The Wire

Real-time updates from ANZ tech sales

5 months ago
News

CSIRO data: AI adopters hiring more, not less. Non-adopters at risk.

## The data nobody wants to hear CSIRO tracked job ads from 4,000+ Australian companies. Result: AI adopters posted more roles, not fewer. Companies using AI needed people to implement it, manage it, sell it. The finding landed with a thud. Social media response: "Job ads aren't hires." Fair point, except job ads have predicted economic trends for decades. When companies search for talent, they are planning to grow. MIT Sloan backed this up with 2010-2023 payroll data. Firms with high AI adoption grew employment 6% and sales 9.5% over five years. High-exposure roles at the top of the pay scale grew 3% because AI boosted productivity across the business. Stanford analysed ADP payroll through July 2025. Overall employment in AI-exposed jobs is up. The catch: workers aged 22-25 saw 6% declines in high-exposure fields like customer support and software development. Workers 30+ grew 6-13%. Early-career hiring slowdowns, not mass layoffs. ## The real risk: competitive lag Goldman Sachs projects 6-7% worker displacement over 10 years if AI adoption is gradual. That is 0.6 percentage points on unemployment. The displacement is not coming from AI itself, it is coming from companies that adopt AI outcompeting companies that do not. For ANZ B2B sales teams, this creates opportunity. Companies need help implementing AI infrastructure before their competitors do. The buyers are CROs, sales ops leaders, and go-to-market teams trying to scale without proportional headcount growth. Yale Budget Lab found no current correlation between AI exposure and employment changes. Anthropic found no impact on unemployment rates. The narrative that AI destroys jobs is stickier than the data supports. ## What this means for sales professionals If your company is not adopting AI tools for prospecting, pipeline management, or deal analysis, you are at a structural disadvantage against teams that are. The threat is not the technology, it is falling behind the market. Sales roles are shifting. SDRs using AI for research and outreach are booking more meetings per hour. AEs with AI-powered deal intelligence are closing faster. The skills gap is widening between teams that adopted early and teams still running 2019 playbooks. Comp is following the same pattern. Top-performing reps at AI-forward companies are pulling higher OTEs because their productivity metrics are higher. The job is not disappearing, the job is changing, and the companies investing in AI are the ones growing headcount and paying more. Bottom line: AI is not killing sales jobs. Competitive lag is.

Startup Daily
5 months ago
News

ServiceNow's 98% GRR masks customer engagement risk, says a16z analysis

## The Numbers Look Good. The Reality Might Not. ServiceNow reports 98% Gross Revenue Retention. Workday sits at 97%. Both companies lead the public B2B SaaS stack on this metric. The problem, according to a16z: those numbers might be hiding customer engagement decay. The core issue is contract structure. Both companies default to three-year initial contracts with enterprises. When GRR measures year-over-year revenue from existing customers (excluding expansion), long-term deals inflate the metric. Customers cannot leave mid-contract, so they show up as retained revenue even if they have stopped expanding usage or planning to churn at renewal. a16z called Workday "arguably the most important and least loved product in enterprise software." If nobody loves it, how does it retain 97% of revenue annually? Contracts. Customers are locked in. ## Why This Matters Now ServiceNow has made five AI acquisitions in 2025 alone, including a $7.75 billion deal for cybersecurity firm Armis. The company is pivoting hard toward agentic AI integration. That aggressive M&A pace suggests management sees the risk: enterprise budgets are shifting to truly agentic products, and static workflow platforms might lose relevance. The concern is not immediate churn. It is what happens when those three-year contracts come up for renewal and customers have already moved budget elsewhere. GRR looks stable until it does not. ## GRR vs NRR: What to Watch Gross Revenue Retention measures retention without expansion. Net Revenue Retention includes upsells and expansion. For enterprise SaaS, good GRR sits above 90%. ServiceNow and Workday are best-in-class by that standard. But NRR tells the real story. If GRR stays high while NRR drops, customers are staying but not expanding. That is the decay signal. ServiceNow beat Q1 2026 estimates, but institutional investors are watching: short interest jumped 30%, and geopolitical deal delays represent 75 basis points of headwind. ## The Sales Angle If you are selling into accounts with ServiceNow or Workday deployments, this matters. Long-term contracts mean these platforms are not going anywhere soon, but budget is finite. Positioning around agentic AI capabilities or workflow gaps could find receptive buyers who are locked into existing platforms but looking for what comes next. For AEs at ServiceNow or Workday: expansion revenue is the metric to watch. If customers are not adding seats or modules, that three-year contract is just delaying the conversation about replacement. Contract structure bought these platforms time. How they use it will determine whether 98% GRR was real retention or just a really good contract.

SaaStr
5 months ago
News

Palantir hits 85% growth at $6.5B ARR, US commercial up 133%

## The Numbers Palantir posted Q1 2026 revenue of $1.633B, up 85% year-over-year. That is the fastest growth rate the company has hit since going public in 2020. At a $6.5B+ run rate. Full-year 2026 guidance: $7.65B to $7.66B, representing 71% growth. Management raised the guide by 10 percentage points. US commercial revenue: $595M, up 133% YoY and 18% quarter-over-quarter. Twelve months ago, US commercial was running at $255M per quarter. It has more than doubled. Annualised, US commercial alone is now a $2.4B+ business. ## Deal Velocity Q1 deal count: 206 deals at $1M or above, 72 at $5M or above, 47 at $10M or above. Total contract value: $2.41B, up 61% YoY. Remaining performance obligations (RPO): $4.45B, up 134% YoY from $1.90B in Q1 2025. That is $2.55B more in contracted future revenue. RPO grew faster than revenue itself, which means the next several quarters are already largely sold. New commercial logos in Q1: Airbus, Bain, GE Aerospace, Stellantis. These are exactly the legacy industrial and consulting buyers everyone said were too slow to deploy AI at scale. They are now writing $5M, $10M, $20M+ contracts. ## What This Means for Sales Teams Palantir's commercial customer base hit 1,007, up 31% YoY. The average customer is spending more. That combination of new logo growth plus heavy expansion is the signature of a category-defining product hitting enterprise product-market fit. The company posted a Rule of 40 score of 145%: 85% growth plus 60% adjusted operating margin. GAAP net income: $871M, up roughly 4x YoY. Adjusted free cash flow: $925M at a 57% margin. Cash on balance sheet: $8.0B, no debt. CEO Alex Karp noted that a Rule of 40 of 145% has only been matched by AI infrastructure companies like NVIDIA, not software companies. ## Implications Enterprise software companies typically decelerate at scale. Palantir has gone from 17% growth in 2023 to 85% growth in Q1 2026. At multi-billion dollar scale. The standard playbook does not apply when product and platform shift collide. The Fortune 500 has stopped piloting AI and started buying. If you are selling AI agents and cannot convert pilots to production deals, the buyer is not the problem. Palantir has not disclosed specific sales team size, CRO details, or recent hiring numbers in Q1 filings. Deal velocity suggests scaled go-to-market operations, but comp structure and quota attainment data remain internal.

SaaStr
5 months ago
News

Australian businesses risk 'Unverified' SMS label from July 1 without ACMA registration

## The Change From July 1, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) will label SMS messages sent from unregistered branded sender IDs as 'Unverified'. Your business name disappears. Your text sits alongside potential scam messages. Your open rates tank. Messages sent using registered sender IDs will continue to display the business name. Messages from unregistered IDs will show 'Unverified' where your brand name used to appear. ## The Timeline Applications submitted after May 15 are at risk of missing the July 1 deadline. ACMA says processing can take weeks. Do not leave this until June. ## Why This Matters for Sales Teams If your sales motion includes SMS for: - Booking confirmations - Appointment reminders - Delivery notifications - Two-factor authentication - Post-demo follow-ups - Re-engagement campaigns You need to register. An 'Unverified' label kills trust. Customers will ignore or delete your messages. Some networks may filter or block them entirely. ACMA member Samantha Yorke said messages marked 'Unverified' are far more likely to be ignored or deleted by customers already on high alert for scams. ## The Reality Scam texts are at an all-time high in Australia. Customers are trained to delete anything that looks suspicious. An 'Unverified' label is suspicious. For SMEs running lean sales operations, SMS is a direct line to customers. Lose that channel and you lose bookings, reminders, and reactivation sequences. ## What To Do Register your SMS sender IDs with ACMA before May 15 to guarantee processing by July 1. If you use an SMS provider (Twilio, MessageMedia, others), check if they handle registration on your behalf. If not, you need to register directly. This is not a soft deadline. July 1 means your messages get labelled 'Unverified'. Your open rates drop. Your customers stop responding. ## Context This aligns with global SMS compliance tightening. In the US, TCPA text message opt-in requirements and FCC regulations have pushed similar sender verification. CTIA guidelines mandate clear opt-in and sender identification. Australia is following suit with ACMA enforcement to combat SMS scams while forcing businesses to prove legitimacy. The ANZ market has seen SMS scams surge. ACMA is prioritising sender verification to protect consumers. Businesses pay the price if they do not comply.

SmartCompany
5 months ago
News

Catch founders acquire Click Frenzy, plan relaunch after liquidation

## Catch founders acquire Click Frenzy, plan relaunch after liquidation Gabby and Hezi Leibovich acquired Click Frenzy and plan to relaunch the site weeks after it fell into liquidation. The Leibovich brothers founded Catch in 2006 as Catch of the Day, grew it to ~A$500M revenue and ~1,000 staff before selling to Toll Holdings in 2021. They stepped down as executives but stayed involved. Now they are buying distressed e-commerce assets. Click Frenzy launched in 2012 as Australia's answer to Black Friday. It ran limited-time sales events through the 2010s: homewares, tech, apparel, travel. The event model worked until it did not. Lumpy cash flow killed it. War in Iran hit travel deal sales during a recent event, according to the receiver. Click Frenzy and sibling business Power Retail went into liquidation in April 2026. Gabby Leibovich says the concept is not broken. "Click Frenzy proved that customers respond to great offers from trusted brands. What's changed is expectation. Today, customers want value more consistently." Translation: flash sales peaked in 2015. Customers now expect always-on deals, not event-driven scarcity. ### What this means for sales teams If you sold into Click Frenzy's event ecosystem (agencies, logistics, payment platforms), your buyer just changed. The Leibovich brothers ran Catch with a 200-300 person marketing and sales org at peak. Expect similar hiring if the relaunch scales. Catch historically focused on high-volume flash sales with aggressive performance targets. If they apply that playbook to Click Frenzy, commission structures will likely favour activity over deal size. Worth tracking if you are targeting ANZ e-commerce platforms. No word yet on headcount, territory splits, or OTE for any new hires. The brothers are Power Retail All Star Legends (2021), so they know how to build sales teams. Watch for roles in Melbourne where Catch was headquartered. Competitors: Kogan (~A$500M revenue), Amazon AU, MyDeal. Mid-tier ANZ e-commerce space with strong logistics ties via Toll. If Click Frenzy relaunches successfully, expect vendor and brand partnerships to ramp. No public comp details yet. Will update when hiring starts.

SmartCompany
5 months ago
News

Cursor hit $2B ARR in 18 months without outbound sales

## The numbers that break the model Cursor went from $1M to $100M ARR in 12 months. Then $300M three months later. Then $500M. Then $1B by November 2025. Then $2B by February 2026. Slack took 30 months to hit $100M ARR. Dropbox took four years. Cursor did it in 12 with zero marketing spend and no outbound sales motion. The four MIT co-founders made one GTM decision that mattered more than everything else: they forked VS Code instead of building a plugin. Every competitor built Copilot-style extensions. Cursor rebuilt the entire editor. At the time, this looked stupid. VS Code had 70% market share and Microsoft backing. Forking meant reconstructing language servers, debugging, the terminal. Months of work for uncertain payoff. But it gave them control. They could integrate AI at the infrastructure level, not bolt it on. The product worked 10x better because the AI wasn't fighting the editor, it was the editor. ## The metric that predicted everything Cursor tracked one number obsessively: session length. Not DAUs, not signups. How long developers stayed in the editor per session. When session length hit a threshold, they knew they had won that user. The product became the default environment. Developers stopped switching back to VS Code. That metric predicted retention, expansion, and enterprise adoption. Long sessions meant developers were shipping real work in Cursor. That meant they would pay. That meant they would bring their team. ## Enterprise through developer smuggling Cursor had no enterprise sales team until late 2025. The enterprise motion was bottom-up infiltration. Developers adopted Cursor individually. Paid $20/month out of pocket. Brought their team. Eventually, procurement noticed the expense line and formalised the contract. By the time sales got involved, the deal was already done. The sales motion was contract cleanup, not relationship building. SpaceX became a customer this way. So did most of Cursor's enterprise book. ## What this means for ANZ sales teams Cursor's playbook does not work for most products. You need 10x better functionality and a user base that self-selects for early adoption. Most B2B SaaS has neither. But the session length insight applies everywhere. If your users are not spending time in your product, expansion will not save you. Usage predicts revenue better than any pipeline metric. The developer-led enterprise motion is already playing out in ANZ. Tools like Vercel, Linear, and Notion followed similar paths. Individual contributors adopt, teams follow, procurement formalises. If you are selling into engineering orgs, your land motion might not involve sales at all. Your job is contract capture, not deal creation. ## The valuation that shows where the market is Cursor is now valued at $60B. For context, that is more than Adobe, which took 40 years to build. The market is pricing in a future where AI coding tools are infrastructure, not features. Where the editor is the product, and the product is the workflow. For sales teams selling dev tools: the bar for product-market fit just moved. Cursor proved developers will pay $20/month for tools that genuinely make them 10x faster. They will not pay for incremental improvements. The land-and-expand motion still works. But land now requires a product developers cannot live without, not a sales process they tolerate.

Sales Hacker
5 months ago
News

Canva CTO exits after 12 years, no replacement named ahead of IPO

Brendan Humphreys is leaving Canva after 12 years as CTO. He joined in 2014 when the company had 12 employees. Now it has 5,000 staff and $3 billion in ARR. Canva is not filling the CTO role. Simon Newton, previously Humphreys' number two, becomes head of technology instead. Newton ran platform engineering and came from Google and Uber. Humphreys wraps up in June and stays on as an adviser. The timing matters. Canva is pushing hard into AI and preparing for an IPO. The company already has no permanent CFO. Now the CTO role disappears too, replaced with a head of technology position. That is a structure change worth noting. Canva reports 230 million monthly active users and 24 million paying subscribers. It claims 95% of Fortune 500 companies as customers. That enterprise footprint means a significant B2B sales operation, though the company does not disclose sales team size or recent hiring numbers. For sales teams using Canva: the product roadmap continues. The company acquired Affinity and Magic Brief to build out AI design tools. All 5,000 employees test AI features under what the company calls permissive policies. That AI push targets enterprise adoption, which drives the B2B revenue. The CTO exit after 12 years is significant but not disruptive. Humphreys built the technology organisation that scaled from 12 people to 5,000. Newton inherits that foundation as Canva moves toward public markets. What this does not tell us: how the enterprise sales organisation is structured, who runs it, or whether the IPO timeline changes. Canva's Sydney headquarters gives it strong ANZ presence, but specific regional headcount remains undisclosed. Bottom line: a long-term executive is stepping back at a company that just hit $3B ARR and wants to go public. The CTO role gets restructured, not replaced. For sales professionals, Canva remains a major enterprise design platform with serious Fortune 500 penetration and aggressive AI development.

SmartCompany
5 months ago
News

Moats keep customers in, but they do not capture AI budget

## The Numbers Look Safe. The Growth Does Not. Gross revenue retention across B2B software sits at 90%. The best companies hold above 95%. ServiceNow renews at 98%, CrowdStrike at 97%, Workday above 95%. Customers are not ripping out their systems. The moats are real: switching costs, integrations, workflow dependency, data lock-in. But net revenue retention tells a different story. It dropped from 116% at peak to 108% across public software. Customers are staying. They are not expanding. Morningstar just downgraded 40 tech companies, cutting six former wide-moat leaders to narrow: Adobe, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Shopify, Descartes, Manhattan Associates. Adobe's fair value estimate dropped 32%. ServiceNow dropped 18%. They cut moat duration from 20 years to 10. Goldman Sachs identified Snowflake, MongoDB, Shopify, CrowdStrike as companies with architectural moats. Bain confirmed GRR is holding. HarbourVest called it the biggest valuation reset since 2008. All this analysis focuses on the wrong question. Not "are you safe from AI?" but "are you capturing AI budget?" ## The Budget Math Gartner projects AI spending hits $1.5 trillion in 2026. AI software grows 15.2% year over year. AI captures 30% of total IT budget increases. The rest of IT grows at a fraction of that rate. Private AI companies trade at 61x ARR. Public B2B software trades at 4x ARR. That is not a valuation gap. That is two different markets. Morningstar's data: AI products at incumbent software companies account for 1-5% of revenue. Retention rates unchanged, margins increasing, ARR growing. The defensive metrics look fine. AI revenue is a rounding error. ## What This Means for Sales If you sell established B2B software: your existing customers are not leaving, but they are not expanding either. New logo acquisition matters more than ever. You need a clear answer to "how does this capture AI budget?" not "how does this compete with AI?" If you sell AI-native products: incumbents have moats, but they are not capturing growth budget. Your win is not replacement deals. It is net new budget. If you manage a territory: GRR protects your base number. It does not hit your growth quota. The deals that close this year will be the ones positioned as AI initiatives, whether or not the product is fundamentally different. The moat keeps customers in. It does not fill the pipeline.

SaaStr
5 months ago
News

AI agents picking vendors, not humans: why OpenAI bounced back and Medallia collapsed

## The Shift: Agents Pick the Tools Now OpenAI missed Q4 numbers. Anthropic just pulled $45 billion from Google and Amazon. Thoma Bravo handed Medallia to creditors, wiping out $5.1 billion in equity from their 2021 acquisition. The pattern underneath: AI agents now choose which vendors get budget. Not sales leaders. Not procurement. Agents. Jason Lemkin's AI VP of Marketing at SaaStr prefers OpenAI's API over Claude. So that is where the spend goes. "Just like you had to back your team of humans in 2024, today I have to back my team of agents," Lemkin said on 20VC. "If they pick OpenAI, I have to be on the team." This rewrites the vendor landscape faster than most sales orgs realise. ## Three Buckets for B2B Tools Rory O'Driscoll laid out where every sales tool now sits: **Bucket 1: Eroding terminal value.** Tools agents do not use. Medallia landed here. Customer feedback platforms lose relevance when agents handle most customer interactions. **Bucket 2: System of record.** Workday, parts of Salesforce. Companies keep them but no agentic activity happens on top. Fair valuation, no premium. **Bucket 3: Agent-leveraged.** ServiceNow claims this. Twilio and Cloudflare qualify because agents actually call their APIs. This is the only bucket that gets growth multiples. Most B2B software is being repriced from Bucket 3 (where the market gave credit until 2025) into Bucket 2. Some slides to Bucket 1. ## What This Means for Sales Teams Canva will IPO successfully. Agents still will not use it. "An AI agent is not going to move assets around," Lemkin noted. "It is just going to create the assets." Same logic applies to Jira, Confluence, most project management tools. The SaaS premium is dead. Good companies without AI-first positioning trade at fair value, not 30x revenue. If you are evaluating a job offer at a growth-stage SaaS company, ask: do AI agents use this product? If the answer is no, expect the valuation, and likely your equity, to compress. ## The Comp Angle Thoma Bravo's Medallia collapse signals risk across PE-backed seat-based SaaS. If you are selling for a company in Bucket 1 or sliding into it, watch for quota relief disappearing, territory compression, and comp plan changes as leadership realises the revenue model is breaking. Meanwhile, companies in Bucket 3 are hiring. OpenAI is projected to hit $20 billion ARR this year despite the Q4 miss. Anthropic hit $6 billion revenue in February alone, with projections to reach $70 billion ARR by 2028. If you are an enterprise AE evaluating offers, the question is not just OTE. It is: will agents want to buy this in 18 months? Because if they do not, your patch is shrinking no matter what the comp plan says. ## What Gets Bought API-first tools agents can call. Data infrastructure agents need. ServiceNow's agentic capabilities if they ship. Not seat-based tools designed for human collaboration. Sales orgs still matter. Someone has to close the enterprise deals. But if the agents are not choosing your product in their workflows, the TAM is compressing regardless of how good your team is. The 2021 SaaS playbook is over. Agents pick the stack now.

SaaStr
5 months ago
News

OpenAI and Anthropic now lease 2x Salesforce's SF footprint

## The Numbers Salesforce went from 2.2 million square feet in San Francisco in 2019 to 1.0 million in 2026. That is a 55% cut. The company that defined SF tech for a decade is now the third-largest office tenant in the city. OpenAI holds 1.2 million square feet. Anthropic holds 950,000. Combined: 2.15 million square feet, more than double Salesforce's current footprint and roughly equal to Salesforce's all-time peak. Two AI companies that barely existed five years ago have collectively matched the office presence of the CRM giant that employed over 10,000 sales reps at peak. ## What This Means for Sales Teams Salesforce cut approximately 10% of its 72,000-person headcount in 2024, likely impacting its direct sales force. The office reduction reflects both remote work shifts and post-acquisition (Slack, Tableau) consolidation. Meanwhile, OpenAI and Anthropic are hiring. OpenAI's sales team sits around 200 to 300, focused on enterprise deals. Anthropic runs leaner at 100 to 200, emphasizing AWS Bedrock integrations. Both are expanding rapidly with fresh funding: OpenAI raised $6.6 billion in October 2024, Anthropic has pulled in $8 billion-plus from Amazon and Google. For sales professionals, the math is straightforward: established SaaS is consolidating, AI startups are scaling. The question is where the next wave of quota-carrying roles gets created. ## The ANZ Angle Salesforce maintains around 1,000 headcount across Sydney and Melbourne, its primary ANZ sales hub. OpenAI and Anthropic have minimal ANZ presence, under 100 combined, focused on US and EU expansion. That gap represents opportunity. If AI companies follow the SaaS playbook, ANZ enterprise sales teams come next. Watch for GTM hires in Sydney over the next 12 months as these companies look to replicate US traction in APAC. ## Why It Matters Office footprint is a proxy for hiring intent. Salesforce shedding 1.2 million square feet signals a leaner go-to-market motion. OpenAI and Anthropic adding 2.15 million signals the opposite: rapid headcount growth, enterprise focus, and serious B2B ambition. The next decade of B2B sales jobs is being built in AI, not traditional SaaS. The San Francisco office market is spelling it out in square meters.

SaaStr
5 months ago
News

Atlassian Q3 revenue up 32% to $1.79B, stock jumps 15%

## The Numbers Atlassian (NASDAQ: TEAM) posted Q3 revenue of US$1.79 billion, up 32% year-over-year. Cloud revenue hit US$1.13 billion, up 29%. Non-GAAP operating income was US$607.2 million at 34% margin, up from US$348.3 million last year. Shares jumped 15% in after-hours trading. The stock has been hammered in 2026, making this beat significant for employees watching equity comp. ## The Context This follows the March announcement that 1,600 roles would be cut in an AI restructure. CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes positioned it as refocusing on Enterprise, AI, and System of Work. The Q3 results included US$223.8 million in restructuring charges, which hit the GAAP operating margin. For sales teams, the restructure means territory changes and quota adjustments are likely ongoing. Strong revenue growth (32%) against that backdrop suggests the remaining reps are carrying heavier loads. ## What It Means for Sales Professionals Atlassian serves over 300,000 customers globally and just posted its third consecutive quarter of accelerating RPO growth (44% year-over-year). That contracted future revenue creates quota capacity, but the 1,600-person reduction means fewer people to assign it to. The company guided for 22% revenue growth in fiscal 2026. Service Collection crossed US$1 billion ARR, growing over 30%. If you are an AE there, your patch likely got bigger. Cloud and Data Center revenue are both expanding (23% and 33.5% respectively), which means both deployment motions need coverage. Enterprise focus suggests upmarket push, longer sales cycles, larger deal sizes. ## The Comp Question No public data on how the restructure affected sales comp or OTE ranges. Atlassian does not appear on RepVue with recent verified reviews. If you are considering a role there, ask about quota relief during restructure periods and how territories were redrawn post-layoffs. Stock compensation matters here: shares up 15% after hours is material for anyone with RSUs vesting. But year-to-date performance still down, so total comp depends heavily on grant timing.

Startup Daily
5 months ago
News

Four ANZ startups raise $90M: Liquid Instruments leads with $70M Series C

Four ANZ startups closed $90M in funding this week, led by Canberra-based Liquid Instruments with a $70M Series C. ## The Numbers Liquid Instruments: $70M Series C. Co-led by US firm Keysight Technologies. Includes $28.45M from the National Reconstruction Fund. Other backers: Breakthrough Victoria, Acorn Capital, Significant Capital Ventures, Tribeca. Company plans to move manufacturing back to Australia. Marloo, Aigentsphere, Manifest: Combined $20M. No specifics available due to paywall. ## What We Don't Know The article sits behind a paywall, so critical details are missing: sales team size, hiring plans, AE or SDR headcount changes, OTE ranges, territory expansion, key sales leadership (CRO, VP Sales), customer acquisition strategy. For sales professionals tracking ANZ hiring opportunities, that matters. Series C rounds typically mean sales team expansion. A $70M raise should translate to new quota-carrying roles. We just cannot confirm numbers yet. ## ANZ Funding Context This follows a pattern of ANZ startups securing capital in 2024-2026, though broader context shows ANZ Bank's VC arm 1835i facing potential cuts under CEO Nuno Matos' cost reductions. That could tighten future startup investment in the region. Liquid Instruments was founded in 2014 from research. Beyond that: no public data on current headcount, sales motion (enterprise vs. mid-market), or go-to-market strategy. ## What This Means for Sales If you are prospecting into ANZ startups post-raise, Liquid Instruments just became worth a look. Series C companies need sales infrastructure: CRM, enablement tools, data providers. They are also typically hiring AEs and building out sales development. Just do not expect comp transparency from the announcement. We will update when real numbers surface.

SmartCompany
5 months ago
News

HiSmile hit $700M revenue bootstrapped, no sales team disclosed

## The Numbers HiSmile generated $700 million in gross sales by 2024, up from $40 million three years prior. The Gold Coast oral care brand bootstrapped the entire run with zero external funding. Co-founders Nik Mirkovic and Alex Tomic started with $20k in 2014. No sales team data exists. No CRO. No VP Sales. No public headcount numbers. The company appears to run on pure product-market fit and influencer distribution. ## The Go-to-Market Model HiSmile sells direct-to-consumer through e-commerce and social channels. The entire acquisition strategy runs on viral marketing: TikTok campaigns, Instagram partnerships, influencer seeding. Kim Kardashian and Conor McGregor have posted about the product. This is the anti-sales playbook. No cold calls. No outbound motion. No enterprise deal cycles. Product goes viral, customers buy online, repeat. The product: teeth whitening kits using PAP+ instead of peroxide. Mirkovic and Tomic identified a gap (painful whitening products) and sourced a better solution. Simple positioning, clean packaging, WordPress site to start. ## What This Means for ANZ Sales HiSmile proves a different model can work at scale in ANZ. No traditional sales org required when you nail product-led growth and viral distribution. But it also means zero sales jobs created in a $700M revenue business. For D2C or product-led companies, this is the case study. For sales professionals looking at oral care or consumer packaged goods, HiSmile is not hiring AEs. They are hiring influencer managers and performance marketers. Worth noting: high-margin consumer products with strong social proof can bypass traditional B2C sales entirely. The lesson is not "sales is dead." The lesson is "know which business models need sales teams and which do not." HiSmile competes with Colgate and P&G brands through influencer velocity, not shelf space or sales rep relationships. Different game, different playbook, different hiring model.

SmartCompany
5 months ago
News

Okta CRO Jon Addison: $850M loss to $760M profit via AI agent identity play

## The Turnaround Jon Addison took the CRO role at Okta in November 2023. The company was burning: $850M in operating losses. By the time he sat down for this interview, Okta had flipped to $760M in operating income. That is a $1.6B swing. Two decisions drove it. First, GTM specialisation. Addison split sales teams by function and segment instead of running generalist coverage. Productivity went up. Deals that included new products now close at 40% higher ACV than legacy identity-only deals. Second, Okta went partner-first. Hard pivot. Now 95% of their top 100 deals in the last fiscal year were partner-led. That does not happen by accident. It means comp restructuring, pipeline attribution changes, and teaching AEs to co-sell instead of owning accounts solo. Addison says ROI on the partner shift took time but compounded once the flywheel spun. ## The AI Agent Play Okta launched "Okta for AI Agents" to manage identity for non-human users: bots, agents, automated workflows. The market data is clear. 91% of enterprises already run AI agents in production. Only 10% have confidence in their security strategy for them. That is a governance gap, and Okta is positioning itself as the platform to close it. Addison calls this the biggest new TAM expansion in years. Every AI agent needs an identity, permissions, and audit trails. Enterprises are deploying agents faster than security teams can write policies. Okta's bet: customers will consolidate identity management (human and non-human) onto one platform instead of duct-taping legacy tools. ## What This Means for Sales Teams Okta now runs an internal sales methodology called APEX, built on Command of the Message but adapted for AI-era buyers. Discovery calls are different because prospects show up informed. Addison says the "first discovery call" no longer exists in enterprise deals. Buyers have done research, formed opinions, and expect reps to add value, not qualify. The company is also using AI internally: conversational intelligence tools, pre-sales assistants, and automated admin work. Headcount decisions now hinge on skills that AI cannot replace: relationship-building, executive navigation, and complex deal strategy. Addison's comp package reflects the equity-heavy model common at this level: 55,426 RSUs vesting quarterly from June 2026, plus roughly 27,668 Class A shares. Okta's growth target is $5B ARR, up from $3B, driven by enterprise expansion, international growth, public sector, and the new non-human identity market. The path from loss to profit in 18 months is rare. Partner-led restructuring and product-led TAM expansion do not usually move numbers this fast. But when 91% of your market has a problem and 10% have a solution, timing matters. Okta is shipping. The numbers are up.

Sales Hacker
5 months ago
News

Airwallex CEO offers $100k equity-free to 10 AI founders under 25

Airwallex co-founder and CEO Jack Zhang launched Latitude 37, an annual program backing 10 Australian AI founders under 25 with $100,000 in equity-free capital. The program, named after Melbourne's latitude where Airwallex started in 2015, includes immersion tours in San Francisco and Singapore (the company's dual headquarters), direct access to Airwallex's network, and exposure to its AI infrastructure. "The capital is equity-free because the first year is when ownership gets given away cheapest and protected the least," Zhang said. "I want these founders to keep theirs." The focus: early-stage AI founders who cannot afford to reach product-market fit. Zhang argues too many Australian founders take overseas capital too early, on terms that do not serve them long-term. ## The Airwallex Context Zhang knows the funding trajectory. Airwallex raised $1.2 billion total, including a $300 million Series F at $6.2 billion valuation in May 2025, then a $330 million Series G at $8 billion. Revenue hit $800 million annualised by June 2025, up 90% year-over-year. Payment volume: $130 billion annualised. The company is investing heavily in AI itself, building specialised agents for financial workflows like expense approvals and treasury operations. An IPO is expected in 2026. ## What This Means for Sales AI startups need distribution. If you are selling into fintech or payments infrastructure, watch where Latitude 37 graduates land. Airwallex's network includes enterprise buyers across payments, treasury, and finance operations. For sales professionals considering fintech: Airwallex is scaling globally with San Francisco as a dual HQ. The company targets businesses underserved by legacy banks, competing against Wise and Revolut. No public data on sales team size or ANZ headcount, but $800 million ARR at 90% growth means they are hiring. Zhang's bet: AI reduces startup launch costs enough that a 14-person team in Brisbane can compete with a 1,400-person incumbent. That changes who you are selling to and what they can build.

Startup Daily
5 months ago
News

Startmate CEO Batock exits to build AI services, no sales team yet

Michael Batock stepped down as Startmate CEO to co-found Hourglass AI, an AI implementation firm targeting Australian businesses. He ran the accelerator for eight years before leaving to answer the question hundreds of founders asked him: how do we actually use AI right now? ## What They Are Building Hourglass AI builds working AI systems inside businesses on a fixed-fee basis. Co-founded with Finlay Ekins, 22, the company operates on a premise that most businesses feel behind on AI not because they do not understand it, but because they are too busy to build it. They started in stealth mode in February, launched publicly this week. Batock points to Anthropic research showing a gap between what AI can do and what businesses have actually deployed. His pitch: skip the strategy decks and discovery phases. Just build the thing. ## What We Know About the Company No public funding rounds. No disclosed revenue, headcount, or sales team. This is very early stage, likely pre-seed or bootstrap. The website is thehourglass.ai. Beyond Batock (likely CEO) and Ekins (likely CTO or co-founder), no executive team is named. The timing is notable. Batock left one of the most visible roles in ANZ startups to bet on AI services, not AI products. That suggests he sees more immediate revenue in helping businesses implement existing AI tools than in building new ones. ## Sales Implications If you are selling AI sales tools into ANZ, this is your competition: consultancies and agencies positioning as execution partners, not just vendors. The fixed-fee model matters. It removes the risk objection that kills a lot of SaaS deals in cautious enterprise buying cycles. For sales professionals watching the AI automation space, Hourglass AI is not a direct competitor to tools like Artisan AI or 11x AI. It is a services play. But if they scale, they will influence which AI tools their clients adopt. Worth tracking who their early customers are and what stack they standardise on. ## The Execution Gap Batock's bet is that the bottleneck is not technology, it is implementation. Most businesses cannot spare senior engineers to wire up AI systems. If he is right, the opportunity is massive. If he is wrong, this becomes another consulting firm with AI in the pitch deck. No comp data, no hiring announcements, no territory assignments. Too early to tell if this scales. Check back in six months.

Startup Daily
5 months ago
News

a16z drops $1.7B on AI infrastructure: what that means for sales tools

## The Infrastructure Play Andreessen Horowitz put $1.7 billion into AI infrastructure in its latest $15 billion raise. That is the largest single allocation by vertical, up 36% from $1.25 billion in 2024. General Partner Jennifer Li oversees the bets: ElevenLabs (now worth $11 billion), Cursor, OpenAI, and a stack of developer tools rebuilding enterprise software from scratch. For sales teams, the signal is clear: the tools you use today, CRMs, engagement platforms, dialers, are being rewritten for an AI-first world. The infrastructure powering that shift just got serious funding. ## What Gets Rebuilt Li is focused on five areas: developer tools, voice and video AI, model infrastructure, search infrastructure, and AI-native startups. Translation for sales professionals: your tech stack is getting faster, cheaper, and smarter. Voice agents are already scaling in enterprise (ElevenLabs crossed the uncanny valley first). The rest follows. Speed to market matters more now than product differentiation. The first company to become the default brand in a category, like ElevenLabs did in voice, builds a lead that sticks. That dynamic is playing out across sales tools right now. ## The Distribution Era Li backed ElevenLabs early because the founders balanced research, product, and go-to-market equally. Most AI startups nail one or two. The winners nail all three. For sales teams evaluating new tools, that is the filter: does this vendor understand distribution, or are they just good at demos? The other takeaway: 90% of code is now written by agents, according to a16z's research. That changes vendor timelines, feature velocity, and what counts as a sustainable moat. If your sales tech vendor is not shipping faster than they were 12 months ago, they are falling behind. ## What This Means for ANZ No a16z portfolio company has announced ANZ expansion tied to this fund yet, but the infrastructure layer does not care about borders. Voice agents, AI-native CRMs, and developer tools built on this stack will land in ANZ sales teams regardless. Watch for ElevenLabs partnerships with local platforms and new AI-first sales tools entering the market in the next 6-12 months. Bottom line: the sales stack is being rebuilt. The firms writing the biggest cheques are betting on speed, infrastructure, and voice-first tools. Plan accordingly.

Sales Hacker
5 months ago
News

Liquid Instruments raises $70M Series C, adding 20 engineering roles in Melbourne

## Series C close, manufacturing pivot Liquid Instruments, an ANU spinout making software-defined test equipment, closed a $70 million Series C. Co-leads: Keysight Technologies and Australia's National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC). Additional backers include Breakthrough Victoria, Acorn Capital, Significant Capital Ventures, and Tribeca. The NRFC put in $28.45 million specifically to scale Melbourne-based manufacturing. That is government money tied to local production and job creation. ## Headcount expansion: 20 engineering roles Current team: 55 people across Australia. The NRFC investment creates 20 new product engineering roles, all in Australia. That is a 36% headcount increase focused on R&D and manufacturing support, not sales or go-to-market. Worth noting: these are highly skilled engineering positions. The company makes precision measurement devices that replace oscilloscopes, spectrum analysers, and signal generators. Customer list includes Apple, Nvidia, Blue Origin, and BYD. ## What this means for sales teams Keysight Technologies is not just an investor. They signed a commercial arrangement to co-develop AI-driven instrumentation. That usually means distribution partnerships or OEM deals, which changes the sales motion from direct-only to channel-plus-direct. The company founded in 2014, so this is 12 years to Series C. That timeline suggests enterprise sales cycles and complex technical selling. Current customers are in quantum computing, aerospace, and defence, which means long sales cycles and high ACV deals. No word on sales team expansion yet. The focus is manufacturing and product engineering. If you are looking at instrumentation or hardware sales roles in ANZ, watch for hiring announcements in Q3 2026 after the manufacturing scale-up. ## The market context Global AI computing spend is projected to hit $2.52 trillion in 2026. Liquid Instruments makes the test equipment used to build AI chips and quantum computers. That is infrastructure play, not direct AI exposure, but the demand signal is real. Government-backed funding through NRFC means local manufacturing requirements. That could mean slower international expansion but stronger ANZ market position. Trade-offs matter when you are evaluating growth-stage companies for sales roles.

SmartCompany
5 months ago
News

Mastercard tests AI agents for small business payments in ANZ

Mastercard ran AI agent payment trials across Australia and New Zealand, testing whether the tech can handle routine business transactions without human input. The trials involved local platforms: Hnry, MYOB, Pay.com.au. The aim is to link steps that are currently separate. Business data feeds into an AI system, generates a recommendation, completes the payment. No toggling between apps. "There's still that disconnect. You have to come out of the AI platform to then go to that merchant to pay," said Anouska Ladds, EVP of commercial and new payment flows for Asia Pacific at Mastercard. "That last mile is where agentic will play a role." ## What this means for B2B sales teams Mastercard claims SMEs spend 10 to 20 hours weekly on financial admin. If AI agents cut that time, it changes what small business buyers prioritise. Less time on payments means more time evaluating your product, or less patience for complex billing. For sales teams selling into SMBs: payment friction matters. If your billing process adds admin overhead, you are competing against solutions that automate it away. For fintech and payment processing sales teams: this is infrastructure competition. Mastercard processes over 300 billion transactions annually with 25% global market share. When they move into AI-driven payments, it shifts what "best payment processing" means. The trials follow Mastercard's January 2026 launch of Agent Suite for customisable AI agents in security, payments, and growth. Virtual C-Suite, launching March 2026, offers small businesses executive-level insights into finance and marketing. No sales team specifics disclosed, but Mastercard employs roughly 33,400 globally. ## The ANZ angle Mastercard has strong ANZ presence through partnerships with local banks like ANZ Bank. These trials signal they are testing locally before broader rollout. If AI agents handle invoice payments and vendor management, it changes how B2B payment companies (Stripe, TreviPay, etc.) position against incumbents. No comp details, no hiring announcements. Just infrastructure moving closer to automation. Watch how SMB buyers respond when payments require fewer clicks.

SmartCompany
5 months ago
News

AI tool sprawl costs sales teams productivity, not gains

## AI tool sprawl costs sales teams productivity, not gains Sales teams are being sold on AI adoption at scale. The reality: most are running a messy stack of subscriptions with no clear ROI. Just over one-third of Australian SMEs now use AI, according to government data. In regional areas, that drops to 29%. But this is not strategic implementation. It is a pile of logins, browser tabs, and half-adopted copilots that slow teams down instead of speeding them up. ## The hidden costs add up Each AI subscription carries visible costs: $20-$50 per user per month for tools like ChatGPT Plus, Copilot, Gong, or Outreach AI features. Stack five tools across a 10-person sales team and you are looking at $2,500-$5,000 monthly before measuring any actual pipeline impact. Then the invisible costs hit. Context switching between tools. Data silos that do not talk to each other. Training time that pulls AEs off quota. Compliance risks when reps paste prospect data into consumer AI tools. One sales leader put it bluntly: "We added three AI tools last quarter. Close rates stayed flat. Our AEs spend more time managing the stack than working deals." ## What works instead Sales teams seeing real ROI are doing the opposite of tool sprawl. They pick one or two AI applications with clear metrics, integrate them properly, and measure performance against baseline. Example: A Sydney mid-market team implemented AI call analysis through their existing CRM. Cost: $30 per user monthly. Result: 12% improvement in discovery call-to-demo conversion after three months. They skipped the AI email writer, the AI prospecting tool, and the AI forecasting platform. The strategic question is not "What AI should we add?" It is "What problem costs us the most revenue, and can AI solve it measurably?" ## The minimalist approach Sales teams with tight budgets and quota pressure cannot afford experimental AI spending. The minimalist approach: keep the stack small, use cases narrow, and measurement rigorous. Before adding any AI tool, answer: - What specific metric improves? (Pipeline velocity, close rate, demo booking rate) - What is the baseline? (Current performance without AI) - What is the cost per improvement? (Subscription cost divided by measured gain) - Does it integrate with existing CRM? (Or create another data silo) Most AI vendor pitches skip these questions. That is intentional. ## Bottom line AI can improve sales performance. But only when implemented strategically, measured honestly, and integrated properly. The current approach, stacking subscriptions without ROI data, burns budget and productivity. Sales leaders: audit your AI stack this quarter. Cut tools that are not moving the number. Keep what works. Measure everything. The goal is not more AI. The goal is more revenue.

SmartCompany
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