enterprise roles with retail vertical experience. ## The Broader Context This week fits the 2024-2025 funding trend: Australian startups raised $5.4 billion across 810+ companies in 2024, up 68% year-over-year. Seed rounds average $2.8 million, Series A sits at $18 million. Sydney and Melbourne take 75% of total funding. B2B dominates. AI takes 24% of deals, fintech 28%, healthtech 18%. The top 10 deals took 70% of Q3 2025's $1 billion. Capital is concentrating in proven execution, not spray-and-pray. ## What This Means for Sales Professionals Funding activity signals hiring. When 24 companies raise in one week, that translates to SDR, BDR, and AE roles over the next 6-12 months. Fluent Commerce alone will likely add enterprise AEs and possibly a VP Sales if they are scaling into new regions. For quota carriers: track which verticals are getting funded. Retail tech, legal tech, defence tech all raised this week. Those sectors will be hiring, and early hires at well-funded startups often get better equity and faster promotion paths than later joiners. ANZ startup funding is up, but comp still lags US by 20-30% for equivalent roles. Know your worth, check Glassdoor, and negotiate.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

Appetise raises $7M selling grocery behaviour data to FMCG brands

## The Deal Appetise closed a $7 million Series A led by Icehouse Ventures, 18 months after making a bet that killed $400k in consumer revenue. The Christchurch-based company ditched its $4/week meal planning subscription, made the app free, and started selling the behavioural data to FMCG brands instead. The math worked. Revenue hit $3.5 million, up from $1.2 million six months prior. Australia now drives 70% of growth, with 70 brands signed including Kraft Heinz and Lee Kum Kee. ## What They Actually Sell Appetise runs two platforms. Consumers get a free meal planning app with 2,000+ recipes and supermarket-integrated shopping lists. Brands get Appetise Insights: behavioural data showing how 110,000 households actually plan meals and buy groceries, not what they report in surveys. Co-founder Toby Hilliam calls it "the largest food and beverage behavioural research panel in Australia" compared to traditional 18,000-person survey panels. The pitch: observed behaviour beats reported behaviour. ## The Sales Angle This is the B2B consumer data play in action. Free product builds the user base. User base becomes the dataset. Dataset becomes the revenue engine. For sales teams selling into FMCG or retail, Appetise is now a competitor to traditional market research firms, but with real-time purchase intent data. Worth noting: 70 brands in 12 months suggests strong product-market fit in Australia, but also indicates they are still in land-grab mode. Series A capital likely funds AE headcount to scale that 70 into enterprise accounts. For anyone tracking the ANZ B2B data and insights space, this validates the consumer-to-enterprise data model. The short-term revenue sacrifice was real. The 3x growth in six months suggests they timed the pivot right. ## The Context Appetise originally launched as MenuAid in 2021. The 2024 rebrand and business model pivot followed $4 million in earlier funding. This Series A brings total raised to $11 million. The company operates across Australia and New Zealand, with COO Elise Hilliam co-founding alongside Toby.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

SaaStr cuts sales team 10 to 1.2 humans, adds 20 AI agents

# SaaStr cuts sales team 10 to 1.2 humans, adds 20 AI agents Jason Lemkin just posted the ratio that should worry every sales leader: his company spent $500,000 on AI agents last year versus $10,000 on Salesforce. That is 50x more on agents than CRM. The SaaStr founder went from 10+ humans in sales to 1.2 humans and 20+ AI agents. Same net productivity. He is not predicting what 2026 sales teams will look like, he is running one. The shift is not theoretical anymore. Lemkin's advice to sales leaders: deploy an AI agent yourself. Not through an agency. Not by delegating to your team. Do it yourself so you understand what changes. For junior sales and GTM roles, his message is clear: embrace it or get left behind. Be the person who knows how to run agents, not the one replaced by them. The question is not whether AI replaces sales roles. It is which ones, and how fast. Lemkin breaks it down role by role in his full post, separating what AI can handle today from what still requires human judgement. If you are still running a 2021 sales org structure in 2026, you are already behind. The companies figuring out the human-plus-agent model now are the ones that will scale efficiently. The ones waiting for clarity will be playing catch-up with worse unit economics. Worth noting: this is not about eliminating salespeople entirely. It is about fundamentally rethinking which tasks justify headcount versus agent spend. The best sales leaders are already making that calculation. **Related:** Sales automation trends 2026, AI predictions for sales teams, how AI changes sales jobs, future of sales teams with AI.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Investors now sit in on live prospect calls during fundraising diligence

## Investors now sit in on live prospect calls during fundraising diligence Forget reference calls. VCs are asking founders to pitch real buyers while they watch. Amanda Robson, GP of Modern Technical Fund, introduces founders to prospects in her network who have never seen the product. Then she sits in on the pitch as a fly on the wall. The shift is straightforward: reference calls are backward-looking. They tell you who already bought, not who would buy. Existing customers like the founder, they have favorable early-adopter contracts, and they want the company to succeed. They are incentivized to give a rosy review. A live buyer has no skin in the game. Their feedback is raw and objective. ### Why it works **It tests real positioning.** Can the founder clearly articulate what problem they solve, why it is urgent, why it is different, and why now? Watching someone lead a call and someone react to it in real time tells you more than a 15-minute reference call ever will. **It measures urgency-to-budget.** The most critical question in diligence is not "Does this work?" It is "Is this a priority?" By watching the pitch, the VC can see exactly where the product sits in the buyer's mental hierarchy. Nice-to-have gets "That is interesting, let us touch base next quarter." Urgency gets "How fast can we get this integrated? Who else are you working with in my industry?" **It removes access bias.** You are not just hearing a polished narrative after the fact. You are watching how the founder handles objections, where they lean in, where they hesitate, and how they adapt. ### What it means for sales teams If your company is fundraising, your sales team needs to be ready. This is not just about the CRO doing reference calls. Your AEs might be running live pitches with investors listening in. Prepare your team: tighten positioning, know your numbers, practice objection handling. Investors are not evaluating the product in a vacuum anymore. They are evaluating how well you sell it to someone who does not already believe. From the founder side, it is also a win. Even if the prospect does not convert, you get immediate market feedback. You learn what resonates, what falls flat, and where the story needs work. This trend aligns with broader 2026 fundraising reality: investors want live traction, not narratives. Companies like Monaco, which recently raised $35M from Founders Fund, are being built for this world: AI-native CRMs targeting Seed and Series A sales teams, emphasizing efficiency and leverage without headcount expansion. The bar for diligence just moved. Sales performance is no longer behind the scenes. It is the main event.

Sales Hacker
about 2 months ago
News

AI agents closing deals, not AEs: Firebolt runs CS with 2 humans

## The Third GTM Motion Is Here Firebolt President Hemanth Vedagarbha told SaaStr AI Annual that B2B sales has entered a third era. Not sales-led. Not product-led. AI-led growth, where algorithms handle top of funnel before a human ever sees your deck. The pitch: your buyer is an AI agent (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) parsing your website, not a VP scrolling LinkedIn. Your mid-funnel is agent-to-agent negotiation. Humans show up late, if at all. ## The Customer Success Model: 2 Humans, Rest Are Agents Firebolt runs CS with one human rep for the US, one for rest of world. Everyone else is agents driving in-product engagement. QBR decks that used to take hours now take minutes, AI-generated with usage data and next-best-action recommendations. Predictive churn models start on day one of a three-year contract, not month 35. Vedagarbha claims 22% churn reduction when deployed this way. The CS rep's job shifts from data assembly to relationship management. ## What This Means for Quota Carriers Firebolt shared their three-year plan: scale from 200 employees to 1,000, but the majority will be agents, not people. That reframes every sales role. If your SDR motion is cold outreach setting appointments for AEs, you are playing a game being automated out from under you. The data backs the urgency. Median SaaS growth dropped from 36% in 2021 to 16.5% today. CAC is up 55% over five years. Customer churn is a $136 billion drag across the industry. Public SaaS valuations collapsed from 17x to 6.7x revenue. ## The ANZ Reality Check Firebolt has no disclosed ANZ presence: no headcount, no regional deals mentioned. This is a Tel Aviv-based cloud data warehouse competing with Snowflake and Databricks on speed (36x faster, they claim) and cost (5% of legacy systems). But the AI-led growth thesis applies here. If your top of funnel is being evaluated by AI agents before humans enter the process, your pitch needs to be machine-readable, not just compelling. That changes how you write positioning, how you structure pricing pages, how you think about what gets scraped and summarised. Worth noting: Firebolt has no public revenue data, no disclosed funding rounds, no named CRO or VP Sales. They are engineering-led, partnership-focused (recent tie-up with Jedify for Semantic Fusion), not traditional sales scaling. ## What Actually Changes If AI-led growth is real, here is what shifts for quota carriers: - Top of funnel optimisation becomes SEO for AI agents, not Google - SDR headcount stays flat or shrinks, agent-assisted prospecting scales - AE role tilts toward high-touch relationship management, not discovery calls - CS becomes data science meets account management, not reactive support - Comp structures lag behind productivity gains (they always do) The CISO becomes the new Chief People Officer, governing what agents can and cannot do. The traditional CPO role shrinks. Sales ops becomes sales and agent ops. ## The Unasked Question Vedagarbha did not address headcount implications for sales teams. If Firebolt scales to 1,000 employees but 800 are agents, what does that mean for AE hiring? For quota distribution? For OTE structures when your team is 20% human, 80% AI? Those are the questions that matter. The comp transparency conversation just got harder, because now you are splitting quota credit between humans and the tools they use. Who gets paid when an agent closes a deal? What does attainment look like when half your pipeline is AI-generated? No answers yet. But the model is already running at Firebolt and others. Worth tracking.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Anthropic hits $14B ARR in 14 months, coding tool at $2.5B

## The Numbers Anthropic hit $14 billion ARR in February 2026. The company was at $1 billion ARR in December 2024. That is $1B to $14B in 14 months, growing 10x annually for three straight years. The company closed a $30 billion Series G at a $380 billion valuation, up from $183 billion five months earlier. No B2B software company has scaled this fast. Not Slack, not Zoom, not Snowflake. ## Claude Code: $2.5B in Nine Months Claude Code, Anthropic's agentic coding tool, launched publicly in May 2025. It is now at $2.5 billion ARR. That number doubled since January 2026. Enterprise users represent more than half of Claude Code revenue. Business subscriptions quadrupled in the past two months. According to recent data, 4% of all GitHub public commits are now authored by Claude Code. Projections put that at 20% by year end. ## Enterprise Metrics The customer breakdown: - $100k+ customers grew 7x in the past year - $1m+ customers went from a dozen to 500+ in two years - 8 of the Fortune 10 are Claude customers - 80% of revenue comes from enterprises - 70 to 75% of revenue is pay per token API, the rest is subscriptions and enterprise contracts Anthropic monetises at roughly $211 per monthly user versus OpenAI at about $25 per weekly user. That is an 8x difference. Smaller audience, massively higher revenue per user. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If you are selling into enterprises that use developers, your buyer budget just got reallocated. Companies are spending billions on AI coding tools. Claude Code went from zero to $2.5B ARR faster than most SaaS companies reach $100M. Enterprise buying patterns: 79% of OpenAI customers also pay for Anthropic. Enterprises are not choosing, they are buying both. Multi vendor AI strategies are the norm now. For sales professionals in SaaS: AI agents are repricing the entire software market. Anthropic's automation tools triggered a global software stock selloff. If your product competes with what an AI agent can do, your buyers are already asking that question. ## The Funding Context This $30 billion round is the second largest private tech raise ever, behind only OpenAI's $40 billion. At $380 billion on $14 billion ARR, Anthropic trades at roughly 27x ARR. That multiple is actually compressing as revenue scales. OpenAI sits at about 30x. 36+ investors participated beyond the leads: GIC, Coatue, Sequoia, Lightspeed, Accel, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, Microsoft, Nvidia, Blackstone, Qatar Investment Authority, Fidelity. When you are growing 10x annually with Fortune 10 customers, capital finds you. Anthropic is now the third most valuable private company globally, behind OpenAI and SpaceX. IPO timing is when, not if.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Atlassian CEO: Software not dead, but public SaaS index is broken

## The Revenue Stacking Problem Anthropic projects $149B ARR by 2029. OpenAI projects $180B. That is $350B between two companies in a $700B global software market, before you factor in Microsoft's $200B run rate. Mike Cannon-Brookes, CEO of Atlassian, pointed out what most coverage misses: the revenue stacking makes these numbers misleading. When Atlassian buys Anthropic, they pay AWS. AWS pays Anthropic. When Cursor does $1B in revenue, a chunk of that is the same billion flowing through the stack. The individual revenue number does not count the whole stack. Even accounting for stacking, the numbers are staggering. Scale Venture Partners' Rory O'Driscoll framed it: you are saying Anthropic becomes another Microsoft and OpenAI becomes another Microsoft. That is two new Microsofts feeding from the same CIO budget pile. The relief valve might be the trillion-dollar consulting and services market. AI could eat into systems integration spend around SAP, Oracle, NetSuite. That is budget that gets reallocated to more efficient software. But implementation consulting for AI itself is booming at Accenture and peers, while rote integration work gets automated. Swings and roundabouts. ## Software Is Not Dead Cannon-Brookes was direct: the idea that software as a category is dead is ludicrous. Businesses have always bought pre-built technology solutions. They did not write everything in assembly before, and they will not build everything from scratch with LLMs. He pulled up Atlassian's competitive docs from 2005, 2010, and 2015. A huge chunk of those companies are gone: merged, acquired, dead. That is capitalism. AI accelerates the cycle but does not change the pattern. ## The Real Problem: Composition For 15 years, median public SaaS growth held around 30%. Not because every company grew at 30%, but because when one slowed below 10%, PE took it private, and a new 60% grower IPO'd to replace it. That cycle broke. No new high-growth IPOs in years. PE bought the mid-tier. Big tech got better at M&A. Cannon-Brookes' SaaS CEO group from 2020 had 10+ public CEOs. Now it is him, Eric from Zoom, Aaron from Box, and Toby from Shopify. Almost everyone else got bought. What remains in the public index is a weird survivor set: too big for PE, too small for big tech, no new entrants. The average looks terrible, but it is a composition problem, not a death spiral. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If you are selling B2B software, the category is not dying. Your buyer's budget is getting reallocated, not cut. The challenge is positioning against both traditional competitors and AI-native alternatives that claim to replace entire categories. Watch where consulting budgets flow. When enterprises cut SI spend but increase implementation consulting for AI tools, that tells you where the real adoption is happening. The companies that survive this cycle will be the ones that ship fast and prove ROI in months, not quarters. For quota carriers: if your company is not in hypergrowth and not getting acquired, ask hard questions about the exit path. The middle is disappearing.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Techstars Sydney shuts down: NSW pulls funding after three cohorts

## Techstars Sydney shuts down: NSW pulls funding after three cohorts Techstars Sydney is closing. The NSW government declined to renew funding for the three-year-old accelerator program, which backed 36 startups across three cohorts with more than $60 million invested. Managing director Christie Jenkins confirmed she and her team are departing. No 2026 cohort will run. The closure follows a pattern. NSW has cut SXSW Sydney, closed the Sydney Startup Hub, reduced MVP Ventures funding, and stalled appointments to innovation councils. Investment NSW promoted Techstars as central to its Innovation Blueprint as recently as September 2025. Six months later, the program is gone. ### What this means for ANZ startups Techstars Sydney gave local startups access to 3,100 global mentors and 3,500 alumni companies. That network mattered for early-stage companies building enterprise sales motions or seeking intro paths to US enterprise buyers. The program selected around 12 companies per cohort from 560 applications in its final intake, up from 390 the prior year. The 2025 cohort included VetNotes (veterinary software) and Zipline AI (brand co-design). 43% of top applicants had women founders, 47% showed racial diversity. For sales professionals at ANZ startups: fewer accelerator paths mean fewer structured intro opportunities to enterprise buyers and fewer demo day showcases for early traction validation. Enterprise AEs selling to mid-market tech buyers will see a smaller pool of funded, accelerator-vetted companies entering their segments. Techstars globally has accelerated thousands of startups, with exits including Gainsight and DNSFilter (acquired Zorus). The Sydney program operated as a non-commercial accelerator arm backed by NSW funding rather than generating independent revenue. No word yet on whether the government will replace the program with alternative early-stage support. Based on the current trajectory, replacement seems unlikely.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

AI agents now drive B2B buying decisions, and they play favourites

## AI agents are making buying decisions, not just researching them When Jason Lemkin built SaaStr's AI tools on Replit, he needed email delivery, authentication, voice processing. The agent recommended Resend, Clerk, ElevenLabs. He picked all of them without demos, without G2 reviews, without a procurement process. That is happening across B2B now. According to Responsive's October 2025 survey of 350+ buyers, two-thirds rely on AI agents as much as Google when evaluating vendors. In software, that jumps to 80%. One in four B2B buyers use generative AI daily for vendor research. ## The bias problem nobody is talking about Here is what matters for sales teams: AI agents have favourites. They recommend based on training data, partnerships, and algorithmic patterns that are not transparent. When Replit's agent suggests HubSpot over competitors, is that based on fit, or on how HubSpot optimised for agent recommendations? This is algorithmic bias at scale. The same issues that affect AI lead scoring (undervaluing certain buyer profiles) and AI hiring tools (perpetuating historical patterns) now apply to vendor selection. If your product is not in the agent's top three, you are not getting evaluated. ## What this means for pipeline The playbook is changing: **Traditional B2B:** Prospect researches, reads reviews, requests demos, evaluates 3-5 vendors, negotiates. **AI-mediated B2B:** Agent surfaces 1-2 options, buyer trusts recommendation, deal velocity increases but consideration set shrinks. For sellers, this creates two problems. First, if you are not optimised for agent recommendations (whatever that means, because the algorithms are not public), you are invisible. Second, when agents make the shortlist, they compress sales cycles but also compress your opportunity to differentiate. ## The fairness question Lemkin frames this as bigger than SEO. He is right about the scale: 700 million people asking AI what to buy. But SEO had transparency. You could see rankings, understand algorithms, optimise accordingly. Agent recommendations are black boxes. Platforms like 6sense and Salesloft are launching AI agent tools for sales teams. Demandbase and Qualified are building agentic marketing workflows. But who is auditing the recommendation algorithms? How do we know which vendors get favoured, and why? ## What sales leaders need to do First, test it. Ask AI agents to recommend vendors in your category. See where you show up. If you are not in the top three, that is a pipeline problem. Second, understand the bias. AI agents trained on historical data will favour incumbents and well-funded brands. If you are a challenger or a regional player, the algorithm works against you. Third, demand transparency from the platforms building these agents. If Replit's agent recommends HubSpot, is that an editorial decision or a commercial relationship? Buyers (and their bosses) should know. This is not speculative. This is happening now. The question is whether sales teams will adapt before the consideration set gets locked in.

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