The Wire

Real-time updates from ANZ tech sales

7 days ago
News

ABGF doubles max cheque to $30m, opens door to majority stakes

The Australian Business Growth Fund doubled its maximum initial cheque size to $30 million, up from $15 million. Total investment per company can now hit $50 million including follow-on rounds. The bigger shift: ABGF will now take majority stakes if founders want to reduce their shareholding. Previously, the fund capped ownership at minority positions. That opens ABGF to businesses where the founder is ready to step back but wants a partner focused on growth, not a traditional buyout. ## What ABGF Actually Is ABGF is a private-sector-owned growth fund backed by the Commonwealth and major banks, launched in 2019 with $540 million. Target: established SMEs doing $2 million to $100 million in revenue. They take stakes between 10% and 49%, typically investing $5 million to $30 million for minority positions. This is patient equity, not debt. No forced exit timeline. The pitch: expansion capital without losing control. First deal was 3ME Technology, a battery systems company for heavy industry. ## Who This Affects If you are selling into mid-market companies, this matters. ABGF-backed businesses are typically expanding: new markets, new products, bigger teams. That means hiring. Sales teams scale when capital comes in. CEO Anthony Healy says the fund previously turned away businesses looking for larger cheques or different ownership structures. The expanded mandate means more deals, more capital deployed, more growth-stage companies entering ABGF's portfolio. ## The Context ABGF sits between venture growth funds and traditional PE. Too large for early-stage VC, too growth-focused for buyout firms. Offices in Melbourne and Sydney. The fund does not operate like a SaaS vendor with a sales org, it is an investment vehicle. No publicly listed CRO or VP Sales, because that is not the model. For sellers: if your prospect just closed ABGF funding, expect expansion plans. Ask about headcount growth, territory expansion, and budget increases. Growth capital means growth mandates. The latest investment: Griffin Industrial Group, a defence supplier. ABGF's expanded mandate coincides with that deal, which signals the kind of established, revenue-generating businesses the fund backs.

SmartCompany
8 days ago
News

Intuit paid $12B for Mailchimp, now strips it from growth figures

## The Numbers Tell It Intuit paid roughly $12 billion for Mailchimp in 2021. The business was doing $800 million in revenue, growing about 20% annually, with 13 million users and 1,500 employees. Five years later, Intuit publishes its growth rate twice on earnings calls: once with Mailchimp, once without. The gap tells you everything. Q3 FY26: Global Business Solutions grew 15%. Ex-Mailchimp, 17%. Online Ecosystem grew 19%. Ex-Mailchimp, 22%. Management confirmed Mailchimp revenue declined year over year and cut 17% of the workforce, roughly 3,100 roles, with restructuring charges of about $300 million landing in Q4. Mailchimp hit $1.06 billion annualised revenue in Q4 FY22, the one quarter Intuit broke out the number. They have not disclosed a Mailchimp revenue figure since. ## What Went Wrong Mailchimp won for nearly two decades by being the best way for a small business to send email. Simple product, clear job to be done, strong word of mouth. Post-acquisition, the roadmap widened. CRM features, website builders, social ad tools. The CFO told Reuters that small businesses, the core customer base, found it "a bit harder to use." That hurt retention and expansion. Meanwhile, Klaviyo grew 28% in Q1 2026 with 110% net revenue retention in the same small business segment. Same market, same buyer, opposite philosophy: Klaviyo does one job (customer data and messaging for commerce) deeply enough that customers expand spend rather than churn. EmailToolTester data from January 2026 shows every major competitor adding double-digit customer growth over 18 months. Mailchimp added zero. The 11 million user count includes mostly free accounts. When your biggest metric is a denominator you do not monetise, it stops mattering. ## What It Means for Sales Teams If you sell MarTech or work at a SaaS company eyeing platform expansion, this is the cautionary tale. Mailchimp is not dead, it shipped real updates in 2026, including native conversational analytics and deeper e-commerce integrations. The people building it are doing serious work. But the market moved. Email provisioning for new apps increasingly happens via API call, not a marketer signing up for a UI. Mailchimp is losing the customers it has and missing the room where new ones get created. Competitors: Klaviyo, HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Brevo, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, Customer.io. If your comp plan ties to a Mailchimp partnership or integration, worth noting the parent company is now optimising for profitability, not growth. For ANZ sales professionals at Intuit or using Mailchimp in their stack: no public data on local headcount impact from the 17% cut, but restructuring at this scale typically hits all regions. If you are carrying quota tied to Mailchimp upsell or cross-sell into QuickBooks customers, the revenue decline and strategic shift matter for your number.

SaaStr
8 days ago
News

Spender: CGT startup carve-out caps could kill founder reinvestment

## The Issue Treasury is consulting on a startup carve-out from Labor's CGT overhaul. The plan: preserve the existing 50% CGT discount for early-stage equity, but cap it at $10 million in lifetime gains per person. Independent MP Allegra Spender says that cap will backfire. Her submission to Treasury argues it will stop proven founders and early investors from recycling capital into new startups. ## What Changed From 1 July 2027, Labor's budget replaces the 50% CGT discount with cost base indexation plus a 30% minimum tax. After pushback from the startup sector, Treasury is now designing an exemption for shares in companies that are: - Unlisted and independent - Under 10 years old (longer for biotech/medtech) - Under $50 million turnover - Held for at least five years The discount stays, but only up to $10 million in eligible gains per individual. ## Spender's Argument "Australia's startup ecosystem owes a great deal of its success to recycled capital and talent on behalf of a small handful of successful company founders, investors and employees," Spender wrote. The cap hits hardest at the people most likely to fund the next round of startups: founders who exit, early employees with equity stakes, and angels who got in early. Hit the cap once, and your incentive to back risky local ventures drops. ## Why It Matters ANZ startup comp already lags US benchmarks. Early-stage equity makes up the gap, especially for founding teams and first hires. If the carve-out discourages repeat founders and experienced operators from staying in the ecosystem, recruitment gets harder. Spender is acting as a bridge between the tech sector and Treasury. She has been meeting with founders and investors on the design of the exemption. The $10 million cap was meant to limit cost to revenue, but it may limit participation instead. Consultation closes soon. The startup sector is pushing for either a higher cap or no cap at all for qualifying investments.

SmartCompany
8 days ago
News

SafetyCulture rebrands to Mitti, pushes AI and insurance play

## SafetyCulture rebrands to Mitti, pushes AI and insurance play Brisbane-founded SafetyCulture is now Mitti. The rebrand went live August 11, 2026, unifying the company's workplace safety platform with its insurance venture under one name. The $2.5B unicorn, originally known for its iAuditor inspection app, is positioning the rebrand around new AI capabilities: purpose-built assistants, site benchmarking tools, and agents designed to turn workplace data into proactive action. The company says the shift reflects customer use cases beyond safety checklists, into quality, compliance, training, and day-to-day operations. ### Insurance angle matters more than the name Mitti was SafetyCulture's insurance JV with QBE, launched in 2020 to use workplace risk data to reduce SME claims and premiums. SafetyCulture bought out QBE's 50% stake in 2023, keeping the Mitti brand dormant until now. The rebrand signals the company is doubling down on insurance as a revenue stream, not just compliance software. For sales teams selling into workplace safety, compliance, or operations software, this matters. SafetyCulture, now Mitti, is moving upmarket from checklists into broader operations platforms. That puts it in competition with QMS, EHS, and workflow tools, not just safety audit apps. ### What this means for the ANZ market SafetyCulture has a large ANZ footprint. The original Mitti insurance operation was based in Sydney's Surry Hills. The company continues to hire across Australia and New Zealand, though specific sales org headcount was not disclosed in the announcement. CEO Luke Anear founded the company in Townsville 22 years ago. Current leadership includes James Whyte as CEO in some materials, though the public-facing structure is unclear. If you are tracking SafetyCulture (now Mitti) for comp benchmarks or role openings, check LinkedIn. The company has not published recent sales team expansion numbers. ### The AI play The AI launch is the substance behind the rebrand. Mitti says it is shipping AI assistants, specialised agents, and site benchmarking tools to help frontline teams act on captured data. That is a move away from passive compliance recording toward active workflow automation. For vendors competing in workplace safety or operations software, this is a signal. The market is consolidating around platforms that do more than collect data. If your product stops at reporting, Mitti is now selling the next step. ### Bottom line SafetyCulture is now Mitti. The rebrand ties together workplace data, AI tools, and insurance offerings. The company is valued at $2.5B, operates globally, and has a strong ANZ presence. If you sell into frontline operations, compliance, or safety software, this is a competitor worth tracking.

SmartCompany
9 days ago
News

Demo conversion benchmarks: 10% to 20% is good, below 8% burns out teams

## The Benchmark Jason Lemkin pegs good SaaS demo-to-paid conversion at **10% to 20%**. Below 8% to 10%, inside sales teams start to break. The math: reps typically need **10 to 15 closed deals a month** to hit quota. If conversion sits at 8%, that is 125 to 188 demos monthly per rep. At 50 demos a month, reps are already stretched thin if they are preparing properly. ## The Context Third-party benchmarks vary. Optifai reports **25%** demo-to-close across B2B and **30%** for SaaS. RevenueHero tracks earlier in the funnel: **50% to 60%** demo-request-to-meeting conversion. Another SaaS benchmark pegs demo conversion at **10% to 30%**, depending on ACV and motion. The spread reflects definition gaps. Demo-request-to-meeting is different from demo-to-close. Enterprise deals convert differently than SMB. Lower ACV, high-volume teams need stronger throughput than enterprise reps working three deals a quarter. ## The Trap Lemkin flags the trick question: bigger top-of-funnel means lower conversion rates. Early-stage teams often celebrate high conversion because their funnel is small and hyper-qualified. Hire a real demand gen VP, scale marketing, attract general traffic, and conversion metrics fall. That is not failure, that is growth. The implication for sales teams: do not obsess over absolute funnel metrics between lead and close. Track them, usually drive them up, but understand that a falling conversion rate can signal a growing brand, not a broken process. ## What It Means for Reps If your demo conversion sits below 10%, ask whether the problem is lead quality, sales execution, or product-market fit. If you are running 50-plus demos a month and closing 8%, the issue is not effort. It is funnel efficiency or qualification upstream. For hiring managers: realistic demo conversion assumptions matter when setting quotas. If historical conversion is 12% and you model at 20%, your reps will miss. If you assume 30% because a benchmark report said so, they will miss harder.

SaaStr
9 days ago
News

Atlassian kills Loom free viewer seats, converts them to paid at $15-24 each

Atlassian eliminated Loom's Creator Lite role, effective on each workspace's integration date. Every person who used to watch and comment for free inside a paid workspace now counts as a paid Creator seat at $15 to $24. A workspace with 10 recorders and 90 watchers used to pay for 10 seats. Now it pays for 100. Admins get a grace period until their next billing date to deactivate users. Miss it and they are on the invoice. Worth being precise: Loom's free Starter plan still exists at $0, with 25 recordings and a 5-minute cap. What got deleted is the free seat inside a paying account. That is the population that mattered, because those people were never going to sign up for their own separate account to keep watching their coworker's videos. ## The free seats were the distribution Loom's loop was simple. One person records something, twenty people watch it, three of them decide that was easier than a meeting and start recording. The watchers were free because the watchers were the top of the funnel. Loom reached 25 million users on that loop, recording close to 5 million videos a month. Atlassian paid $975 million for it in October 2023, roughly 35% below Loom's 2021 Series C valuation of $1.53 billion. Charging for the watchers converts a growth loop into a collections problem. The rational admin response is not to pay for 90 seats. It is to deactivate 85 of them. Those 85 people do not stop needing to send video. They go find something that does not bill for watching. ## Sales impact: the alternatives conversation just started Figma restructured its seat model in March 2025 and made the opposite call. Prices went up on Full seats, but viewers got a free View seat with view and comment access. New users automatically join with a free seat. If they need a paid one, an admin has to approve the charge. Atlassian's default: an existing free person becomes a paid seat automatically. If you do not want the charge, an admin has to find them and remove them before the invoice. Same problem, same year, opposite default. Figma understands that the stakeholder who comments on a design file is how the design file spreads through the company. Atlassian looked at the same population and priced them at $15 to $24 a head. For sales teams using Loom for video prospecting, the math changed overnight. Vidyard, Sendspark, and other tools that do not charge per viewer are now in play. LinkedIn threads on the change are full of people asking what to switch to. Loom is not Atlassian's core product. The business rationale appears to be platform integration with Jira and Confluence, not preserving Loom's original free-user growth model. That might be the explanation. It does not change the billing.

SaaStr
9 days ago
News

OpenAI signs South Australia MoU, part of broader ANZ enterprise push

## OpenAI signs South Australia MoU, part of broader ANZ enterprise push South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas signed a memorandum of understanding with OpenAI during a trade mission to San Francisco. The deal was inked with OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman at the company's headquarters. The agreement covers AI skills development, research acceleration, investment attraction, and government service productivity. It is believed to be the first MoU between an Australian state or territory government and a major AI company. ### Part of a larger ANZ motion The South Australian deal sits within OpenAI's broader Australia strategy. The company recently launched OpenAI for Australia, its first "for Countries" program in Asia-Pacific. That initiative includes an MoU with NEXTDC for an AI campus and GPU supercluster in Sydney, plus training programs with CommBank, Coles, and Wesfarmers, and startup backing with Blackbird, Square Peg, and AirTree. OpenAI is positioning itself as an ecosystem partner in Australia, not just a product vendor. The company faces competition from Anthropic, which signed its own MoU with the federal government in April 2026. ### What this means for sales teams For sales professionals, OpenAI's Australia expansion signals growing enterprise demand for AI tools. The company's partnerships with major employers suggest ChatGPT Enterprise and Business tiers are gaining traction in ANZ. ChatGPT Enterprise offers unlimited high-speed GPT-4 access, admin controls, and security features. Pricing is not publicly disclosed but typically requires direct sales engagement for organisations above 150 seats. ChatGPT Business starts at USD $25 per user per month for smaller teams. AI SDR tools and sales prospecting platforms increasingly rely on OpenAI's API infrastructure. The company's local partnerships could mean improved latency and support for ANZ sales teams using AI for lead generation, qualification, and outreach. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese plans to convene state leaders in August to discuss data centre standards. Six states have agreed to the framework. Queensland and the Northern Territory are holding out. OpenAI has not disclosed ANZ headcount, sales team size, or local commercial leadership. The public face remains tied to core executives like Brockman.

Startup Daily
10 days ago
News

Backstory retiered 141 accounts in 3 days with AI signals, down from a quarter

## The Exercise Backstory retiered its entire customer base in three to four days. Same project used to take Haya Kamola's team plus four others a full quarter. The scope: 141 accounts. Define what good customers look like, measure everyone against that definition, produce a tiering framework the exec team can act on. Board request, short turnaround. Kamola leads customer success at Backstory, a revenue intelligence startup. She presented the workflow at SaaStr AI Day, and the before-and-after is the part worth noting. ## What Changed The old version: cross-functional data pull across product, BI, finance, and several other teams. Manual collection of TAM, health scores, renewal risk, feature requests, and adoption metrics for every account. Quarter-long exercise. The new version: four connectors replaced the data pull. Amplitude for usage data. Atlassian and Jira for feature requests. Backstory's own conversation history tool. Slack, because the company runs an internal channel per customer and that is where account strategy and risk get flagged first. Only manual step: CSV export from Salesforce with account name, health score, renewal date, and ACV. ## The Signals That Mattered Kamola started by asking account teams to describe what made one or two customers different. Not largest contract, not longest tenured. What they landed on: customers who treated Backstory as core infrastructure, built systems around it, planned five years out with it at the center, and kept finding new use cases. That definition produced the signals they measured. AI maturity: a five-level framework covering culture, investment, tech stack, talent, and willingness to engage on hard problems. Previously required account teams to categorize by hand. Now runs as a systematic prompt against CRM fields, public company data, and full conversation history. Output is a maturity level per account plus reasoning. Tech stack mix got the same treatment. Pre-sales scorecards from two years ago were stale. Current picture was sitting in unread conversations. Deployment velocity: did they land small and expand fast across the stack. Executive visibility: was Backstory data being used by execs to make decisions. White space: TAM within the account and what remained. ## What This Means for Sales Orgs The Slack connector is the replicable piece. Most account teams run internal channels or threads per customer. That dialogue is usually the earliest read on account health, expansion opportunity, and risk. It almost never makes it into structured systems. The broader pattern: account tiering and segmentation exercises typically bottleneck on data collection, not analysis. If the signals that matter are conversation history, feature requests, usage patterns, and internal account team dialogue, those are all capturable without asking four teams to pull reports. Backstory is not disclosing headcount, ARR, or ANZ presence. The company sits in the revenue intelligence category alongside People.ai, Clari, Gong, and 6sense. Kamola's background is sales and sales leadership before moving to customer success. Worth noting: she ran four iterations to narrow eight signals down to four scoring buckets. One signal was scoring backwards and had to be flipped. The definition came before the data, which is the part that prevents you from scoring accounts against whatever fields happen to be populated in your CRM.

SaaStr
12 days ago
News

Firmus hits $15B valuation, raises $2.85B for Australian AI data centres

## Firmus raises $2.85B at $15B valuation Firmus, the AI data centre startup building GPU-dense infrastructure across Australia, closed a $2.85 billion equity round at a $15 billion valuation. Coatue and Nvidia returned as investors. Blackstone Tactical Opportunities led new money in, with Jane Street also participating. The company has now raised over $4 billion in equity in 12 months. That total does not include a separate $10 billion debt package Blackstone is arranging. ## Valuation trajectory Firmus was worth $1.85 billion in September 2025 when Nvidia first invested $330 million. By November 2025, it hit $6 billion. April 2026 brought a $725 million raise at $8 billion. Now it sits at $15 billion, eight months later. For context: that is faster valuation growth than most ANZ tech companies achieve in a decade. The speed reflects investor appetite for AI compute infrastructure and Firmus's land and power positions in Australia. ## Project Southgate rollout Firmus is deploying capital into Project Southgate, its plan to build AI data centres across Australian capital cities. The company operates from Singapore but holds development sites in Tasmania and South Australia. Three facilities are now under construction in Tasmania alone. The business started in 2019, initially focused on bitcoin mining infrastructure before pivoting to AI compute. Co-founders Oliver Curtis and Tim Rosenfield lead the company. ## What this means for sales teams Firmus is hiring to support this buildout, though the company has not disclosed team size or recent sales leadership appointments publicly. For enterprise AEs selling into AI infrastructure buyers, this is a signal: budgets for GPU compute and co-location are real, large, and moving fast in ANZ. Data centre sales roles typically pay $120k to $180k OTE for mid-market, $180k to $300k+ for enterprise. Expect Firmus to compete for talent in that range as it scales. The company is reportedly preparing for an ASX float. When infrastructure startups go public, sales teams usually double in the 12 months before and after the listing. Watch for hiring announcements tied to that timeline. ## Market context Firmus competes with other neocloud and AI infrastructure providers across Asia-Pacific. The funding environment for AI data centres remains strong: investors are backing companies that can secure power, land, and GPU supply at scale. Firmus has all three in Australia, which explains the valuation momentum. For sales professionals tracking the AI infrastructure space, this round confirms that enterprise compute budgets are expanding, not contracting. If your territory includes mid-market or enterprise accounts evaluating AI workloads, expect more inbound interest and faster deal cycles in 2026.

Startup Daily
12 days ago
News

Brisbane AI sales startup Enrola raises $2.1M seed after edtech pivot

## The Deal Brisbane-based Enrola closed a $2.1 million seed round led by Purpose Ventures, with participation from Antler, AfterWork Ventures, and Skalata Ventures. The company previously raised $800,000 in late 2024 for an education comparison platform before pivoting to AI sales automation. ## What They Actually Do Enrola builds AI SMS sales agents that qualify leads, handle objections, and either close deals or hand off warmer prospects to human sales teams. The platform targets high-consideration B2C services: telecommunications, insurance, broadband, financial services, education, and healthcare. Founded in late 2023 by CEO Jo Thomas and CTO Yvette Quinby, the company initially launched as an education marketplace. They built an AI agent to convert their own leads, realised the agent was the actual product, and pivoted in September 2025. Since the pivot: 28 customers signed, 250,000 leads processed. New head of growth David Johnson joined from UpGuard, where he ran GTM automation. ## Market Context Enrola is late to a crowded space. AI SDR and BDR tools have been raising serious capital: competitors like Actively AI, Rox AI, and Attention are building similar automation across B2B and B2C. The difference here is focus: Enrola targets B2C sales teams dealing with high-value, long-consideration purchases where buyers research independently before engaging. The pitch is familiar: meet buyers where they research, automate qualification, free up human sellers for closing. The question is execution and unit economics. Can an AI SMS agent actually convert at rates that justify the stack cost versus hiring another BDR? ## What It Means For Sales Teams If you are selling high-touch B2C services (think: insurance, education programs, finance products), this is the automation wave coming for outbound and inbound qualification work. The implication: fewer junior sales roles doing initial engagement, more focus on late-stage conversion and account management. Worth noting: Enrola is still early-stage, Brisbane-based, and up against well-funded competitors. The seed capital suggests traction, but we have not seen public revenue or retention numbers yet.

Startup Daily
12 days ago
News

Firmus raises $2.85B, three other ANZ startups add $950M this week

## The Numbers Firmus Technologies closed $2.85 billion (US$2 billion) this week, valuing the AI data centre infrastructure startup at $15 billion. Existing backers Coatue and Nvidia led the round, with new equity from Blackstone Tactical Opportunities and quant trading firm Jane Street. Three other Australian startups raised approximately $950 million in the same period across medtech, hospitality tech, and climate sectors. Combined total: $3.8 billion in one week. ## What This Means Firmus has now raised over $4.25 billion (US$3 billion) in 12 months. The Singapore-based company, founded by Australians Tim Rosenfield and Oliver Curtis, is rolling out Project Southgate: a $73 billion plan to build green-powered AI data centres in four Australian capitals. They were touting an ASX IPO at $12 billion earlier this year. That valuation just jumped 25%. For context: Airwallex closed a $460 million round at $16 billion in June 2026, cementing its position as Australia's fintech infrastructure leader. Firmus is now playing in the same valuation league. The broader market is still capitalised. Australian startups raised $5.48 billion across 390 deals in 2025, per Cut Through Venture data. Weekly totals fluctuate, but the ecosystem remains active for growth and venture rounds. ## Sales Context Firmus operates infrastructure, not commercial sales software, but the raise signals continued investor appetite for ANZ tech at scale. When a local startup closes a $2.85 billion round, it creates downstream hiring activity: project managers, enterprise account teams, vendor partnerships. The three other startups in this week's roundup span sectors that typically hire commercial teams: hospitality tech, digital health, maternal care, and climate solutions. No headcount or hiring specifics were disclosed in available coverage. Worth noting: Airwallex continues to set the benchmark for ANZ enterprise sales at scale. Any payments, treasury, or cross-border commerce startup in the region is measured against its trajectory. ## The Market Reality One week, $3.8 billion across four companies. That is not a typical cadence, even in a strong funding environment. It is also not evenly distributed: Firmus accounts for 75% of the total. The mix matters more than the headline figure. Large growth rounds like Firmus signal infrastructure investment. Smaller venture rounds in the same week suggest early-stage activity remains funded. Both are necessary for a functioning ecosystem. No comp details, territory expansions, or executive hires were disclosed for the four startups. When those details surface, they will indicate commercial traction beyond capital raised.

SmartCompany
12 days ago
News

SaaStr bought 30 APIs this year: only one vendor checked product usage

## The Setup Jason Lemkin's team at SaaStr signed up for 30+ APIs this year: search, enrichment, email infrastructure, inference, storage. They are building SaaStr AI Connect and running 21 agents in production, which means a lot of vendor trials. One company checked in on usage. One. The rest ran sequences, pitched features, or went silent. Nobody else asked if the product actually worked for what SaaStr was doing with it. ## What Exa Did Four days after Lemkin ran his first real batch, Alina from Exa's product team sent this: "Hi Jason, I'm on the product team here at Exa. I noticed you signed up and tested Exa. If you have a one-liner on how we did (or what could have been done better), that would be greatly appreciated (and I'm happy to drop $50 of credits in your account). Thanks a mil, Alina." Four sentences. Fifty dollars in credits. A named PM who could actually act on feedback. Lemkin wrote back 33 minutes later with 400 words: production feedback, a benchmark, feature requests, pricing constraints. Alina replied in under three hours with specific endpoint configurations and an honest "we don't support that yet" on one ask. ## Why It Worked **Small ask, big response.** "One-liner" is answerable in 15 seconds. "30-minute call" is a calendar negotiation with someone who does not know if you are worth it yet. The small ask produced the detailed spec. **Usage trigger, not signup trigger.** Most drips fire on day 0, day 1, day 3 regardless of what happened in the account. Exa triggered after actual API calls: after a real test, before a decision. That is the one window where feedback matters. **Product person, not SDR.** Someone who works on the product, using their own name, who can answer product questions and influence roadmap. Automated outreach is infinite now. Human attention from someone with product context is scarce. **Credits, not gift cards.** Fifty dollars of API credits costs Exa almost nothing and pays developers in more usage of the thing you want them using. A gift card buys an answer. Credits buy an answer plus more production traffic. **Reply showed product depth.** Alina came back with specific configurations by endpoint and parameter, a second approach Lemkin did not know about, and a direct "we don't expose that yet" with a note that it is worth looking at. Most CS sends "Thanks, I have passed this to product" and teaches you never to bother again. ## What This Means for Sales If you sell APIs, infra, or any product-led tool: your sequences are not working. Your upgrade pitches are not working. Checking in on usage, from someone who knows the product, with a tiny friction ask, works. Worth noting: Coresignal did reach out after Lemkin upgraded tiers. The rep was smart and had done homework. But he was there to upsell, not to check in. The trigger was billing, not usage. That is a good sales motion. It is not the same thing. One vendor out of 30 asked how the trial went. Copy them.

SaaStr
13 days ago
News

Canva cuts revenue forecast 30% to 20%, AI costs hit margins

## Canva cuts revenue forecast 30% to 20%, AI costs hit margins Canva dropped its 2026 revenue growth forecast from 30% to 20% after AI inference costs blew out harder than expected. The Sydney-based design platform, valued at US$42 billion, slowed product rollout to fix unit economics before scaling broadly. Quarterly revenue still grew 25% to US$921.9 million. But co-founder Melanie Perkins told investors the company was "relying too heavily on frontier models" when it launched Canva AI 2.0 four months ago. Translation: they were paying OpenAI and similar providers per API call, and at 265 million monthly active users, that adds up fast. Canva has since cut the cost of a single AI task by nearly 90% by building first-party models and rebuilding architecture. That is the right move long term, but it meant pulling back distribution in the short term. The growth slowdown is the result. ### What this means for go-to-market Canva is shifting from selling features to monetising AI usage and credits. That changes enterprise packaging, customer acquisition economics, and likely how sales teams position the product. If you are selling into design or productivity buyers, watch how Canva prices AI: it will set the benchmark for what customers expect from SaaS tools with embedded GenAI. The broader pattern: SaaS companies are learning that adding AI without fixing unit economics first tanks margins. Atlassian just capped employee AI spending for the same reason. CFOs are now asking VPs of Sales to justify AI tool costs with actual ROI data, not vibes. Canva sits at about US$4 billion in ARR as of end of 2025, up from US$2.8 billion a year earlier. The company competes directly with Adobe and Figma while defending a freemium-led growth model. Co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht said at Blackbird's Sunrise in April that building proprietary models was the plan all along to cut the AI bill. ### The takeaway If you are in sales leadership and your company is adding AI features: ask about unit economics before quota gets built around adoption metrics. Canva just showed what happens when inference costs outrun pricing strategy. They fixed it, but growth took the hit.

Startup Daily
13 days ago
News

Airtable sells for $2.25B at 2.7x ARR after $11.7B valuation

## The Numbers Bending Spoons is buying Airtable for $1.285B enterprise value, or about $2.25B equity value after net cash. That is 2.7x the company's $480M ARR as of June 2026. Airtable raised $1.4B total. Its peak valuation was $11.7B in late 2021 at 75x ARR. The current deal prices it 81% below that mark. The business: $480M ARR growing 20% YoY, 90% gross margins, cash flow positive since late 2024 generating $100M+ annually, 500,000+ organisations including 80% of the Fortune 100. ## What Changed Founded in 2012, Airtable built a relational database with a spreadsheet interface and sold it bottoms-up into enterprise. By 2021 it was doing $156M ARR and raised at a 75x multiple. Then growth slowed. Two rounds of layoffs totaling 491 people. The company cut to profitability, kept half its capital on the balance sheet, stabilised enterprise retention. In 2025-2026, founder-CEO Howie Liu declared a full AI refound: launched conversational app builder Omni, acquired DeepSky, hired OpenAI's former head of ChatGPT business products as CTO, shipped Superagent and Hyperagent. The result was 20% growth, not re-acceleration. ## Why It Sold No forcing function. No debt, $700M in the bank, profitable. But no path back to $11.7B either. At 20% growth you get priced as a cash flow asset, not a compounder. Filing an S-1 means going public well below the last private round, permanently. Secondary markets had been repricing Airtable for three years. The final price landed 44% below the January 2026 secondary mark and about 25% below where desks were pricing it three weeks ago. Competitive pressure matters too. The no-code app building position Airtable owned is being commoditised by faster, cheaper tools. ## The Hyperagent Carve-Out Pre-signing, Airtable transferred assets relating to Hyperagent, its autonomous AI worker platform announced February 2026, into a separate entity. The SEC filing confirms the reorganisation happened before the deal. Hyperagent was contributing roughly nothing to the $480M ARR, so the 2.7x multiple holds either way. But it tells you where Liu is going next and that the agent bet survived the sale. ## What It Means for Sales Bending Spoons is the Milan-based serial acquirer that IPO'd on Nasdaq in July 2026 and closed up 40% on day one. Its portfolio includes Evernote, Vimeo, Eventbrite, WeTransfer. Airtable is its first deal since listing. For sales professionals watching SaaS valuations in 2026: this is the clearing price for a well-known B2B brand doing half a billion in ARR at 20% growth with strong margins and profitability. The 2021 multiples are not coming back. The market pays for growth or profitability, rarely both at premium prices unless you are re-accelerating. Airtable's comp structure and sales org headcount are not publicly disclosed, but the scale suggests a meaningful enterprise motion alongside product-led growth. What happens to that team under new ownership is the next question.

SaaStr
13 days ago
News

YC-backed startup offered job interviews for tattoos, founder apologizes

## The Stunt LemonLime, a Y Combinator-backed AI automation startup, hosted what founder Jordan Zietz called the "most unhinged" YC Startup School afterparty in San Francisco last week. The hook: get a tattoo, get an interview. Seven people took the deal. They are still in the interview process for AI and engineering roles. Zietz, a 24-year-old Stanford graduate, posted about it on LinkedIn (since deleted): "We brought an actual tattoo artist to our party and offered an instant interview to anyone who got a LemonLime tattoo. We are bold, we take risks, and we do things that haven't been done before." ## The Backlash The post got torn apart. "The job market cannot be this cooked that kids have to get permanent tattoos to get interviews," one user wrote. Another: "Imagine getting branded with the LemonLime logo for a job interview, then getting rejected." Zietz apologized days later: "What I thought would be a fun, memorable way to meet people was, in reality, reckless and instead came across as tying a permanent tattoo to a job opportunity, which showed poor judgement. I should have understood the pressure and power dynamic created by connecting tattoos to hiring." The company is covering tattoo removal costs for anyone with regrets. ## What This Actually Is This is a founder-stage recruiting stunt at a company with no disclosed headcount, no named sales leader, and no public revenue. LemonLime is early YC, not scaled venture. The fact that they are running tattoo parlours instead of structured hiring processes tells you where they are in the growth curve. For context: this is the same market where AI hiring tools are facing lawsuits over algorithmic bias (Workday settled a discrimination case last year), where recruitment scandals damage employer brands for years, and where experienced sales professionals are asking for comp transparency, not gimmicks. Worth noting: none of the seven people have been offered roles yet. They got tattoos for a shot at an interview at a startup most people had not heard of until this story broke. ## The Sales Angle If you are hiring sales talent in ANZ or anywhere else, this is a case study in what not to do. Desperation hiring signals scare off strong candidates. Power dynamics in recruiting are real. And viral stunts that make your company look unserious do not help when you are trying to close enterprise deals or attract experienced AEs. Real talk: if your recruiting strategy involves permanent body modification, your employer brand is not the problem. Your judgment is.

Startup Daily
14 days ago
News

Palantir hits $7.7B ARR, 93% growth, 157% NRR: Rule of 40 at 155%

# Palantir hits $7.7B ARR, 93% growth, 157% NRR: Rule of 40 at 155% Palantir just posted numbers that rewrite the rules on what growth looks like at scale. Q2 2026 revenue: $1.935 billion, up 93% year over year. That puts the run rate at $7.7 billion ARR. For context, this is the twelfth consecutive quarter of accelerating growth. A year ago, this was a $1 billion quarter. U.S. business is doing the heavy lifting. U.S. revenue grew 115% YoY and 23% sequentially to $1.573 billion, now over 81% of total revenue. U.S. commercial alone grew 149% YoY and 28% quarter over quarter. Net revenue retention hit 157%. That means existing customers expanded contracts by more than 50% on average. For enterprise SaaS benchmarks, anything above 120% is considered strong. Above 130% is elite. 157% is absurd. Rule of 40 scored 155%. That is growth rate (93%) plus operating margin (47% GAAP, 62% adjusted). Most public SaaS companies struggle to break 40%. Palantir is at 155%. The company raised full-year guidance from $7.65 billion to $8.15 billion. That is a $500 million raise, mid-year, at a business already doing nearly $8 billion ARR. ## What this means for enterprise sales teams These metrics are not just impressive, they are instructive. Palantir is showing what AI-driven land-and-expand looks like when it works at the highest level. NRR of 157% means the sales motion is not just closing new logos, it is expanding existing accounts faster than most companies can grow top-line revenue. For enterprise AEs and sales leaders, Palantir is proof that growth does not have to decay at scale if the product drives enough value and the expansion motion is embedded in the go-to-market model. Palantir also has meaningful ANZ presence through government and enterprise deployments, though the company does not break out regional headcount publicly. Its recent $10 billion U.S. Army contract underscores its dominance in defense software, and that same approach is playing out in commercial enterprise, where it competes with Snowflake, Databricks, and C3.ai for AI and data transformation budgets. CEO Alex Karp called the quarter "otherworldly." CRO Ryan Taylor said the results were "unprecedented, but entirely unsurprising." Twelve straight quarters of acceleration. $7.7 billion ARR. 157% NRR. Rule of 40 at 155%. These are the numbers sales teams reference when they talk about best-in-class expansion. Palantir is not just scaling. It is redefining what scaling looks like.

SaaStr
15 days ago
News

Unlockd cofounder ends 8-year Google fight, startup killed 2018

Matt Berriman has ended his eight-year legal fight against Google over the death of Unlockd, the Australian adtech startup that went from $200 million valuation to voluntary administration in 2018. The Ninth Circuit Federal Appeals Court rejected Unlockd's latest attempt to overturn a 2025 decision favouring Google. Berriman, cofounder and former CEO, confirmed the news on LinkedIn this week. Unlockd raised over $60 million, backed by Lachlan Murdoch and the Catch of the Day founders. The company served ads on Android lock screens in exchange for user rewards: credits, loyalty points, discounts. It had 330,000 monthly active users and was preparing for an ASX listing when Google banned it from the Play Store in early 2018. Google cited policy violations. Later it emerged Google had invested in Glance, an Indian company with a similar lock-screen ad model. Unlockd secured interim injunctions in the UK and Australia to stay on the Play Store temporarily, but the damage was done. By June 2018, Unlockd entered voluntary administration. Berriman filed the US case in California in 2021 after details of Google's Glance investment surfaced. The case was dismissed in 2023, survived through appeals and amended filings, and now ends with the Ninth Circuit rejection. ## Why this matters for ANZ sales teams Unlockd is a case study in platform risk. If you are selling B2C software that lives inside Google, Apple, or Meta ecosystems, you are one policy change away from losing your book of business overnight. Enterprise AEs, ask your prospects about platform dependency. If their revenue relies on Google Play or App Store distribution, price in the risk. For adtech sellers in ANZ, Unlockd is a cautionary tale your prospects already know. It killed an Australian startup with real traction and real funding. Use it to frame platform diversification conversations. The broader context: Google faces multiple antitrust cases globally, including a major US ruling in 2024 on search monopoly practices. Unlockd's legal theory, that Google killed a competitor, aligns with regulatory scrutiny now hitting big tech. But regulatory action moves slowly. Unlockd moved into administration six years before US regulators delivered their first major antitrust win against Google. Berriman has moved on to VC investing and mental health advocacy. Unlockd remains defunct. Google remains.

Startup Daily
15 days ago
News

Canva now second biggest AI platform globally, behind ChatGPT

Canva pulled 10.5 billion website visits between May 2025 and April 2026, making it the world's second most-visited AI platform behind ChatGPT, according to new data from OneLittleWeb. That puts the Sydney-founded company ahead of Google Gemini (6.9 billion visits), DeepSeek (3.8 billion), Anthropic's Claude (3.4 billion), Grok (2.5 billion), and Perplexity (2.3 billion). ChatGPT still leads by a wide margin at 64.7 billion visits, more than six times Canva's traffic. ## What this means for sales teams Canva's number two position reflects a different competitive strategy: AI embedded in existing workflows rather than a standalone chatbot fighting for daily active users. Sales and marketing teams already use Canva for pitch decks, one-pagers, and social content. The AI layer speeds up template customisation and asset generation without changing the underlying use case. That workflow integration matters for AI tool adoption in sales orgs. Tools that sit inside existing processes (CRM prompts, email assistants, proposal generators) see higher daily usage than standalone platforms requiring separate logins and context switching. Canva now operates at roughly US$4 billion in annual revenue with 265 million monthly users across 190 countries. The company is Sydney-headquartered and remains one of ANZ's best-capitalised tech companies, backed by Sequoia, Blackbird, and Fidelity. Recent market commentary pegs its valuation around US$100 billion tied to IPO preparation and AI product expansion. ## The AI platform landscape The OneLittleWeb analysis tracked 9,531 AI tools across 170+ categories. The data shows market concentration: ChatGPT and Canva together account for the majority of AI platform traffic, with established players like Gemini and Claude competing for the remainder. For sales leaders evaluating AI tool stacks, the usage data suggests two adoption paths: general-purpose chatbots (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) for research and writing, and workflow-specific AI (Canva for design, Gong for call analysis) embedded in existing sales processes. Teams report higher sustained usage with the latter. Canva's Chief Product Officer Cameron Adams has not commented publicly on the ranking. Sales team size is not disclosed, but the company's enterprise and SMB penetration across 190 countries indicates a substantial global go-to-market operation.

SmartCompany
15 days ago
News

Small business costs up 25%: insurance, wages, interest hit sales team budgets

## The Numbers Australian small business costs jumped 24.6% from March 2020 to March 2026, according to AMP Bank Go's inaugural Small Business Cost Pressure Index. By year-end, that figure hits 27.1%. The breakdown: - Insurance: +51.7% - Interest payments: +36.3% - Wages: +20.3% Wages made up half the index weighting. Small businesses are labour-heavy, and this margin squeeze is real. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If you are selling into SMB, your buyers just got a lot more careful. Operating costs are up across 2.7 million Australian small businesses. That means: **Longer sales cycles.** When insurance premiums double and interest payments climb 36%, discretionary spending gets scrutinised. Expect more stakeholders, more questions about ROI, more requests for proof of value. **Tighter budgets.** The businesses you are prospecting into have thinner margins than they did four years ago. "Nice to have" is now "show me the payback period." **Comp pressure.** If your territory is weighted toward SMB, quota relief conversations are worth having. When your customer base is under this much cost pressure, close rates shift. Historical attainment data from 2022 may not reflect 2026 reality. ## The Broader Context This tracks with what we have been hearing across ANZ sales: business confidence is down, hiring is cautious, and deal velocity has slowed. Small business insurance costs now range from $600 to $2,000 annually for basic cover, more for staffed operations. AMP Bank Go director John Arnott put it plainly: "Small businesses are finding it really tough to contain these price increases given their razor-thin profit margins." For enterprise and mid-market AEs, this is background noise. For SMB-focused teams, it is the story of your quarter. Worth noting: if your comp plan assumes 2023 close rates in a 2026 cost environment, that is a conversation to have with your manager before Q3 planning.

SmartCompany
15 days ago
News

Skalata Ventures management buyout: Workman and Lee acquire Paul Little's VC fund

## Management buys Skalata from founding backer Rohan Workman (CEO) and Maxine Lee (COO) acquired Skalata Ventures from billionaire cofounder Paul Little. Little launched the Melbourne seed fund with Workman in 2019, backed by LaunchVic's $3 million and RBA board member Carol Schwartz. He stays on as director during transition. Former Future Fund CFO Paul Mann joins as board chair. Skalata runs three funds with 85 portfolio companies. Early cheques range $50k to $300k, with follow-on support to $1 million. Latest fund size: $50 million. Investors include Victorian and WA state governments, four universities, Afterpay cofounder Anthony Eisen, and TechnologyOne founder Adrian Di Marco. ## Why this matters for sales teams VC ownership changes can signal portfolio shifts. Management buyouts in venture capital differ from traditional leveraged buyouts: the acquiring team (Workman and Lee) buys equity from the founding investor (Little) rather than using debt to acquire an operating company. This structure keeps fund operations stable while transferring control. For sales professionals at portfolio companies, founder exits rarely change day-to-day support. The investment team (Workman, Lee, Investment Director Shahirah Gardner, Investment Manager Rob Greco) stays intact. Portfolio companies like H3D (raised $5.8 million Series A) and Restoke ($5.1 million seed) continue operating under existing fund terms. ## Portfolio performance Skalata's most recent exit: Canva acquired outdoor adtech startup Doohly for $30 million in March. The fund backs Australian pre-seed and seed startups across SaaS, adtech, foodtech, and healthtech. Sector-agnostic but concentrated in Melbourne and Sydney-headquartered tech businesses. Investment pace and cheque sizes unlikely to change. Workman and Lee have run operations since launch. Little's exit after seven years follows a standard VC exit strategy: transfer ownership to the operating team once the fund reaches scale. Most venture capital fund exits happen through distributions to LPs over 10+ years, but GP-level exits like this consolidate control without changing fund structure. For startups considering Skalata: same team, same model, same support infrastructure. The ownership change is internal mechanics, not a strategic pivot.

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