Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
New York City's minimum pay rules for app-based delivery workers hit $22.13 per hour in 2026, up from $21.44 in 2025. Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, Instacart, and Shipt face direct unit economics pressure in NYC. The regulatory model offers a preview of gig-economy labor rules that could reshape platform pricing in ANZ markets.
Sydney creator marketing platform Fabulate closed an oversubscribed $4.5 million round at $84.5 million post-money valuation, 90% from existing backers including Centerstone Capital and Nightingale Partners. The company is profitable and operates across 10 APAC markets with more than 100 employees.
Independent MP Allegra Spender says Labor's proposed $10 million lifetime cap on startup CGT concessions could discourage successful founders and investors from backing new ventures. The cap applies to gains under the existing 50% discount, potentially hitting serial investors and exited founders who reinvest.
Brisbane unicorn SafetyCulture is now Mitti, pushing AI-driven workplace operations and insurance alongside its core safety platform. The rebrand follows the 2023 buyout of QBE's 50% stake in their insurance JV. Worth noting: 26,000 businesses worldwide already use the platform, but the company has not disclosed sales headcount or go-to-market structure for the expanded product suite.
Five years after Intuit paid $12B for a business doing $1B ARR, Mailchimp is now shrinking. Intuit reports growth twice: once with Mailchimp, once without. The May earnings call confirmed year-over-year revenue decline and a 17% workforce reduction. Mailchimp went from 20% growth to a liability Intuit strips out of its numbers.
Sydney semiconductor startup Millibeam shipped Rakurai, a portable drone jammer built on proprietary mmWave chips. The company pulled $4.6 million in federal grants: $2.6m from Industry Growth Program, $2m from Supply Chain Resilience Initiative. Worth noting: this is prototype stage (TRL5), not field-ready product.
Atlassian eliminated Loom's Creator Lite role (free viewers inside paid workspaces) and auto-upgraded them to paid Creator seats. A workspace with 10 recorders and 90 watchers used to pay for 10. Now it pays for 100. The free seats were the distribution engine.
Jason Lemkin says SaaS startups should target 10-20% demo-to-paid conversion. Below 8-10% and your sales team runs out of capacity: they need to close 10-15 deals monthly, and over 50 demos per month leaves no time to actually sell. Worth noting: conversion rates often drop as you scale because you attract more top-of-funnel traffic.
Australian startups are hiring sales talent across APAC to dodge local comp pressure. The choice between contractors and employees comes down to control, compliance risk, and actual cost, not just base salary. Get the structure wrong and you are looking at fines, backpay claims, and IP disputes.
Customer success leader ran account prioritization that used to take five teams a quarter. The shift: AI-scored maturity levels, Slack channel analysis, and automated data pulls replaced cross-functional meetings. Four connectors, one Salesforce export, four iterations.
Enrola ditched its education marketplace in September 2025 to focus on AI sales agents that qualify B2C leads via SMS. The Brisbane startup has now closed $2.1M seed led by Purpose Ventures, bringing total funding to $2.9M. 28 customers across ANZ, UK and Ireland already using the platform.
Australian AI infrastructure startup Firmus closed a $2.85 billion round led by Coatue and Nvidia, doubling its valuation to $15 billion in four months. The company has now raised over $4 billion in 12 months to build GPU-dense data centres across Australia and Asia-Pacific.