The Wire

Real-time updates from ANZ tech sales

3 months ago
News

DataMasque raises $5.6M: NZ data privacy play targets enterprise AI spend

**DataMasque closed $5.6 million** led by Wavemaker Partners, with OIF Ventures and Icehouse Ventures participating. The New Zealand startup builds data masking software for enterprises that need to use sensitive customer information for AI training, testing, and analytics without compliance headaches. **The pitch:** synthetically identical data that preserves relationships and statistical properties while stripping personally identifiable information. CEO Grant de Leeuw describes it as changing a date of birth but keeping the age intact, so AI models train on realistic data without touching real customer records. **Deployment model matters here.** DataMasque runs inside the customer's environment (cloud, hybrid, on-prem) rather than shipping data externally. That addresses a common enterprise objection around exfiltration risk, particularly for regulated industries where data residency and compliance drive procurement. **Growth metrics:** six times ARR growth and triple headcount. Actual revenue and team size were not disclosed. The company appears to sell direct to enterprise and has leveraged AWS Marketplace for distribution, suggesting a partner-assisted enterprise motion alongside direct sales. **Market context:** this sits in the data security posture management and synthetic data category, competing with broader privacy platforms and specialist vendors. The regulatory compliance angle (particularly in banking and healthcare) is driving enterprise spend here. Gartner tracks this space under data security platforms and DSPM vendors. **Previous funding:** DataMasque raised $2.7 million from OIF Ventures and Icehouse Ventures previously. Whether the $5.6 million is cumulative or a fresh round was not specified. **What this means for sales teams:** if you are selling into regulated enterprises (financial services, healthcare, government), expect data privacy and AI compliance questions in procurement. Solutions like this enable deals that would otherwise stall on data governance concerns. Also worth tracking which competitors are building similar capabilities into existing platforms versus buying point solutions like DataMasque.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

Entrata IPO at $575m ARR, 23% growth tests PE software exit market

Entrata filed its S-1 on May 28 to list on the NYSE under ticker ENT. The multifamily property management platform is at $575m ARR, growing 23%, with 16% operating margins and real GAAP profitability. Silver Lake has held majority control since 2022. The numbers are solid but not exceptional. Growth held flat at 23% year-over-year in Q1 2026. Net revenue retention sits at 117%, also flat across 2024 and 2025. Rule of 40 score is 47 on a non-GAAP basis. This is efficient growth, not breakout growth. What makes Entrata notable is timing. The company is the leading edge of a backlog of PE-backed software trying to exit, and private equity tends to move first when the window opens. The problem: public markets have decided efficient growth is not enough anymore, and almost none of the companies lined up behind Entrata are accelerating. Entrata's core business is property management software for multifamily operators. The platform consolidates roughly seven systems: leasing, accounting, payments, insurance, screening, utilities, resident apps. The company has 233 customers spending more than $500k annually, accounting for 84% of ARR. Average customer pays $216 per unit, up from $175 two years ago. Top customers pay $580 per unit. Payments is mandatory. Every customer using the platform must process payments through Entrata. That forced attach is why the company still posts 60% gross margins despite booking payment processing fees gross, the same way Toast does. Three years ago, Entrata ran breakeven. In 2022 and 2023, GAAP operating margins were negative 1% and negative 2%. In Q1 2026, operating margin hit 26%. Revenue nearly doubled while the company flipped to $50m+ in annual GAAP net income. Before filing, Entrata paid itself a $356m dividend funded with a $400m term loan. The company now carries about $270m of net debt into its IPO. Part of the offering proceeds will pay that loan back down. Standard sponsor-backed IPO structure. For ANZ sales professionals watching software exit timelines, Entrata is the test case. If a $575m ARR company at 23% growth can price well, the PE-backed software backlog has a path. If it does not, expect the exit queue to get longer. No confirmed ANZ presence or sales team details available at this stage.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Scalare Partners buys Fishburners for undisclosed sum after administration

## The Deal Scalare Partners (ASX: SCP) acquired Fishburners in a cash-only transaction completed today. Terms were not disclosed. The ASX filing says the deal is "not material" to Scalare's financial position. What they bought: Fishburners brand, programs, IP, and community assets. What they did not buy: employees, physical assets, or liabilities. Clean acquisition of a distressed brand. ## Why This Matters Fishburners entered voluntary administration last month after failing to resolve $2 million in rental arrears owed to the NSW government. The Sydney Startup Hub location (now closed) cost more than $1.5 million a year in rent. The numbers did not work. Scalare is building a portfolio of founder-facing infrastructure: Tank Stream Labs (seven coworking locations across Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide), Planet Startup, InHouse Ventures, The Founders Union. This is their fourth acquisition since listing on the ASX. Pattern recognition: they are consolidating startup support services, not just writing cheques. ## What It Means for Sales Teams Fishburners has supported 35,000 founders since 2011. Those founders need sales tools, SDR platforms, CRM systems, and go-to-market advice. Scalare CEO Carolyn Breeze now controls access to that community across multiple brands and locations. If you sell to early-stage tech companies in ANZ, Scalare's roll-up strategy matters. One buyer, multiple touchpoints, consolidated decision-making on vendor relationships and ecosystem partnerships. The administration write-down likely made this acquisition cheaper than building equivalent brand recognition from scratch. Worth noting: no staff were included in the deal. Any future Fishburners hiring will be new roles under Scalare's structure. ## The Broader Picture This is the second major Sydney startup infrastructure deal in recent months. Tank Stream Labs sold to Scalare for $5.5 million. The NSW government shut down Sydney Startup Hub last year, forcing Fishburners to relocate to Tech Central before the administration. Startup support services are consolidating. If you are targeting early-stage founders in ANZ, your potential buyer landscape just got smaller and more concentrated.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

Anthropic runs Clay, Salesforce, Gong: Claude updates the CRM, not the AEs

Anthropic is not running on some self-built, AI-native sales platform. The company uses the same six tools most enterprise SaaS companies run: Clay, LeanData, Salesforce, Gong, Ironclad, and Slack. Claude is the substrate, but it connects to the core B2B stack. The difference is what they do with each tool. **Clay is the funnel gate.** Most teams use Clay to enrich inbound leads. Anthropic uses Clay plus Claude to qualify every lead at the moment of capture and route it to either the AE-led path or the self-serve path within seconds. No human review. Result: 54% of new enterprise logos in 2026 came through self-serve. **LeanData routes to humans and AI.** The router no longer just decides which AE gets the lead. It decides whether a human gets it at all. Leads can route to a BDR queue, an AE directly, or to the Intercom Fin guided self-serve flow. **Salesforce is where Claude updates.** AEs do not manually log calls or update opportunity records. Claude does. The morning briefing reconciles opportunity records against context pulled from Gong calls, emails, and Slack threads. AEs inspect and approve. The forecast call is no longer a data-scrubbing exercise. It is a discussion about where AEs need help, because the data is already current. **Gong is the highest-value context source.** Claude pulls Gong transcripts into the morning briefing, the call prep workflow, the proposal-drafting workflow, and the weekly coaching loop. When a rep types `/call prep` before a meeting, Claude reads Gong transcripts of every prior call with that account to generate the briefing. The coaching loop is dynamic: Claude surfaces six coaching moments per week based on call analysis. **Context for ANZ sales leaders:** Anthropic is hiring a Head of GTM Systems to own CRM, CPQ, Salesforce architecture, billing, order management, and revenue-recognition workflows. The company is also building out international GTM with a Head of Enterprise Sales for Industries in ANZ and a broader Head of International GTM Strategy and Operations role. That signals Anthropic is building a conventional enterprise sales organization even as it markets itself as an AI-native company. The stack is not new. The connective tissue is. If you are running Salesforce, Gong, and Clay today, the question is not whether to replace them. It is what happens when AI can read, write, and route across all of them without waiting for a rep to log in.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Dashdot liquidates, cuts 40 jobs, blames CGT changes for investor collapse

## What Happened Property investment advisory Dashdot collapsed into voluntary liquidation last week, cutting more than 40 jobs. The seven-year-old Australian startup appointed Teneo's Rebecca Gill and Martin Ford as liquidators. CEO Gabi Billings (co-founder alongside former cricketer Glenn McGrath) blamed federal budget capital gains tax reforms, Meta advertising platform changes, and broader economic conditions for tanking investor demand. Customers who paid thousands in upfront advisory fees are now waiting to see what happens to their money and their property deals. ## Why It Matters This is a demand-collapse story, not a product failure. Dashdot's business model relied on steady investor appetite for property advisory services. When federal tax changes spooked the market, the customer pipeline dried up faster than the company could adjust its cost base. Forty-plus jobs gone suggests either a small total headcount or a service-heavy model with high people costs relative to revenue. Either way, when your revenue is tied to investor confidence and policy changes tank that confidence, you are exposed. ## What Sales Teams Should Note If you are selling to property investors or adjacent markets (mortgage brokers, wealth advisors, tax accountants), watch for ripple effects. Dashdot's collapse signals that retail property investment is cooling, which means related B2B sales pipelines could slow. For anyone in advisory or service businesses with big upfront payment models: this is what happens when demand drops and you cannot pivot fast enough. Dashdot bet on continued investor appetite. That bet did not land. Worth noting: Meta ad changes got cited alongside tax reforms. If your customer acquisition depends heavily on Facebook and Instagram ads, you are vulnerable to platform risk. Diversify your channels or accept that exposure. The liquidators are from Teneo, a major restructuring firm. That means creditors (including staff owed entitlements and customers owed refunds) will be queuing up. Unsecured creditors rarely get much back.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

WiseTech cuts 2,000 jobs, blocks staff from joining four rivals for 12 months

## The Numbers WiseTech Global announced 2,000 redundancies in February, roughly 30% of its workforce. The ASX-listed logistics software company ($1.19 billion revenue, 975 employees in controlled subsidiaries per IBISWorld) is now inserting non-compete clauses into severance agreements that ban affected workers from joining four named competitors for 12 months: Expedient Software, Clear.AI Systems, Yojee, and Trade Window. Professionals Australia, the union representing affected employees, wants the clauses removed. WiseTech is holding firm. ## Why This Matters for Sales Teams If you are in enterprise software sales in ANZ, this is your market reality check. WiseTech sells CargoWise, mission-critical logistics platform software to freight forwarders globally. The company has framed these cuts as an AI transformation. Staff reportedly sat through months of uncertainty while leadership talked up AI doing work "faster, cheaper, and with less human constraint." Now the severance terms are restricting where people can work next. That is unusual for redundancy packages in Australia, where non-competes during employment are common but post-termination restraints face higher legal scrutiny. ## What Sales Professionals Should Know Severance terms are negotiable, even when HR says they are not. Non-compete clauses in redundancy agreements can be challenged, especially if: - The restriction is broader than necessary to protect legitimate business interests - You were made redundant (you did not resign or get fired for cause) - The payout does not compensate you for the income restriction WiseTech has not publicly disclosed the severance quantum or whether additional compensation offsets the 12-month restraint. That matters. If you are being asked to sign away your ability to work in your field, the package should reflect that cost. ## The Broader Pattern This is WiseTech's second workforce story in a month. CEO Zubin Appoo reportedly received a threatening letter as redundancy consultations began. Founder and Executive Chair Richard White called in police. The company has been writing a narrative of leadership choices under pressure: AI pivot, mass redundancies, long consultation periods, now restrictive post-employment terms. For sales professionals watching from the sidelines: when a company makes you redundant, it is saying your role is no longer needed. Blocking you from using your skills elsewhere for a year is a different conversation. One that usually costs more than standard redundancy pay. ## What You Can Do If you are facing redundancy with a non-compete: 1. Get the severance offer in writing 2. Calculate what 12 months of lost opportunity costs you (not just base, but OTE and career progression) 3. Ask for legal advice (many employment lawyers offer free initial consults) 4. Negotiate. Severance terms are not take-it-or-leave-it, despite what the first offer implies WiseTech is a founder-led company (Richard White co-founded it in 1994). That can mean strong culture and vision. It can also mean decisions get made top-down without the usual HR checks. Either way, if you are holding a severance agreement that limits where you can work, you have more leverage than you think.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

AI agent booked 614 meetings from one event. Here is the actual workflow.

## The Numbers Qualified ran an AI agent at SaaStr AI Annual 2026. From that single event: - 2.2M website sessions handled - 442,000 individual chats - 614 qualified meetings booked - Average sponsor ASP around $85,000 No human SDR team could have handled that volume without burning out or missing leads. The alternative would have been 3 to 10 BDRs, probably churning every 3 to 6 months. Instead: one agent, connected to Salesforce, trained on the full context. ## Where the ROI Actually Lives The play is not A leads. Enterprise inbound closes itself. Your slowest AE will respond to a $1M opportunity in 60 seconds. The money is in B leads: real signal, real ICP fit, but not worth a human rep's time per-lead. SaaStr's outbound agent recovered $500,000 in sponsor revenue this year from B leads that would have sat in Salesforce otherwise. If you are running an AI startup with a "Contact Us" form in 2026, you are leaving pipeline on the table. Replace the form. Today. ## How Agents Actually Get Built None of SaaStr's 20+ agents started as agents. They started as boring tools: - 10K (AI VP of Marketing) started as a dashboard to stop copy-pasting numbers from Marketo into Notion. - QBee (AI VP of Customer Success) started as a project management tool. - Annie (event producer) started as a Squarespace replacement. Each became an agent through 600 to 1,000 commits over a few months. The pattern: pick something broken in your stack, rebuild it so you can vibe code it, then keep adding context and tools until it starts acting like an agent. ## The Headless CRM Move If you do one thing after reading this: spin up Replit or Lovable or v0. Connect it to Salesforce via API. Build a dashboard or workflow you cannot do natively. SaaStr's founder has not logged into Salesforce in two companies. He queries it in real time instead: ticket sales by hour, VC attendees by region, look-alike sponsor scoring. None of that works in native Salesforce. Whoever owns your CRM owns the maximum context for your agents. Use it. ## Time Investment, Not Fire-and-Forget The narrative that autonomous agents work on their own is dangerous. The number one lesson from running 20+ agents in production: the more time you spend with them, the better they get. Last week, SaaStr's marketing agent started writing better re-engagement emails than any human marketer they could hire. The answer is not magic architecture. It is hours of interaction and context building. Your best human rep gets better when you spend time with them each week. Agents are exactly the same. ## What This Means for ANZ Sales Teams The signal here is not that Qualified ran an event in the US. It is that AI agents are now being used to qualify demand at event scale. That affects: - SDR workflows (what gets routed to humans vs. agents) - Lead routing (A leads vs. B leads) - Event follow-up automation (442,000 chats is not a human-scalable number) If your team is still running "Contact Us" forms or manually qualifying event leads, you are competing against teams that are not. The ROI is sitting in your CRM right now, in the B leads your reps will not touch because the per-lead expected value does not justify their time. Wire up an agent. The math works.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Salesforce reaccelerates to 13% growth at $45B ARR, core apps grow 7%

Salesforce grew revenue 13% to $11.1B in Q1 FY27, reaccelerating subscription growth from 9% to 12% at $45B+ run rate. At this size, that is rare. Most enterprise SaaS companies this large are decelerating into the teens. The headline hides the mix. Salesforce split its revenue reporting this quarter into two buckets: core apps with Agentforce embedded (7% growth in constant currency) and data platform plus other products (23% growth). The 13% total is the blend, plus roughly 3 points from acquiring Informatica. **The growth came from three levers at once:** Agentforce crossed $1.2B ARR, up 205% year over year. That is the fastest-scaling product in Salesforce history. The company delivered 1.6B agentic work units in Q1, up 111% quarter over quarter. More than 50% of Agentforce bookings came from existing customers, meaning they are buying agents on top of seats, not replacing them. The data and platform layer (Data 360, headless platform) grew 23%, three times faster than core apps. Strip out Informatica and the combined Agentforce plus Data 360 ARR is $2.3B, still up more than 100%. Informatica added roughly $1.1B in cloud ARR from the acquisition. That is bought growth, not organic, but it counts. **What this means for sales teams:** The seat compression fear has not shown up yet. Core apps still grew 7%, and revenue attrition held at 8%. If AI agents were cannibalizing seats, you would see flat or shrinking core revenue and rising churn. Neither happened in Q1. But 7% core growth is not booming. The enterprise SaaS playbook at $40B+ scale is now layering consumption and outcome-based pricing on top of seats, not replacing the seat model outright. Salesforce is running that playbook: agents, data infrastructure, and acquisitions all feeding the growth engine. For ANZ enterprise sales teams selling into the same accounts, this matters. Salesforce has meaningful regional presence across financial services, telecom, government, and retail. When they expand wallet share with agents and data products, that is budget you are competing for. The broader takeaway: reaccelerating at this scale took the entire kitchen sink. AI product line, acquisition, margin expansion, and a full revenue reporting overhaul. One lever does not move the number when you are this big.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

AI-generated PR pitches killing startup media coverage, says Jason Lemkin

## The Problem Jason Lemkin, founder of SaaStr, says AI-generated PR pitches have become so common he now blocks domains daily. Before AI, he did not block anyone. The volume increased sharply over 12 months. PR firms and in-house comms teams adopted AI tools for media outreach. Muck Rack data shows generative AI usage in PR workflows jumped from 23% to 64% in a year. That scale created a new problem: pitches are well-written but generic. Good enough to open, not good enough to respond to. ## What Changed Lemkin used to reply to mediocre human pitches with feedback: here is what we actually want for SaaStr speakers or podcast guests. That feedback loop helped PR reps learn. Sometimes they came back months later with something great. He stopped doing that. Two reasons: giving feedback to an AI is pointless, and the same firm sends the same templated pitch the following week with a different founder name swapped in. Gergely Orosz, who also receives high volumes of PR outreach, says he reads then blocks the entire domain. Some senders now use throwaway domains to get around blocks. ## Why This Matters for Startups If you are using AI tools to scale PR outreach, you are likely damaging credibility with the journalists you need. Volume does not equal coverage. Reporters already receive huge volumes of pitches. AI made it easier to send more, which made it easier for them to ignore all of it. Effective PR still depends on relevance, specificity, and trusted relationships. Industry guidance from Cision and others says use AI for research, timing, and analytics. Keep final judgment, tone, and fact-checking human-led. The startups getting coverage are not the ones blasting templated pitches. They are the ones doing the work to understand what each journalist actually covers and why their story matters to that beat. ## The Parallel to Sales This mirrors what happened with SDR outreach. AI tools made it easier to send 1,000 emails. Response rates collapsed because everyone else also sent 1,000 emails. The reps who still get meetings are the ones doing account research, writing specific openers, and earning replies. Same principle applies here. AI can help with the scaffolding. It cannot replace the work of making your pitch actually relevant.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Australia back in global top 10 startup ecosystems, Melbourne growth outpaces Sydney

Australia is back in the global top 10 startup ecosystems for the first time since 2023, climbing three spots to ninth place in the 2026 StartupBlink report. The local ecosystem grew 22.9% in 2025, more than double the 10.3% global average. Australia also ranked fifth globally for return on investment and sixth for attracting talent and capital. ## What this means for sales teams Ecosystem rankings track venture funding, exits, and infrastructure. When Australia climbs, it signals more capital flowing to local startups, which historically translates to hiring. Q1 2025 saw A$1.3 billion raised across 100 deals, maintaining momentum after the 2022-2024 slowdown. Sydney remains the commercial anchor with 3,000+ tech startups and ranks 30th globally among cities. Melbourne is growing faster (37.8% versus Sydney's 11.7%) but sits at 34th. For AEs and sales managers, this means Sydney still has the deepest enterprise patch, but Melbourne's growth could shift where the best opportunities land in 2026-2027. Australia produces 1.22 unicorns per US$1 billion of VC investment, the highest rate globally according to ecosystem reports. That capital efficiency matters because it suggests local startups can scale on smaller rounds, which impacts how quickly they build out sales teams. ## The hiring context Ecosystem strength concentrates in enterprise SaaS, fintech, deep tech, and climate startups. Major players include Canva, Airwallex, and Morse Micro. When these companies scale, they pull sales talent from across ANZ and increasingly hire remote. The practical signal: Australia's ecosystem recovery is real, backed by funding data and growth metrics. If you are tracking ANZ sales opportunities, watch Melbourne's momentum. Sydney remains the largest market, but the gap is narrowing. Worth noting: Australia had negative momentum and fell out of the top 10 before this rebound. This is a recovery story, not a structural leap. The concentration in two cities also means regional sales opportunities remain limited compared to other top 10 ecosystems.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

Gartner: AI software spend hits $453B in 2026, up 60%

## The Numbers Global AI software spending will hit **$453 billion in 2026**, up 60% year on year, according to Gartner's updated worldwide AI spending forecast released last week. The research firm projects another 41% growth in 2027, taking the category to $638 billion. That is the largest single-year jump in B2B software spending on record. By the end of 2027, AI software alone will be bigger than every existing B2B software category combined was just a few years ago. Total AI-related spending across all categories is forecast to reach $2.59 trillion in 2026, up 47% year over year, with software driving the bulk of growth. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If your software company is growing at 30% while the AI software category grows at 60%, you are losing budget share. The new benchmark is category growth rate, and anything below that means CIOs are spending more on AI but a larger share is going to competitors. The math is harsher in faster segments. AI cybersecurity is growing 98% in 2026. AI models: 110%. AI data: 278%. A vendor growing at 50% in a segment expanding at 98% is getting outflanked. For sales teams, this creates two realities. First, if you are selling AI-adjacent products, this is the largest tailwind in B2B software history. Second, if you are not, you are fighting for a shrinking slice. Overall IT budgets are not growing 60%, which means non-AI software spend is getting rationalised to fund AI purchases. ## ROI Is the New Battleground The vendors that win will be those that help CIOs prove ROI to their boards. This is a customer success problem disguised as a product problem. Deployment playbooks, time-to-value metrics, and post-sale support will determine who captures this spend. For ANZ sales professionals, Gartner's forecast signals enterprise budget expansion in AI software, sales enablement tools, and automation platforms. If you are carrying quota in these segments, the tailwind is real. If you are not, the pressure to shift focus or product positioning is about to increase. Worth noting: Gartner, the 45-year-old Stamford-based research firm, remains one of the most influential sources for CIO budgeting and vendor planning decisions. When Gartner forecasts category growth at this scale, enterprise procurement teams take notice.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Chalmers consulting on CGT hit to zero-cost startups, founders

## Chalmers consulting on CGT hit to zero-cost startups, founders Treasurer Jim Chalmers says the government is consulting on how its capital gains tax overhaul will affect businesses with "low or zero cost base", narrowing the focus of potential carveouts for startups. The Budget replaces the 50% CGT discount with an inflation-based discount and a minimum 30% tax on gains from 1 July 2027. The changes apply only to gains arising after that date. For startups and small businesses that launch with almost nothing, this is where the pain sits. The reform taxes real gains above inflation, so a founder who bootstraps from zero and later sells their business creates only taxable gains. No cost base means no offset, which could mean larger tax bills on exit. Chalmers introduced the legislation on Thursday. Labor wants it passed before Parliament breaks on 2 July. The government argues the change makes the tax system fairer by aligning how capital gains and wages are taxed. The startup sector argues it discourages risk-taking and makes Australia less competitive for early-stage investment. The Budget does include measures aimed at early-stage businesses: loss refundability for eligible companies from 2026–27, and from 2028–29 a refund mechanism for small startups in their first two years, subject to caps linked to fringe benefits tax and withholding tax paid on wages. Treasury says this is meant to support new startups and improve cash flow. The $20,000 instant asset write-off is now permanent for businesses with turnover up to $10 million. Chalmers told media the reforms would let businesses make decisions based on economics rather than tax outcomes. Consultations with the startup sector are continuing. Worth noting: the policy debate is not just about CGT mechanics. It is about whether the changes alter incentives for founders, investors, and small-business formation in a market that already lags the US on risk capital and exit multiples. The clock is running. Parliament breaks in five weeks.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

Three Aussie startups raise $15.5 million: Oli, AlleSense, Cable close rounds

Three Australian startups raised $15.5 million in new funding this week, with medtech and energy companies leading the activity. ## Oli: $6.5 million Series A3 Sydney medtech Oli closed a $6.5 million Series A3 for its maternal and fetal monitoring technology. Scale Investors, Clare Ventures, and the University of Sydney backed the round. Total private capital now sits at $13 million across three Series A rounds: $4.7 million in 2022, $1.8 million in 2024, and this week's $6.5 million. The company has also secured over $9.5 million in non-dilutive grants. No sales team expansion announced yet. The capital is earmarked for product development, not go-to-market build-out. ## AlleSense and Cable: $9 million combined Medtech AlleSense and energy startup Cable closed the other two rounds, combining for roughly $9 million. Specific round sizes and investor details were not disclosed. ## What it means for sales These raises fit the current ANZ funding pattern: deep tech, medtech, and climate startups are securing capital while traditional SaaS activity stays quiet. Series A3 is an unusual structure. Most companies either raise a larger A or move to Series B. Multiple A extensions can signal either strong investor support or difficulty closing a full B round. For sales professionals evaluating Oli, check whether the repeated A rounds reflect intentional capital efficiency or fundraising challenges. Watch for hiring announcements in the next 60 to 90 days. Series A capital typically triggers AE and SDR hiring once product milestones clear. If you are tracking ANZ medtech opportunities, Oli's total capital and grant funding suggest they are building for scale, but timing matters. No comp details available. Standard Sydney medtech AE roles currently sit around $110k to $130k base, $170k to $200k OTE, depending on stage and segment.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

Dropbox hit $1B ARR faster than any B2B company, then stopped growing

## The Numbers Tell the Story Dropbox grew to $1B in revenue faster than any B2B company before it. Revenue went from $603.8M in 2015 to $1.107B in 2017, growing 40% then 31%. The company generated positive free cash flow of $137M in 2016 and $305M in 2017. Then the deceleration: 2018-2019 grew 26% then 19%. By 2022-2023, growth slowed to 8% both years. Fiscal 2025 revenue came in at $2.521B, down 1.1% year over year. Drew Houston is moving to Executive Chairman after 19 years as CEO. Ashraf Alkarmi, who joined as GM of Core in November 2024 from Vimeo, takes over as co-CEO and will eventually become sole CEO. ## What Happened After $1B The core wedge commoditised. Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud, Box all came for file sync. Cloud storage went from a paid product to a free feature inside Workspace and Microsoft 365. Drew tried multiple second acts: HelloSign for e-signature, DocSend for sales document tracking, FormSwift for forms. Each added revenue. None re-accelerated the company. The one that hurts: enterprise AI search. Dropbox had the unfair advantage. They had the files, hundreds of millions of users, the document graph everyone else was trying to reach. By November 2023, Glean had hit $100M in ARR, growing 203% year over year, with plans starting at roughly $30K per year and scaling to over $5M for Fortune 500 customers. Dropbox launched Dash. It is a fine product. It is not the agentic Glean-killer that should have been the natural Dropbox 2.0. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If you are selling into enterprise accounts, this is the pattern to watch: incumbency in the AI era is worth far less than people thought. Data moats do not automatically convert to AI moats. The AI-native startup with no users beats the legacy player with 700M users more often than not. For sales professionals at SaaS companies approaching $1B ARR: the deceleration is real. The core wedge commoditises. The second act is harder than it looks. Drew did the things almost no founder does: built a $1B+ recurring revenue business, ran it profitably, took it public, stayed CEO for 19 years, returned real capital to shareholders, never blew up the company. The no-second-act critique is real. It is also a luxury problem. Most companies never get a first act. Q1 2026 came in at $629.5M with management raising full-year revenue and operating margin guidance. Ashraf inherits a massive, profitable, slightly declining core with 18 million paying users and an AI mandate from the board.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Bad hires cost ANZ SMEs $7.3 billion annually, Seek data shows

## Bad hires cost ANZ SMEs $7.3 billion annually, Seek data shows Seek released research today estimating Australian small and medium businesses collectively lose $7.3 billion per year on hires that do not work out. The average cost per wrong hire: $16,000. The research, conducted by advisory firm Nature in February 2026, surveyed over 950 small businesses across Australia and New Zealand. It breaks down the cost into three buckets: turnover (55%), training and performance management (34%), and direct business impact (11%). ### What the numbers mean for sales teams Turnover costs include recruitment, advertising, interviews, and onboarding replacement staff. For sales organisations, this is the visible part: reposting the SDR role, running discovery calls with candidates, ramping a new hire while the territory goes dark. Training and performance management is the 34% that hurts quietly. An AE who is not hitting quota still requires coaching, pipeline reviews, and manager time. That is time not spent with reps who are performing. Direct business impact, the remaining 11%, includes lost productivity, workflow disruption, and customer service issues. For sales, this translates to: deals that slip, pipeline that stalls, accounts that churn because the rep was not a fit. ### The ramp reality Seek's data does not break out sales-specific costs, but the $16,000 figure is conservative for quota-carrying roles. A mid-market AE at 6-month ramp who churns at 90 days costs closer to $50,000 when you factor in: base salary during ramp, manager time, lost pipeline, and the opportunity cost of an empty territory. The research confirms what sales leaders already know: hiring wrong is expensive. The question is whether businesses are measuring it. ### Context Seek is a Melbourne-based recruitment marketplace, founded 1997, and the dominant online jobs platform in ANZ. The research reflects its employer audience: SMBs hiring across functions, not just sales. But the cost structure applies: every role that turns over fast costs more than the job ad. For sales teams, the takeaway is simple. Measure time-to-productivity, track early churn, and calculate what a bad hire actually costs your business. It is probably more than $16,000.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

Hyperscalers spending $12 on AI infrastructure for every $1 earned

## The Infrastructure Bet Nobody Expected Hyperscalers are spending $12 on AI infrastructure for every $1 they earn from AI. Annual capex sits at $575B. Meta, Google, and Oracle are levered 7:1 on a cash flow basis, burning all free cash and borrowing heavily to fund data centers. This is the fifth-largest infrastructure project in history. Bigger than everything except railroads and the two world wars. By 2030, data center spending could hit 5-7% of US GDP. ## What This Means for Software Sales The buying process just got more complex. "Software is moving toward a two-buyer reality," Tunguz says. Technical and business buyers both have a seat at the table again. For AEs selling AI tools: you need dual fluency. The engineer cares about intelligence per watt. The CFO cares about whether this $575B bet pays off. Your pitch needs to land with both. Data teams are now reporting to heads of engineering. That org chart shift changes who controls budget and who signs deals. If you are still routing through the old data team structure, you are selling to the wrong people. ## The Sales Cycle Reality Foundation models broke the old product-market fit playbook. It is not binary anymore. It is continuous. Models grow 5-10x in size. Inference demand is infinite. Your customer's needs shift every quarter. Second-time founders are winning because they understand domain history and distribution. For sales teams: domain expertise is table stakes now. You need to know the customer's infrastructure reality, not just pitch features. PR is a major distribution channel for AI companies in a way it never was for software. That changes how deals get sourced and how urgency gets created. ## The Numbers That Matter Anthropicreportedly has high gross margins. First wave competition is margin-driven, not just feature-driven. When you are qualifying deals, ask about their infrastructure spend ratio. Ask who owns the AI budget. Ask whether they are building or buying. The next frontier: images and video. That data is 1,000-10,000x larger than text. Infrastructure spend will grow accordingly. If you are selling AI tools, the market is expanding faster than anyone expected. Bottom line: the biggest infrastructure bet since World War II is happening right now. Sales teams need to understand the two-buyer reality and adjust qualification, pitch, and close strategy accordingly.

Sales Hacker
3 months ago
News

Graduates booing AI at ceremonies: warning for sales teams cutting SDRs

## The booing heard across LinkedIn Graduation season brought viral clips of something uncommon: crowds of graduates loudly booing speakers the moment they mentioned AI. Eric Schmidt at University of Arizona. Gloria Caulfield at University of Central Florida. Scott Borchetta at Middle Tennessee State. Same story: mention AI as opportunity, get drowned out. The footage split viewers into two camps. One dismissed graduates as anti-progress. The other said the speakers misread the room, selling AI as pure upside to a cohort watching entry-level roles vanish. ## What this means for sales orgs Australian sales teams are automating SDR and BDR work at pace. Sequence tools handle outbound. AI qualifies inbound. Chatbots book meetings. The logic is simple: cut headcount, protect margin, scale faster. The problem: you are eliminating the cohort that grew up with this tech. Fresh graduates understand LLMs, prompting, and AI limitations better than most VPs. They also spot when automation breaks personalisation or when your AI-generated emails sound like every other AI-generated email in the prospect's inbox. Sales orgs that cut all junior roles are trading short-term cost savings for long-term capability gaps. Who trains your future AEs? Who tests your new tech stack? Who tells you when your AI outreach is getting flagged as spam? ## The reckoning no one is prepping for The booing is not about rejecting technology. It is about graduates entering a market where the traditional pathway (SDR to AE to manager) is closing. ANZ tech companies that historically hired 10 SDRs per quarter are now hiring two and a chatbot. Meanwhile, enterprise deals still require human relationship-building. Mid-market still needs discovery calls. Complex sales still need people who can read a room. Automating everything assumes AI can replace judgement. It cannot. Not yet. Smart sales leaders are not asking whether to use AI. They are asking which parts of the role actually benefit from automation and which parts get worse. Cutting all junior roles because you can is not strategy. It is cost accounting. The graduates booing AI are not anti-technology. They are anti-being-replaced-before-they-start. If your sales org is automating without a plan to develop the next generation, you are building a team with no bench and no institutional memory. That shows up in quota attainment two years from now, not two quarters.

SmartCompany
3 months ago
News

OpenAI CEO calls AI email tools dehumanising, admits revenue model unsolved

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told business leaders in Sydney he tried letting AI handle his emails and Slack messages, then stopped. "I found it surprisingly dehumanising to watch, even when I had it reply to messages," Altman said during a virtual appearance at Commonwealth Bank's AI conference. "It was an amazing example to me of like, we really do care about people and we really do care about our interactions with people." The admission matters because every SDR and AE is being pitched AI email tools right now. Subject line optimisation. Sequence automation. Reply generation. The CEO of the company behind ChatGPT just said he will not use that tech for his own communication. Altman also confirmed OpenAI's revenue model is still evolving: "Revenue will take a bit longer to figure out." The company runs on a mix of ChatGPT subscriptions, API usage, and enterprise deals, but no mature sales organisation yet. That tracks with what we are seeing in market: strong product adoption, unclear go-to-market motion. For ANZ sales teams, the gap between AI capability and actual adoption is the story. Tools exist. Usage is growing. But Altman's comments suggest even true believers hit a wall when automation replaces human connection. OpenAI has positioned itself beyond chatbots and into workplace productivity. Altman previously called Slack "fake work," arguing AI agents could handle routine coordination. Now he is saying AI should not handle his own messages. The tension is real: efficiency versus authenticity. Practical takeaway for sales professionals: AI can draft sequences and summarise calls. It cannot replace the relationship work that closes enterprise deals. The companies building these tools know it. The question is whether procurement teams buying AI sales assistants know it too. OpenAI remains privately held with strong ANZ product usage but limited public disclosure on local operations. The company's enterprise motion will matter more than its consumer chatbot when evaluating market impact for ANZ sales organisations.

Startup Daily
3 months ago
News

Owner.com reps closing $2M ARR each: AI workflow, not AI theatre

## The Numbers Owner.com reps are closing $2M+ in ARR per year. Average, not top performer. A $150K OTE rep brings in 20x their comp in closed-won revenue. BDRs are closing $100K+ ARR per month, not booking pipeline. Owner sells vertical AI to independent restaurants: websites, ordering, marketing automation, loyalty. Think HubSpot plus Shopify for the corner takeout spot. They are at roughly $100M ARR, up from $2M when CRO Kyle Norton joined in 2022. Flat $499/month per location, 10,000+ restaurants. At SaaStr AI 2026, Norton walked through how they built the GTM motion. The talk matters because these are real B2B subscription numbers, not usage revenue or token sales. ## The Architecture Norton's thesis: most companies are stuck at "Level 1" AI adoption (reps building custom GPTs, Slacking markdown files to each other). Owner is at Level 3: centralized infrastructure, shared skills, context library. The gap between Level 3 and everyone else is widening exponentially, not linearly. Three decisions drove the outcome: **Centralized AI, not decentralized.** A small applied AI team owns production builds. Ideas bubble up from reps, but a central team ships the tools. What their AI lead builds is 5-10x better than what a rep builds on a weekend. Why have 20 people build 20 mediocre tools when one team can build one that moves a number? **Build intelligence, buy infrastructure.** Norton's framework: run every decision through five questions (uptime criticality, customization need, engineering ROI, proprietary intelligence, competitive advantage). Dialers and sim platforms: buy. Pre-call research built on Owner's proprietary restaurant marketing data: build. That AI pre-call research tool cost two weeks of one engineer's time. BDRs now book 85% more meetings. **Start with data, not demos.** Third-party data (full market map, scored accounts, right contacts) and first-party data (CRM hygiene, closed-loop attribution, what actually converts). Norton's take: most companies skip straight to the fun part (building agents, running experiments) and wonder why nothing scales. The constraint is not the AI, it is the data. ## What This Means These numbers (20x close-won to OTE, $100K+ closed ARR per BDR per month) are not normal SMB SaaS metrics. Owner's closest comp is the website builder plus online ordering plus marketing automation stack for independent restaurants. They are selling a premium bundle ($499/month) with strong personalization and claiming LTV:CAC of 4.5:1. The broader point: AI is not about reps using ChatGPT as a smarter search engine. It is about workflow architecture that removes friction from the entire motion. Norton's warning: the gap between companies with centralized AI infrastructure and everyone else is compounding fast. Not 10-15% productivity lift. Per-rep output doubling. Worth noting: Owner is a US-focused vertical AI play. No material ANZ presence in available data. The framework still applies to any B2B sales org evaluating AI investment.

SaaStr
3 months ago
News

Cable raises $4m pre-seed, targets SME energy savings with battery play

# Cable raises $4m pre-seed, targets SME energy savings with battery play Sydney energy startup Cable closed $4m in pre-seed funding and opened public beta access for businesses in the Sydney metro area. The round came from UK firm Systemiq Capital (first Australian investment) and Black Nova VC, plus angels. ## The model Cable installs batteries at SME premises at no upfront cost, uses them to access cheaper electricity prices, then bills customers based on usage. Founder Dominic Reardon claims savings of up to 40% compared to standard retail rates. The startup owns the batteries. Customers pay for energy consumed, not hardware. The pitch: SMEs get household-style battery economics without capex. Cable has been running a private beta for six months. Public beta is now live for Sydney businesses. ## Market context This is battery-as-a-service for the SME segment. Households have had solar-plus-battery options for years. Large commercial operators negotiate demand-response deals. Cable is targeting the gap: businesses too small for custom energy contracts, too large to ignore their power bills. The 40% savings claim assumes specific usage patterns and rate arbitrage. Real outcomes will vary by site, consumption profile, and how pricing evolves. ## Not that Cable Worth clarifying: this is not Sun Cable, the Northern Territory solar export project backed by Andrew Forrest and Mike Cannon-Brookes that entered voluntary administration in January 2023. Different business, different model, different founder. Cable (the SME energy startup) was founded mid-2025. Sun Cable was founded 2018 and was pursuing a $30bn infrastructure play. ## What this means Pre-seed at $4m suggests early traction but no revenue scale yet. Public beta in one metro area means the model is still being proven. If it works, the sales motion is likely field-based: site assessments, install coordination, ongoing billing relationships. For sales context: this is not a SaaS motion. It is capital-intensive (batteries cost money), operationally complex (install crews, energy trading), and involves long sales cycles (site surveys, credit checks, contract negotiations). The team composition is likely more project managers and energy traders than SDRs. Systemiq's first Australian investment signals European capital is watching ANZ climate tech. Whether the unit economics work at SME scale remains to be seen.

SmartCompany
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