The Wire

Real-time updates from ANZ tech sales

about 2 months ago
News

Salesforce runs 3 Agentforce pricing models at once, hits $540M ARR

## Three Models, One Product Salesforce shipped three pricing models for Agentforce in 18 months. All three are still running. October 2024: $2 per conversation. Elegant pitch, messy execution. What counts as a conversation when one customer query triggers 8 backend processes? Buyers could not model costs. Result: 5,000 deals in two quarters, only 3,000 paid. May 2025: Flex Credits at $0.10 per action. 100,000 credits for $500, each action consumes 20 credits. More granular, still unpredictable for enterprise procurement. Late 2025: Per-user licenses starting at $125/month. The Agentic Enterprise License Agreement wraps seats around your "digital workforce." CFOs get a number they can budget. CIOs get a contract shape they understand. Salesforce did not kill the other models. All three run simultaneously. ## The Numbers Agentforce hit $540M ARR by Q3 FY2026, growing 330% year-over-year. 18,500 total deals closed, 9,500 paid. That is 8% penetration across Salesforce's 150,000+ customer base. The multi-model approach is working better than $2/conversation ever did. Pricing opened doors instead of closing them. The per-user option gave enterprise procurement teams something they could actually approve. Salesforce had to discount. Heavily. A company that "just does not discount ever" gave steep concessions to get enterprises committed. But they got the deals done. ## Why This Matters for Sales Teams If you are selling Salesforce or competing against it, understand this: the pricing is not chaos, it is market discovery. Nobody knows what the right model for AI agents actually is yet. The PricingSaaS 500 Index tracked 1,800 pricing changes across the top 500 B2B and AI companies in 2025. That is 3.6 pricing changes per company in one year. Credit-based pricing grew 126% year-over-year. Seat-based pricing as the primary model dropped from 21% to 15% of companies in 12 months. For sales teams selling into this: your buyers are confused about how to budget AI. Three pricing models gives them three on-ramps. Match the model to how they want to buy, not how you want to sell. For sales teams using Agentforce: the $125/user/month model is predictable, but watch your actual credit consumption on the Flex model. The ROI depends on volume and use case. Get the calculator out before you commit. The market has not converged on how to buy AI agents. Until it does, expect more pricing shifts, more models, and more "competitive" deals where vendors discount to win early adoption.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Twelve B2B SaaS companies now trade below 2.5x revenue, some under cash

## The Numbers Twelve public B2B SaaS companies now trade below 2.5x revenue. Some sit under 1x. A few trade below their cash on hand. Combined ARR: $10 billion. Combined market cap: under $10 billion. This is not a broad market problem. Median public SaaS still trades around 3x revenue. The S&P is up 17.6% while the SaaS index dropped 6.5% over the same period. This is selective, and it is getting worse. ## What Puts You in the Club Seven patterns show up across every company in this group: **Growth stalled or went negative.** Eight of twelve are growing under 5% or shrinking. Median growth: roughly flat. When you stop growing in B2B, the market stops caring. Five9 at 13% growth gets 2.5x. Upland at negative 23% gets 0.2x. **The 2020 hangover never ended.** Every company peaked between 2019 and 2021 at absurd multiples. RingCentral hit 35x revenue. Teladoc hit $50 billion market cap. COVID pulled forward three years of demand. When it normalized, growth collapsed and never recovered. The difference now: rates are down, the market is strong, but these businesses are not recovering. This is structural, not cyclical. **No credible AI story.** Palantir trades at 50x revenue. CrowdStrike at 20x. Salesforce gets 7x at 8% growth because AgentForce is real. LivePerson does "conversational AI" and trades at 0.2x because being AI-adjacent without AI-native architecture makes you the disrupted, not the disruptor. Features bolted onto pre-AI products do not count. The market wants AI as the core value proposition and the core growth driver. **Profitability is unclear or negative.** Upland carries $301 million in debt. LivePerson refinanced to avoid defaulting on convertible notes. Domo has $140 million in debt against a $243 million market cap. Teladoc is still writing down the $18.5 billion Livongo acquisition. The companies inching toward profitability still cannot escape because profitability alone does not work. You need growth and profitability. Rule of 40 still matters. **Leadership instability.** Founder-CEOs resigning, messy transitions, second or third leadership teams in three years. When you are fighting for survival, executive churn kills momentum. Several companies are trying to execute turnarounds while managing the AI transition. That is nearly impossible to do simultaneously. **Category headwinds from AI-native competitors.** Some of these companies are not just missing an AI story. Their categories are being actively replaced by AI-native products. Budget is moving to hyperscalers ($470 billion in AI infrastructure spend), to vertical SaaS with domain moats (growing 20-31%), and to AI agents that automate workflows entirely. Horizontal platforms without AI defensibility are getting squeezed. Enterprises are consolidating around 275 apps per company, down from more. Seat-based pricing is weakening as AI reduces headcount needs. **Net revenue retention stalled.** NRR for top performers sits at 115-125%, driving 2.5x faster growth. For this group, NRR is flat or declining. Expansion revenue dried up. New logos are not enough to offset churn and contraction. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If your company fits these patterns, expect: **Flat or shrinking territories.** Budget is not growing. Customers are consolidating vendors, not adding them. Price resistance is real. Deals are taking longer, scrutiny is higher. **Quota relief is unlikely.** When growth stalls and profitability is unclear, leadership cuts costs, not quotas. Attainment across the industry is already sitting around 85% for realistic plans. At companies in structural decline, expect that to drop further. **Retention becomes the priority.** New logos are expensive. NRR is the metric that separates survivors from the 2x ARR Club. CROs are pivoting comp plans to weight renewals and expansion heavier. If your comp is still 90% new business, that is a red flag. **AI integration is table stakes.** If your product roadmap does not have AI as the core value prop by now, customers are noticing. Klarna dropped Salesforce and Workday. Publicis cut Adobe spend by 50%. Budget is moving to AI-native tools. If you are selling a horizontal platform without a credible AI story, you are fighting headwinds every deal. ## The Comp Reality No one is publishing updated OTE for these companies, but the pattern is clear: when stock comp craters and cash flow is tight, total comp suffers. RSUs granted in 2021 are underwater. New hires are getting lower equity packages. Base salaries are holding, but accelerators and President's Club are getting quietly restructured. If you are interviewing at a company trading under 3x revenue, ask: - What is historical quota attainment? - What is NRR trending? - What is the AI roadmap, and is it driving pipeline or just a feature? - How much of OTE is stock, and what is the strike price relative to current valuation? Those questions will tell you if you are walking into the 2x ARR Club. ## What Gets You Out Growth plus profitability. AI as the growth driver, not a feature. NRR above 115%. Leadership stability. Category tailwinds, not headwinds. Eight of these twelve companies will not make it out. They will get acquired for parts, go private at distressed valuations, or slowly bleed revenue until they are irrelevant. A few might turn it around, but the window is closing. The lesson: growth is not optional. AI is not optional. NRR is not optional. If you are flat, non-AI-native, and horizontal, the market is pricing you like you are already dead.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

AI tools adding workload for sales teams, not cutting it

## The efficiency promise is not delivering AI was supposed to give sales teams more time for selling. The reality looks different. New research from UC Berkeley tracked 200 workers at a US tech company for eight months as they adopted generative AI tools. The outcome: people did more work, not better work. Product managers started writing code. Researchers took on engineering tasks. Sales teams filled what used to be breaks with AI-prompted micro-tasks. Work intensified. Natural pauses disappeared. The workday got longer and denser. ## The numbers tell two stories Individual productivity is up. Email processing is 25% faster with AI. Coding tasks complete 55.8% quicker. US productivity growth hit 2.7% in 2025, nearly double the previous decade's average. Generative AI contributed 1.1 to 1.3 percentage points of that growth. But here is the catch: 95% of organisations report no measurable return on AI investment, according to MIT Media Lab. AI adoption doubled since 2023. Usage jumped from 55% to 78% of organisations. The tools work at the task level. They are not working at the business level. ## What this means for ANZ sales teams If you are using AI for prospecting, email sequences, or proposal writing, watch for these signs: your day feels fuller but quota attainment is flat. You are checking AI output more than you expected. Small tasks are multiplying. The tools make individual tasks faster, but your workload keeps growing. The Berkeley researchers call it "intensification of work." Sales teams call it grinding harder for the same result. Worth noting: lower-performing reps see the biggest individual gains from AI, suggesting these tools compress skill gaps while creating new management overhead. Wharton projects AI productivity gains will peak in the early 2030s, then fade as implementation complexity catches up. That tracks with what we are seeing now: fast adoption, minimal business outcomes, and teams working harder to manage both the AI and the work it generates. ## The burnout risk The research found workers felt "empowered" by AI, taking on tasks outside their normal scope. That confidence came with a cost: wider job scope, fewer natural breaks, continuous work involvement. Over eight months, what felt like efficiency gains accumulated into overwork. For sales leaders: if your team adopted AI tools in the past year and quota attainment has not moved, you are not alone. The tools work. The business case does not. Yet.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

HotDoc sells to Potentia PE for $250M-$300M, Airtree partially exits

## HotDoc sells to Potentia PE for $250M-$300M, Airtree partially exits HotDoc, Australia's largest patient engagement platform, sold to private equity firm Potentia Capital in a deal valued between $250M and $300M. Potentia now holds majority stake, with health tech investor Acclivis Group joining as a partner. Original backer Airtree, which led HotDoc's $2.2M Series A in 2015, remains as a minority investor. CEO and founder Dr Ben Hurst confirmed the sale on Wednesday. The company serves 23,000 medical practitioners and 13 million active patients, processing 2.5 million appointments monthly. Nearly 1 in 3 Australians use the platform to book GP appointments, handle telehealth, and receive test results. ### What This Means for the Sales Team PE acquisitions typically trigger sales org restructuring within 6-12 months. Potentia will likely assess: customer acquisition costs, sales cycle length, quota attainment rates, and whether the current team structure supports aggressive growth targets or needs optimisation. HotDoc added 66 employees in October 2020 during its growth phase. No word yet on current sales team size, recent sales leadership hires, or whether Potentia plans to expand into enterprise hospital systems beyond GP practices. That expansion would mean new AE roles, longer sales cycles, and different comp structures. Airtree's partial exit after 10 years signals a liquidity event for early employees with equity. For current sales staff without significant stock, PE ownership usually means: clearer revenue targets, more aggressive quota setting, potential territory realignment, and pressure to prove ROI on every role. ### The PE Playbook Potentia operates healthcare and tech portfolio companies. Standard PE moves: implement rigorous pipeline forecasting, standardise comp plans, evaluate whether current OTEs align with market and performance, assess which sales roles drive the most efficient revenue growth. Hurst remains CEO, which provides continuity. But PE majority ownership means the growth mandate likely shifted from "build market share" to "optimise unit economics and prepare for next exit." For sales professionals watching this deal: PE acquisitions create opportunity for high performers who can operate in a metrics-driven environment. They also mean less patience for missed quota and underperforming territories. Know your numbers, document your wins, and understand your equity situation before any restructure conversations start.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

Shopify hits $11.6B revenue, 30% growth. Stock down 28% anyway.

## The Numbers Shopify closed 2025 at $11.6 billion revenue, up 30% year over year. Free cash flow hit $2 billion on a 17% margin. GMV grew 29% to $378 billion. They announced a $2 billion buyback and guided Q1 growth to low 30s, above Street expectations. The stock is down 28% in 2026 so far. Down 38% from its 52-week high. ## What Actually Matters for Sales Shopify now processes 14% of all US e-commerce. GMV growth is accelerating: 20% in 2023, 24% in 2024, 29% in 2025. At nearly $400 billion in transaction volume, they are speeding up, not slowing down. Shopify Payments penetration hit 68% of GMV in Q4, up from 45% five years ago. That is $248 billion in payments volume. Merchant Solutions (the payments-heavy segment) is now 76% of total revenue. Subscriptions are just 24%. They have become a fintech company that happens to sell commerce software. B2B commerce grew 96% for the full year. Every quarter cleared 84% growth, with Q4 at the low end. Brands like Carrier and Dermalogica are using Shopify for B2B now. The horizontal platform went upmarket without building a separate product. ## The Profitability Turn Free cash flow swung from negative $186 million in 2022 to positive $2 billion in 2025. Operating expenses dropped from 60% of revenue in Q1 2023 to 29% in Q4 2025. They divested logistics, cut headcount, and got disciplined. The gross margin compressed slightly as payments grew, but operating leverage more than compensated. ## The Market Reality Shopify trades at roughly 100x earnings, 73x forward. At some point, even strong growth has to meet valuation reality. The business is performing. The multiple is compressing. That is the story. For anyone selling into or around e-commerce: the underlying platform is expanding fast. GMV growth is accelerating. B2B is nearly doubling. The infrastructure layer is getting stronger, regardless of what the stock does on any given Tuesday.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

eBay buys Depop from Etsy for $1.7b, chasing Gen-Z fashion resale

eBay is buying fashion resale platform Depop from Etsy for $1.7 billion in cash, marking another shift in marketplace consolidation strategy. The numbers: Depop has 7 million buyers, 90% under 34. Three million active sellers moved $1 billion in gross merchandise sales in 2025. The platform has grown since Etsy acquired it in 2021 for $1.6 billion, meaning Etsy exits with a modest gain after four years. ## What eBay Gets Depop runs on social commerce: Instagram aesthetics meets peer-to-peer selling. Founded in 2011 by Simon Beckerman, it targets Gen-Z with secondhand fashion and vintage clothing. The platform generates engagement beyond transactions: in its early days, users were hitting 13 million likes and 18 million follows daily. eBay CEO Jamie Iannone says Depop gets access to eBay's scale and operational capabilities. Translation: logistics infrastructure, payment systems, and cross-platform inventory management that smaller marketplaces struggle to build alone. ## The Marketplace Play This fits eBay's pattern of buying established vertical marketplaces rather than building them internally. Depop stays standalone, keeps its brand and platform. That suggests eBay learned from past integration missteps: let the acquired team run their playbook, layer in backend infrastructure where it helps. For B2B marketplace operators, the take is clear: vertical focus with strong demographic lock-in creates acquisition value. Depop owns Gen-Z fashion resale the way LinkedIn owns professional networking. That defensibility justifies premium multiples even in a category (peer-to-peer resale) that eBay already serves. Etsy's exit after four years signals something too: owning a social-first marketplace alongside its maker-focused platform did not generate the synergies they expected. Sometimes the best acquisition strategy is knowing when to sell. Depop continues operating independently. The 500-person team stays intact, headquartered in London with a New York office. No layoffs announced, which in 2026 M&A is worth noting.

SmartCompany