Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
David Fairfull, founder of Sydney AI-marketing startup Metigy, sentenced to 9 years for misleading investors and misusing $7.7m in company funds to buy property. The platform raised $39m on AI claims that the ex-CFO says never existed. Worth noting for sales teams: the red flags were visible during the raises.
Denise Persson runs a 700-person marketing org at Snowflake and stopped logging into dashboards. She asks her data questions directly, gets answers in real time, and cut cost per opportunity by 30% in six months. The shift killed the sales-marketing data war and changed who she hires.
Federal government revises capital gains tax proposal after founders warned the policy would double exit tax rates and push investment offshore. Small businesses with turnover under $10 million keep the 50% discount. New carve-out coming for innovative firms, details still unclear.
New Side Stage Ventures data shows Australia is the world's fastest-growing venture ecosystem since 2016, up 13.7x. The reality for sales teams: early-stage funding has dropped every year since 2021, and founders now raise 41% of seed capital from overseas, double the US rate. That means fewer SDR and AE roles at the earliest stages.
Labor's new CGT carve-outs for startups still leave equity comp less attractive than overseas markets. Founders say the changes won't stop commercial talent heading offshore. The concern: if equity upside gets taxed harder, ANZ startups can't compete on total comp.
Jason Lemkin's SaaStr ran 20 AI agents with minimal human oversight. A rogue PR firm nearly torched a key relationship. The lesson: AI SDRs and human agents both need active monitoring, not just approved scripts from six months ago.
Six companies showed the actual GTM playbook at SaaStr AI 2026. The pattern: build and sell in parallel, price outcomes not seats, treat agents as buyers. Stripe's top AI customers grew 175% in 2026. Cloudflare reports non-human traffic crossed 50%. The old seat-based model is done.
Siva Rajamani has seen 300+ enterprise sales comp plans. Most are too complex, reward the wrong behavior, or both. He breaks down the hidden math that makes reps avoid your best deals, quota-to-OTE ratios that work, and why your top performers should out-earn almost everyone.
Jason Lemkin breaks down a pattern he sees across SaaS startups: the number one rep, already earning top 1% money, quits when the environment shifts. Not because of pay, but because change itself makes staying less attractive. New VP, harder quota, or leadership turnover are the top triggers.
Big Tech buys your rival. Your AE panics. The prospect goes quiet. Except the data says something different: acquirers validate categories, slow down GTM, and hand you runway. Here is what changed in 2025, and what it means for your pipeline.
Melbourne longevity startup Everlab closed a $65M Series A led by Airtree. The three-year-old company, which raised $15M seed in July 2025, is hiring for UK market entry and scaling its clinical and tech teams. Worth noting: they are selling preventive health diagnostics direct-to-consumer and through corporate wellness programmes, including BCG, BHP and Bain.
Queensland fintech Flyweel closed $2.41M pre-seed led by Ten13 to build embedded lending for ad spend. The company processed $110M in ad spend across 1,000 businesses and is launching US-first. Worth noting: this is a different entity than the digital commerce company Omnicom acquired for $835M.