Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
Gamma scaled to $100M ARR, 600,000 paying subscribers, and 50 million users without a sales team. Product-led growth worked. Then CEO Grant Lee got on stage and said the reactive approach cost them. Here is what happened when virality replaced go-to-market strategy.
The Sydney-founded design platform slashed its revenue growth target by a third as AI feature costs blew out. The company pulled back on some AI launches when unit economics did not work at scale. Worth noting: Canva has since cut those costs by 90%, but the growth hit matters more than the margin fix.
Databricks crossed $7 billion run-rate in Q2, growing 80% year-over-year. That is a 30-point acceleration from 50% growth four quarters ago. Companies at this scale are supposed to slow down. Databricks went the other way.
Klaviyo's 2,400-person team, including sales and marketing, had to reach L3 AI proficiency by end of June. That means running multiple agent sessions simultaneously, not just searching with ChatGPT. The company is betting its $1.5B run rate on agents building agents, including Composer, which hit 95,000 users in month one.
ASX-listed VC Bailador Technology Investments delivered 2.8% post-tax portfolio return for FY26, down from 7.8% prior year. Portfolio revenue grew 32% to $735m across expansion-stage SaaS and tech companies. Property investment platform PropHero led portfolio gains with 69% uplift.
Commerce platforms tied to restaurants, logistics, and retail are growing 2-3x faster than seat-based SaaS. Shopify hit $3.6B revenue (+34% YoY), Toast added 9,500 locations in one quarter, Samsara crossed $2B ARR at +30%. AI is squeezing seat-licensed software, but transaction-based models in the physical world are holding up.
Below $8k ACV, you cannot afford dedicated account managers. The unit economics do not work. At $10k+, you can justify pooled coverage. At $50k+, customers deserve a dedicated person. Here is what the data shows and where most SaaS companies get it wrong.
Farmbot closed a $22M Series B led by Lewis & Clark Partners. Seven other ANZ startups raised capital this week, spanning agtech, medtech, and robotics. The full cohort: Farmbot, Atmo Biosciences, Alloy Robotics, Vexev, Fabulate, Kantoko, Sterling, and Enrola.
ASX-listed furniture retailer Nick Scali forced parts of its network offline following a cyber incident, leaving sales and customer service teams working from manual records. The company says orders and deliveries continue, but response times are slower. No evidence of customer data breach yet, AFP and Cyber Security Centre notified.
Auckland-based Sterling closed an oversubscribed seed round led by Blackbird to build AI workflow automation for finance teams. Founded in 2025 by ex-Deliveroo and Vend engineers Nik Wakelin and Ludwig Wendzich, the startup has early customers but no public headcount or sales org details yet.
Jason Lemkin warns B2B founders that experienced executives with strong LinkedIn profiles are joining AI startups without basic AI tool proficiency. The pattern: good logos, fluent talk, zero hands-on capability. Worth noting: this is not about tech skills, it is about leaders who have never built anything from scratch.
The Australian Business Growth Fund lifted its initial investment cap from $15M to $30M and total investment ceiling to $50M. The government-backed fund can now take majority stakes, marking a shift upmarket from its original $5M-$15M sweet spot.