Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
Jason Lemkin (EchoSign, SaaStr founder) ran three different commission structures on multi-year SaaS contracts. One worked. One printed money. One let a rep sell a lifetime deal for $200k and bank $150k commission. Here is what actually happens when you get the incentives wrong.
The construction software incumbent spent $845 million cash on drone tech, more than double its own valuation multiple. Meanwhile, sales and marketing spend grew just 3% while revenue jumped 16%. First GAAP profit in company history, new CEO six months in.
Brussels hit Google with its first Digital Markets Act penalty: €890 million for favoring its own services in Search results and blocking app developers from steering users to cheaper payment options outside Play. The fine underscores EU enforcement on platform gatekeepers, relevant to ANZ app developers and digital advertisers navigating Google's ecosystem.
Chief Product & Technology Officer roles are showing up more at larger B2B software firms, especially those pushing AI transformation. The market reality: executive search firms report these hybrid roles typically fail because one person cannot cover both product strategy and technical execution well. For sales teams, a CPTO hire often signals organisational complexity rather than stronger execution.
Australia's national science agency is courting philanthropists and businesses after cutting jobs and narrowing focus. Worth noting: 75% of CSIRO revenue still comes from government, not private sector. The pitch for donations follows Australia's R&D spend sitting at 1.6% of GDP versus 5% in comparable nations.
Eight ANZ startups closed $102 million in funding over two weeks, led by automotive software company Partly's $71.5 million raise from DST Global and Blackbird. The NZ company now valued at $715 million is building an Australian team. The cohort spans deep tech, AI, and agtech, with most still in early scaling phases.
Almost half of Australian organisations already have a Chief AI Officer, with that number expected to hit 64% by 2027. Enterprise CAIO roles pay $350k–$500k+, Head of AI positions sit at $230k–$350k. Big four banks all have executive AI leaders. The hires signal AI is moving from experiment to C-suite function, but only 40% of companies actually have an AI strategy.
SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin says Adobe Marketo went down for a day and a half, broke unsubscribe links for two weeks, and missed a 450,000-subscriber send. Then Adobe asked for a 20% renewal increase. Lemkin runs SaaStr with 20+ AI agents and says the company has stopped hiring human SDRs and AEs: legacy SaaS cannot be operated by agents, so it gets replaced.
Jason Lemkin's team moved 10 years of data off Marketo after their AI agent kept hitting API rate limits. The agent recommended the switch. The migration cost $14 in agent time. This is what procurement looks like now.
Australian fintech Thriday warned customers Tuesday that a phishing email sent from its official address contains a fraudulent link requesting banking credentials. The timing matters: it hit during tax season, when small business owners are most vulnerable to credential harvesting attempts.
Melbourne sports tech startup Superstat closed a $3.5 million pre-seed led by Blackbird and is moving operations to Austin. The AI video analysis platform has 5,000 active users and is hiring a computer vision engineer and GTM partnerships lead. Worth noting: they are calling this pre-seed at $3.5M, which would be Series A territory in most ANZ markets.
New ATO taxation data shows who got real pay rises during the cost-of-living squeeze. Some roles saw income jump 15-20% while most treaded water. Here's what the numbers say about which patches are worth targeting.