The Wire

Real-time updates from ANZ tech sales

about 1 month ago
News

Haast raises $17M Series A, relocates to US

## Haast raises $17M Series A, relocates to US Sydney-founded compliance startup Haast closed a US$12 million (A$17M) Series A led by Peak XV Partners, with DST Global Partners and existing backers Airtree, Aura Ventures, and Black Sheep Capital participating. The company has now raised US$17.05M total since launching in 2023. Here is what changed: Haast relocated to New York. The US is now the primary market. ### The pitch Haast automates marketing and content compliance for enterprises in regulated industries: financial services, pharma, FMCG, retail. The problem they are solving: legal and compliance teams cannot keep pace with AI-driven content production. Manual review processes create bottlenecks. CEO Kunal Vankadara says the platform embeds policy and risk standards directly into workflows, letting teams move at AI speed without breaking governance rules. Translation: marketing and sales teams get their content approved faster, compliance teams stop being the blocker. ### The traction Haast reports 4.5x revenue growth in 12 months and zero customer churn. Client list includes Telstra, Zurich ANZ, Aviva, and Future Super. Worth noting: no public revenue figures, so scale remains unclear. The company claims the platform reduces manual compliance review by up to 80% and accelerates approval timelines by 3x. If those numbers hold across enterprise deployments, that is a meaningful operational unlock for sales and marketing teams stuck waiting on legal sign-off. ### What this means for sales teams For ANZ sales professionals in regulated industries, this matters if your comp is tied to campaign velocity or content-driven pipeline. Compliance friction directly impacts time-to-market. If Haast's automation actually works at scale, it removes a bottleneck that sales teams cannot control but constantly blame for missed numbers. The Series A and US move signal they are chasing enterprise scale, not ANZ mid-market. That usually means longer sales cycles, bigger deals, and if you are selling into these accounts, expect procurement processes that reflect the compliance obsession this product is built around.

Startup Daily
about 1 month ago
News

Canva acquires two more AI startups, Stayz founders join

Canva acquired two Sydney startups: Simtheory (AI collaboration platform) and Ortto (marketing automation, 11,000+ customers). Both founded by Chris and Mike Sharkey, who sold Stayz to Fairfax in 2006, then to HomeAway for $225M in 2013. This is Canva's fourth and fifth acquisition in six weeks. MagicBrief in January, MangoAI and Cavalry six weeks ago, Doohly two weeks ago (rumoured $30M). Financial terms not disclosed. Blackbird backed Ortto, which raised $46M total including a $16M round in 2017. The Sharkeys join Canva leadership: Mike ran both startups as CEO before the deals. Canva is at $4B annualised revenue with 265M monthly users, 31M paid. That revenue number suggests significant enterprise traction, but sales team size and structure not disclosed. Context for sales professionals: Five acquisitions in six weeks signals aggressive expansion. Marketing automation (Ortto) and AI collaboration (Simtheory) acquisitions point to enterprise play beyond freemium design tools. When companies buy this fast, integration teams grow: implementation, customer success, account management roles typically follow. Ortto served 190 countries pre-acquisition. That customer base needs coverage. Simtheory raised $5M seed 12 months ago, still early but validates AI workflow thesis. No hiring announcements yet. When Canva moves, they move fast: watch for Sydney-based sales roles supporting enterprise AI and marketing automation products. The Sharkey brothers have enterprise sales DNA from Stayz days, expect that experience to shape go-to-market. Worth noting: Canva does not publish sales team metrics. $4B ARR with 31M paid users suggests strong product-led growth, but enterprise deals at that scale need humans carrying bags. Acquisition spree of this pace usually means team expansion within 90 days.

Startup Daily
about 1 month ago
News

Zapier makes AI fluency a hiring requirement, shares assessment rubric

## Zapier makes AI fluency a hiring requirement, shares assessment rubric Zapier now tests AI fluency in every interview. Not nice-to-have. Requirement. The workflow automation company went from 10% to 97% daily AI usage across 800 employees in under two years. CEO Wade Foster credits a single decision: stopping work in March 2023 for a week-long hackathon after GPT-4 launched. AI adoption jumped from 10% to 50% in five days. They ran quarterly hackathons after that. The marketing team alone shipped 57 AI projects. Now they hire for it. ### The four-level rubric Zapier assesses candidates on a scale: Unacceptable, Acceptable, Adaptive, Transformative. **Unacceptable:** Cannot articulate basic AI use cases or demonstrate baseline fluency. **Acceptable:** Uses AI for standard tasks. Email drafts, research summaries, basic automation. **Adaptive:** Builds workflows, chains prompts, understands when AI is the right tool versus when it is not. **Transformative:** Redesigns processes around AI capabilities. Builds agent workflows. Identifies business problems AI can solve that humans missed. Most sales orgs are still hiring at Acceptable. Zapier wants Adaptive minimum. ### What this means for sales teams If you are hiring AEs or SDRs in 2026 and not testing AI fluency, you are behind. The question is not whether your team uses AI. It is whether they use it well enough to 10x their output. Zapier runs 800+ AI agents now. More agents than employees. Their support team handles 50% of tickets with AI. Foster uses a personal "advisory council" of AI sub-agents for major decisions. That productivity gap shows up in quota attainment. Teams that adopted AI early are closing faster, researching deeper, and personalising at scale. Teams that did not are still manually building prospect lists. ### The assessment question In interviews, Zapier asks: "Walk me through how you would use AI to solve [specific sales problem]." They listen for workflow thinking, not just tool names. Can you chain prompts? Do you know when to hand off to a human? Can you build a repeatable process? If your interview process does not include an AI assessment, add one. If your onboarding does not include AI training, fix that. If your sales leaders are not using AI daily, that is your biggest bottleneck. The comp gap between AI-fluent reps and non-fluent reps is widening. Zapier just made it a hiring requirement. Expect more companies to follow.

Sales Hacker
about 1 month ago
News

Canva buys Simtheory, Ortto: AI pivot targets enterprise sales teams

## Canva buys Simtheory, Ortto: AI pivot targets enterprise sales teams Canva acquired Sydney startups Simtheory and Ortto on April 8, its fifth and sixth acquisitions in 10 months. The deals mark a clear shift: the $4 billion design platform is building an AI-powered work platform targeting enterprise teams. Simtheory builds custom AI assistants for enterprise and government. Teams can deploy agents that integrate with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google models, automating CRM updates, document creation, and email management. For sales teams, this means AI agents that can actually touch your stack: update Salesforce, draft follow-ups, pull pipeline reports. Ortto handles marketing automation: unified customer data, campaign deployment, metric tracking. The platform serves 11,000 customers across 190 countries. That customer base matters. Canva now has a foothold in marketing ops at scale, territory adjacent to sales enablement. COO Cliff Obrecht called founders Chris and Mike Sharkey, who built both companies, "exactly the kind of founders we love partnering with." The Sharkey brothers sold Stayz for $225 million in 2013. They know how to build and exit. Canva did not disclose deal terms. No comp details, no team size, no integration timeline. ### What this means for sales teams Canva is not just adding features. The company is assembling infrastructure for end-to-end B2B workflows: design, automation, AI agents, customer data. If you are selling into marketing or revenue ops, watch this space. Canva is building a platform play that touches prospect research, content creation, campaign execution, and CRM integration. The AI agent angle matters more than the design tools. Enterprise sales teams need automation that connects systems, not just pretty decks. Simtheory gives Canva that capability. Ortto's 11,000 customers represent potential cross-sell territory. Marketing automation users need sales enablement tools. That is not speculation, that is pipeline math. ### ANZ context Both acquisitions are Sydney-founded, keeping talent and IP in the ANZ market. Canva maintains its Sydney headquarters and continues aggressive M&A: MagicBrief, MangoAI, Doohly ($30 million in March), now Simtheory and Ortto. The company hit $4 billion ARR by end of 2025, still private, still expanding. For ANZ sales professionals, this is local product development at scale. Enterprise AI tools built in Sydney, deployed globally, competing with Adobe and emerging workflow platforms. No details yet on how Canva plans to staff the new capabilities or what this means for go-to-market teams. If historical patterns hold, acquisitions lead to hiring. Watch for AE and solutions engineer roles as Canva pushes deeper into enterprise.

SmartCompany
about 1 month ago
News

90-day cashflow crunch hitting ANZ SMEs: what sales teams need to know

# 90-day cashflow crunch hitting ANZ SMEs: what sales teams need to know Australian SMEs are walking into a cashflow pinch, and if you sell to them, your pipeline is about to feel it. ## The numbers 80% of Australian SMEs have experienced cashflow impacts in the last 12 months. The average SME burns through 4.2 months of negative cashflow annually. Payment terms have stretched to 55 days average, despite most invoices being written at 30. Now add fuel price lag (four to eight weeks to flow through supply chains), payday super changes (requiring $124k additional working capital for average SME), and consumer confidence at levels that correlate with delayed purchasing decisions. That is three things hitting at once. Ninety days is not much time when that happens. ## What this means for your deals Customers are not cancelling. They are delaying. Shopping harder on price. Deferring anything deferrable. If you are selling into SME, expect: - Deal cycles extending 30-60 days beyond historical norms - More stakeholders in approval chains - Heavier scrutiny on payment terms and ROI timelines - Requests for quarterly payment plans instead of annual upfront Growth often makes this worse, not better. Larger clients demand 30-60 day terms versus 7-14 days from smaller accounts. Revenue goes up, cash position goes down. ## Impact on quota and comp If your customers are experiencing cashflow pressure, expect: - Slower collections affecting company cashflow, potentially delaying commission payments - Territory adjustments as companies reprioritise enterprise over SMB - Quota relief discussions if SME segment materially underperforms For sales managers building 30-60-90 day plans: factor in extended close timelines. Historical win rates may not hold if purchasing decisions are being delayed by finance teams, not rejected by champions. ## What to watch 85% of SMEs are actively managing cashflow through expense reduction, finding new revenue streams, or raising prices. 27% of business owners have dipped into personal savings or forgone salary in the last year. If your champion starts talking about budget reviews, approval freezes, or CFO involvement where it did not exist before, that is the signal. The deal is not dead, but the timeline just changed. For AEs and sales managers forecasting Q2 and Q3: model for longer cycles. For commission forecasting, factor in collection delays if your comp is tied to cash received rather than booking. The cashflow crunch is not theoretical. It is already showing up in payment terms and approval chains. ## Bottom line Cashflow crunches do not kill deals. They delay them. Adjust your forecast, extend your pipeline coverage, and have the conversation with finance about what happens if collections slow down. The businesses that see this coming will adjust. The ones that do not will miss quota and blame the market.

SmartCompany
about 1 month ago
News

Meta's Muse Spark targets commerce: AI shopping hits social feeds

Meta shipped Muse Spark overnight, the first model from its superintelligence team. The play here is straightforward: commerce at scale across its entire app ecosystem. The model powers Meta AI, rolling out across Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger. Meta calls it "purpose-built for Meta's products", which is corporate speak for: this AI is optimised for keeping you inside our apps and buying things. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If you are running paid social or lead gen on Meta properties, the targeting and discovery mechanics are about to shift. AI-driven shopping feeds mean: - **Discovery changes**: Product recommendations get smarter. Your ad targeting needs to keep pace. - **Lead gen formats evolve**: Meta's AI can now handle more complex customer queries in-feed, potentially shortening the path from scroll to conversion. - **Attribution gets messier**: When AI surfaces your product organically versus paid placement, tracking gets complicated. For B2B teams using Meta lead ads (still one of the better performing channels for top-of-funnel), watch how AI-assisted discovery affects cost per lead and quality. Early indicators suggest AI-surfaced leads convert differently than traditional ad-driven ones. ## The Commerce Focus Meta abandoned its metaverse spend and is now betting hard on AI commerce. The company is explicit: Muse Spark is "tied to commerce and discovery inside its ecosystem." Translation: Meta wants to own the entire shopping journey, from discovery to checkout, without you leaving their apps. For sales teams, this means your product needs to be discoverable by Meta's AI, not just their ad algorithm. ## ANZ Context Meta has not disclosed ANZ-specific rollout timing or regional sales team expansion tied to Muse Spark. Worth noting: Australian e-commerce brands have historically seen strong performance on Instagram Shopping. If AI discovery improves conversion rates, expect Meta to staff up local commerce partnerships. Bottom line: Meta is repositioning AI as a shopping tool, not a search tool. If your go-to-market relies on Meta properties, your targeting strategy needs to account for AI-driven discovery, not just paid placement.

SmartCompany
about 1 month ago
News

SaaStr CRO: Ditch Your CRM, Follow the AI Agents Instead

## The CRM Question Just Changed A CRO at a leading AI company is hiring 250 sellers this year and asked Jason Lemkin at SaaStr which CRM to use. His answer: follow the agents. For years, the advice was simple. Use Salesforce because your VP Sales will want it. Then HubSpot came up, native marketing integration included, and by 2022 it was neck and neck with Salesforce in the startup world. SaaStr itself had Salesforce as shelfware, paying for it but barely using it. Then SaaStr went all-in on AI agents. Now Salesforce is the most important software they run. ## What 20+ AI Agents Actually Looks Like SaaStr plugged 20+ agents into Salesforce as the central hub. Here is what that stack does: - **Artisan** runs three AI SDR campaigns: ticket sales, sponsorship outreach, VIP reactivation. 15,000+ messages, 5-7% response rates. - **Monaco** handles a fourth outbound campaign, booking meetings with top AI execs from day one. - **Qualified** powers inbound AI on saastr.com. 700k+ sessions. $1M+ in closed sponsorship revenue. In one month, 71% of closed-won sponsorship deals came from AI-qualified leads. Historic average: 29-34%. - **Agentforce** handles warm lead win-backs. After SaaStr Annual, Lemkin found 1,000 people who filled out "interested in sponsoring" forms and got zero human follow-up. Agentforce got a 72% open rate and 10%+ response rate on contacts considered dead. For context: cold email averages 2-4% open rates. - **Momentum** auto-transcribes every sales call, pushes structured data into Salesforce. Reps never manually update CRM. - **Attention** layers on call intelligence, auto-populates Salesforce fields. Plus 4-5 specialised agents for email campaigns, de-anonymisation, event coordination, sponsor management. All connected to Salesforce as the data layer. Salesforce acquired Qualified. Salesforce acquired Momentum. They built Agentforce with 2,000 people. The thesis: the CRM that becomes the hub for AI agents wins. ## What This Means for Sales Orgs Lemkin is budgeting $500k for 21 AI agents in 2026. Compare that to $10k on Salesforce CRM. SaaStr is running AI-heavy teams with 6-10% response rates and 130+ booked meetings while shrinking human sales roles. The CRM decision is no longer about features or marketing integration. It is about which platform your agents can plug into without breaking. If you are hiring 250 sellers this year, ask which CRM supports the agents you need, not which one your VP Sales used at their last company. SaaStr's AI events are running at 132% growth year-over-year. AI spend is up to $2.52 trillion globally, up 44% YoY. The market is moving to agent-native sales stacks. Emerging options like Lightfield, Monaco, and Aurasell are positioning as next-gen AI agent CRMs, though public details on funding, headcount, or ANZ presence remain scarce. The playbook: follow the agents. Pick the CRM that supports them. Everything else is shelfware waiting to happen.

SaaStr
about 1 month ago
News

Firmus locks $725m raise at $8bn valuation, ASX IPO incoming

## The Numbers Firmus Technologies is raising US$505 million ($725 million) at an $8 billion valuation, led by New York AI investor Coatue with Nvidia participating. The round is subject to closing conditions. This comes weeks after a $100 million raise at $6 billion valuation. Total capital raised: over $16 billion across equity and debt, including a $10 billion debt facility from Blackstone. The company plans an ASX IPO later this year. This is reportedly the final private raise, though an additional $3 billion raise has been floated as part of the listing. For context: that would exceed Guzman y Gomez's 2024 IPO market cap. ## What They Actually Do Firmus builds AI data centers. Not cloud hosting, actual infrastructure: purpose-built facilities designed to train and run AI models on Nvidia chip architectures. Founded in Sydney in 2019 by Oliver Curtis, Tim Rosenfield, and Jonathan Levee, the company started in bitcoin mining before pivoting to AI infrastructure. Now Singapore-based, they are deploying thousands of GPUs across construction sites in Tasmania, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, and Perth. The flagship campus is in Launceston. Project Southgate, their national expansion plan, targets 1.6-1.8 gigawatts of capacity by 2028 with a $73 billion price tag. ## The Sales Angle Firmus serves hyperscale and AI-native customers globally. They joined Nvidia's DGX Cloud Lepton program in June 2025, letting developers rent infrastructure from their data center network. No public data on headcount, sales team size, or revenue. The company has not disclosed staffing plans around the IPO. ## What It Means Australia landing one of the country's largest-ever private debt deals signals serious institutional confidence in AI infrastructure plays. The IPO will test whether public markets share that conviction. For enterprise sales teams: if your prospects are building or scaling AI capabilities, they need compute. Firmus is betting Australia becomes a regional hub for that capacity.

Startup Daily
about 1 month ago
News

Anthropic hits $30B run-rate, passes OpenAI while spending 75% less on training

## The Numbers Anthropic: $30 billion annualised run-rate as of April 2026. OpenAI: $24 billion ($2B monthly, confirmed by the company). A year ago, Anthropic was at $1 billion ARR and OpenAI was at $6 billion. The company that most people outside B2B circles could not name two years ago just passed the company that invented the consumer AI category. Worth noting: Anthropic has roughly 5% of ChatGPT's consumer user base. Consumer scale and revenue scale are not the same thing. ## How They Got There No viral consumer app. No 900 million weekly users. Enterprise API contracts, cloud provider deals (Google Cloud, AWS), and developer adoption. Eight of the Fortune 10 are now Claude customers. Over 500 companies spend more than $1 million annually. Anthropic captured 73% of enterprise AI spend among businesses buying AI tools for the first time, according to Ramp customer data. That split was 50/50 ten weeks prior. Claude Code launched May 2025. By February 2026: $2.5 billion ARR. The product now authors 4% of all public GitHub commits. That figure has doubled in the past month. A product that did not exist 11 months ago is generating more revenue than most public SaaS companies ever will. ## Growth Rates Without Precedent Anthropic went from $1 billion ARR in December 2024 to $30 billion in April 2026. That is $14B to $30B in roughly eight weeks. Meritech reviewed IPO trajectories of over 200 public software companies and never saw a growth rate like this. Salesforce took about 20 years to reach $30 billion in annual revenue. Anthropic did it in under three years. OpenAI's trajectory: $2 billion ARR in 2023, $6 billion in 2024, $20 billion by end of 2025, $24 billion run-rate now. That is 3x per year, sustained, at scale where 3x means adding billions every quarter. ## What This Means for Sales Teams Enterprise is the engine. OpenAI confirmed enterprise now makes up over 40% of revenue, up from 30% last year, on track to reach parity with consumer by end of 2026. APIs process more than 15 billion tokens per minute. Nine million paying business users as of February. The company that started consumer-first is rapidly becoming enterprise-first. The company that was enterprise-first from day one is pulling ahead on run-rate as a result. The B2B motion gets you to durable, high-ACV revenue that compounds. Coding tools are the category. Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex are both tracking developer adoption rates that most SaaS companies never see. The AI coding category went from zero to multi-billion dollar market in under a year. If your sales team is not tracking how prospects are using AI coding tools, that is a gap. ## The Burn Neither company is profitable. OpenAI is burning approximately $17 billion in cash this year, projecting a $14 billion loss for 2026. The company has committed over $1 trillion to infrastructure and does not project positive free cash flow until 2029. Anthropic has raised over $18 billion in funding. The revenue is real, but so is the cost structure. The investors backing both companies (SoftBank, Amazon, Nvidia, Google, a16z, Lightspeed, ICONIQ) are making a specific bet: compute costs fall per unit of intelligence, revenue compounds faster than burn, and whoever owns the AI infrastructure layer owns the next decade of enterprise spend. Both companies are reportedly targeting public market debuts in 2026.

SaaStr
about 1 month ago
News

How Databricks sells across 30 industries without building vertical products

## The Framework Databricks sells a $4.8 billion run-rate data platform to CDOs, CTOs, and CIOs across 30+ industries. They do not build vertical products. They build what they call imperatives: the intersection of customer priorities, industry trends, and product capabilities. Most B2B teams stop at personas and ICP. Databricks goes further. Personas tell you who buys. ICP tells you which accounts fit. Neither tells you what the buyer is actually held accountable for this quarter. ## How It Works in Practice Take retail. Databricks maps three imperatives: - Personalisation and monetisation of customer experience - Employee productivity improvement - Supply chain optimisation Each imperative breaks down to business priorities (the OKRs the exec owns), use cases (specific product applications), and proof (customer references with metrics). Sales gets a one-page placemat: here is what retail CIOs care about, here is how our platform maps to it, here is the data. The product stays horizontal. What changes is the conversation entry point. You start from their world (tariffs, regulation, industry consolidation) then connect back to your capabilities. As Madelyn Mullen, Sr. Industry Solutions Manager at Databricks, put it: you are not fitting square pegs into round holes. You are starting from their problems. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If you are selling a horizontal platform into multiple industries, stop asking product to build vertical editions. Start mapping imperatives: 1. What are buyers in this vertical actually accountable for? 2. What industry trends are moving their market right now? 3. Where does your product deliver differentiated value against those priorities? The overlap is where deals happen. One caveat: SMB and enterprise imperatives are different. An SMB construction company and a global construction enterprise have different strategic priorities. You cannot use the same conversation framework across segments. ## The Comp Angle Databricks is hiring industry solutions managers and industry marketing managers to run this motion. These are not AE roles. They sit between product marketing and sales: building the frameworks, mapping the imperatives, enabling the field. Worth noting for sellers looking to move into solutions or enablement roles at platform companies. The company closed a $4+ billion Series L at $134 billion valuation in December 2024, up 34% from their August round. That kind of growth funds GTM expansion. Expect more hiring in industry-specific enablement roles over the next 12 months.

SaaStr
about 1 month ago
News

Melbourne startup Spoony shuts down, blames AI funding shift

Spoony, a Melbourne-based social app for disabled and neurodivergent communities, will shut down by end of May after failing to raise its planned October 2025 round. Co-founder Nicholas Carlton told media the funding environment changed dramatically during the startup's two-year run. Investors now prioritise profitability over the grow-first model Spoony followed. The company raised $1 million early on and reached 65,000 users, but that was not enough. "The sands have shifted," Carlton said. "There's an expectation now from investors that you are monetising much, much earlier." Spoony explored revenue through referrals to speech pathologists and ADHD assessment services. Traditional advertising, Carlton noted, only makes sense past a million users. The startup never got there. ## The AI funding shift This shutdown sits within a broader trend. While AI-focused startups like Firmus raise hundreds of millions, non-AI ventures struggle for capital. The message from investors is clear: AI or nothing. For sales professionals, this matters. Startups that cannot raise are not hiring. The Melbourne team at Spoony, likely under 10 people based on structure and stage, will not be adding AEs or SDRs. Multiply that across dozens of similar shutdowns and you see why ANZ sales hiring slowed in 2025. ## Sales automation reality check The irony: Spoony shut down partly because investors want AI startups. Meanwhile, sales automation companies face backlash for replacing human roles. Artisan AI's "stop hiring humans" campaign sparked controversy, and multiple AI SDR tools launched promising to replace outbound teams entirely. The data tells a different story. AI tools handle repetitive tasks well. They do not close enterprise deals or navigate complex buying committees. Companies that gutted sales teams for AI automation are quietly rehiring. Spoony's closure is not a sales story directly. No CRO departing, no territory restructure, no quota changes. But it shows what happens when funding dries up for non-AI plays. Fewer startups means fewer sales roles, tighter hiring, lower OTEs as competition decreases. Worth noting: Carlton did not mention considering AI tools for growth or operations. For a community-focused app serving neurodivergent users, that makes sense. Some products need human touch. The shutdown date is end of May 2026. 65,000 users will need to find new platforms. The Collingwood office at 54 Wellington Street will go quiet. Another Melbourne startup story ends before Series A.

SmartCompany
about 1 month ago
News

SaaStr runs 20+ AI agents, 3 humans: daily reports ship on Sundays

## The Setup SaaStr, the B2B SaaS events and media company behind SaaStr Annual, now runs on 3 humans and 20+ AI agents. Founder Jason Lemkin posted Sunday: two detailed reports waiting in Slack before he woke up. One from the 10K Daily Bot (attendee count, ticket revenue, year-over-year comps). One from the Sponsor Portal Bot (100+ sponsors tracked, at-risk accounts flagged). Nobody asked the bots to work weekends. They just ship. ## The Numbers SaaStr cut headcount from 20+ employees to 3. The agents handle daily dashboards, sponsor check-ins, SDR follow-ups, lead scoring, content drafts. SaaStr Annual 2026 is tracking 20% ahead of last year's attendance at the same point. The AI SDRs are generating pipeline that closes. The AI concierge converts web traffic around the clock. ## What This Means for Sales Teams Lemkin's argument: the unlock is not cost savings, it is consistency. Agents do not have bad weeks, vacations, or burnout. The Sunday report is as thorough as the Monday report and every report after. For a lean operation running a major event, that reliability beats any individual hire. The catch: agents need oversight. They can get out of sync or confused. You have to spot-check their work. But they do not forget tasks, skip follow-ups, or deprioritize because something else came up. The at-risk sponsor gets flagged today, tomorrow, and every day until the status changes. ## The Question for Sales Leaders If you are running a B2B company and have not deployed at least a few AI agents, Lemkin says you are leaving reliability on the table. Start with the boring stuff: the daily report someone forgets, the lead follow-up that slips on Fridays, the sponsor check-in that gets deprioritized during crunch time. Give it to an agent. Watch it never miss. ## The Reality Check SaaStr is a media and events company, not a typical sales org. The agents Lemkin describes (daily dashboards, sponsor tracking) are not the same as replacing quota-carrying AEs. But the model shows where AI sales agents are proving out: repetitive tasks, consistent follow-up, data pulls, lead scoring. The agents that ship every day, including Sundays, while your team is off. Worth noting: SaaStr has no public data on sales team structure or comp. Lemkin runs a lean, high-impact operation tied to event sponsorships and subscriptions. This is not a 50-AE sales floor. It is 3 people and a fleet of bots running a multimillion-dollar event. Your mileage will vary.

SaaStr
about 1 month ago
News

Triple Bubble hits $10m first close, targets $50m fintech fund

# Triple Bubble hits $10m first close, targets $50m fintech fund Triple Bubble closed $10 million in its first nine months, one-fifth of its $50 million target. CommBank's x15ventures came in as cornerstone investor. Final close planned for Easter 2028. The fund backs ANZ fintech across three stages: early-stage private markets, secondary equity, and pre-IPO/public companies. Stage-agnostic model addresses what founders Dom Pym, Brian Collins, and Judy Anderson-Firth call a structural gap in Oceania fintech capital. Investor list includes fintech operators: WeMoney's Dan Joveski, Caligra's Grant Bissett, Tractor Ventures cofounders Matt Allen and Aprill Enright. Worth noting the operator-heavy cap table: these are people who have built sales teams and know what scaling fintech GTM actually costs. Pym (Up Bank, Euphemia) said it is one of the toughest capital markets in a decade. The fund's thesis: Australian and New Zealand fintechs produce global outcomes but lack local VC support. Fintech Australia data shows four in five Aussie fintechs have no VC on their cap table. Australian VCs own less than 4% of the local fintech market. **What this means for sales professionals:** More fintech funding typically means more sales hiring. If Triple Bubble deploys across 15-20 companies over three years, expect SDR and AE roles as portfolio companies scale. The x15ventures partnership could accelerate enterprise sales cycles for portfolio companies selling into banks. Pym says first investments will be announced in coming months. The firm maintains ANZ-only focus, no offshore expansion noted. **The context:** Fintech funding rounds have contracted globally through 2024, but ANZ produced exits (Airwallex valuation growth, Judo Bank IPO). A dedicated fintech fund with bank partnerships changes the capital equation for early and growth-stage companies that need to hire sales teams to hit next-stage metrics. Triple Bubble's three-asset-class model is unusual for ANZ: most local VCs pick a stage and stay there. Multi-stage approach could mean follow-on capital for strong performers, which matters when you are building a sales org and need 18 months of runway, not 12.

Startup Daily
about 1 month ago
News

Australia Post acquires Rendr, adds same-day delivery to 90% coverage

Australia Post acquired Rendr, a last-mile delivery orchestration platform, bringing same-day delivery to nearly 90% of Australian coverage. The deal gives Australia Post access to Rendr's algorithm-based platform that matches merchants with optimal couriers in real time based on location, speed, and delivery windows. Rendr will operate independently before integration into Australia Post's sending platforms. Financial terms were not disclosed. Rendr was founded in 2020 by Greg Leibowitz and James Fisher. The startup raised $2.1 million in 2021 from investors including former Australia Post boss Ahmed Fahour and Global Retail Brands executive chairman Steven Lew. Current CEO is Sonney Roth. The acquisition expands Australia Post's e-commerce capabilities against global marketplace competition. Businesses will gain access to same-day, three-hour, evening, and weekend delivery options without operational complexity. This builds on Australia Post's Metro next-day service launched in major cities including Perth and Adelaide. Gary Starr, executive GM for parcel, post, and e-commerce services at Australia Post, said the investment helps Australian businesses compete. The government-owned corporation is scaling delivery options while managing reforms to letter services, including every-second-day regular delivery rollout through 2026. **What this means for sales teams:** Rendr's sales org details are unknown: no public data on team size, CRO, or recent hires. Australia Post has not disclosed sales leadership or hiring plans post-acquisition. The move signals consolidation in ANZ last-mile logistics, with implications for anyone selling into or competing with on-demand delivery providers. Rendr operated with national ANZ focus, no international presence. No prior acquisitions or additional funding rounds beyond the 2021 raise.

SmartCompany
about 1 month ago
News

Chime Labs raises $900k for AI receptionist targeting tradies

# Chime Labs raises $900k for AI receptionist targeting tradies Sydney startup Chime Labs closed $900,000 pre-seed funding led by 500 Global with angel participation. The company builds an AI receptionist for tradies: plumbers, electricians, and service businesses that lose revenue on missed calls. Founded in 2025 by former Googlers Alexis Griveau (CEO) and Mathew Pretel, Chime Labs answers inbound calls 24/7, qualifies leads, and books appointments directly into calendars. According to Griveau, a single missed call costs tradies up to $12,000 monthly in lost revenue. ## Market context: AI receptionists for SMBs Chime Labs enters a crowded field. US-based Beside hit $4M ARR with 20,000+ customers before raising $32M total funding. Canadian startup Handshake runs a six-person team with a voice agent handling 20 simultaneous calls in 50 languages. LA-based Steno raised $49M addressing similar admin gaps. Chime Labs differentiates by focusing exclusively on ANZ tradies, a niche underserved by global players. No revenue, headcount, or customer numbers disclosed. The company is early: founded last year, first institutional raise, minimal public data. ## What the money funds The $900k goes toward product expansion (quoting, invoicing, lead generation tools) and hiring. Current customers are requesting features beyond call handling. The company positions itself as a one-stop admin solution for service businesses, not just a receptionist. ## Sales angle: What this means for the market AI receptionist tools are proliferating in the SMB space, but few target specific verticals. Chime Labs is betting that tradie-specific workflows (quoting a bathroom reno differs from booking a SaaS demo) justify a focused product. Whether that thesis supports venture scale remains to be seen: tradies operate on tight margins, and willingness to pay for software tools varies widely. No word on pricing, ACV, or go-to-market strategy. For sales teams selling into SMBs, the tradie vertical represents a hard sell: high volume, low ACV, long sales cycles. Chime Labs will need strong product-led growth or a scalable inbound model to make the unit economics work. Worth watching: whether they can convert early traction into repeatable revenue, and whether the ANZ tradie market supports a venture-backed business.

Startup Daily
about 1 month ago
News

OpenAI buys tech podcast TBPN: balance sheet marketing play

OpenAI bought TBPN, the daily tech talk show hosted by Jordi Hays and John Coogan. First media acquisition for the AI company. The show goes to OpenAI's strategy team under Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane. Editorial independence stays, ads phase out. The financial logic: OpenAI is sitting on cash but is unprofitable. Spending cash tanks earnings. Buying an asset and converting it to goodwill? Different story on the balance sheet. TBPN was doing $5 million in ad revenue, projected to hit $15-30 million. Now it becomes 20+ hours weekly of OpenAI brand exposure. This mirrors how public companies obsess over getting their CROs and CEOs on long-form podcasts. Joe Rogan, TBPN, 20VC: these are now viewed as primary channels for reaching tech decision-makers. Comms teams block executive calendars around these appearances. Buying one outright gives you the channel without the pitch process. TBPN stays mostly as-is. OpenAI gets constant exposure. The hosts get resources and reach. No deep integration plan disclosed, which tracks: let it run, see what happens, world changes fast anyway. Penn Entertainment tried similar logic with Barstool Sports. That deal unwound, but the thesis held: turn balance sheet cash into owned distribution to your target audience. Worth noting for sales leaders: this is a strategy play, not a GTM hire. OpenAI's enterprise motion remains licensing-focused. No disclosed sales team expansion tied to this deal. The value is brand and influence, not pipeline generation. Relevant if your company is sitting on cash and wondering how to stay top-of-mind with buyers without burning through marketing budget. Media acquisitions are back on the M&A menu for scale tech companies with trapped capital. TBPN operates US-only. No ANZ presence or sales ops disclosed for either party. OpenAI remains US-centric despite global AI expansion.

SaaStr
about 1 month ago
News

SaaStr AI graded 4,000 pitch decks: growth rate worth 55 of 100 points

SaaStr AI has graded 4,000 VC pitch decks since launching its free analyzer tool last year. The data shows what founders miss before they pitch, and what VCs actually care about. The tool spits out four scores. Traction Score (0-100) is the big one: growth rate alone is worth 55 of 100 points. Not raw growth. Growth relative to what's expected at your ARR tier, benchmarked against Carta, Iconiq, Emergence, and Bessemer data. Deck Quality Score (0-100) grades how well you communicate team, market, and competitive advantage. Most decks land between 55-70 here. Investment Grade combines both (traction weighted 75%, deck quality 25%). You need an A- (85+) to realistically pitch top-tier VCs. Funding Odds benchmarks you against companies that actually closed rounds recently. What 4,000 decks revealed: deck quality clusters at "fair." Not terrible, not fundable. Common failures are weak competitive differentiation (the "why can't a big player copy this" slide is always thin), vague market sizing (top-down TAM without bottoms-up logic), and team slides that bury the important credential. The gap between traction and deck quality is usually large. Good businesses with weak decks are common. Less common: beautiful decks with metrics that don't support them. The 75/25 weighting is intentional. A great deck does not rescue weak numbers. Funding odds are sobering. Series A founders right now compete with AI-native companies growing 300-500%+ at similar ARR. The tool tells you this before you burn three months pitching. "Not Ready" does not mean your company is bad. It means your deck does not yet make the case for institutional VC. The Priority Improvement section tells you what to fix. Team slide is thin. Competitive moat is not demonstrated. Financials are missing. Fix it. Upload again. This matters for sales teams at two points: when your startup is fundraising (these benchmarks determine whether your comp stays stable or gets restructured), and when you are evaluating offers (a company with weak fundraising odds might not make payroll in 18 months). The tool is free. No account required. SaaStr AI also offers VC matchmaking with 400+ investors for decks that score well. It draws from proprietary data on 5,000+ funding rounds and exits like Salesloft ($2.3B) and Pipedrive ($1.5B). For sales professionals evaluating startup offers: ask to see the deck. If they will not show you, that tells you something. If they show you and it scores below 70, factor that into your decision. Quota is hard enough when the company is well-funded.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

AI Budget Shift: CIOs Pull 9% for Price Hikes, Winners Get 61x ARR

## The Numbers That Matter Global IT spending hits $6.08 trillion in 2026, up 9.8%, per Gartner. Software grows 15.2%. AI spending alone: $2.52 trillion, up 44% year over year, according to Redpoint's 2026 Market Update. Here is the problem: CIOs are setting aside 9% of their total IT budget just to cover price increases on existing software. Overall budget growth runs at 1.8%. The math only works one way: money is being pulled from low-ROI tools and redirected toward AI winners. Private AI companies trade at 61x ARR. Public SaaS companies sit at 4x ARR. That is two completely different markets. The companies getting 61x are capturing AI budget in their categories and growing accordingly. The ones at 4x got left out. ## What This Means for Sales Teams ICONIQ's January 2026 survey of 150+ GTM executives shows what is working. Sales generates 62% of new logo pipeline at high-growth companies. Marketing generates 19%. The companies growing fastest are radically growing net new customer accounts, not relying on upsells and price increases. Median NRR for public B2B companies sits at 108-110%. Top quartile hits 123%+. If your NRR is below 100%, you have a retention problem that no amount of new logo activity fixes. Average initial contract lengths are declining across the board. Buyers want shorter commitments everywhere. The answer is not to fight it. The answer is to deliver enough value in the first 90 days that the renewal is never in question. ## The AI Agent Race Companies growing 100%+ year over year allocate 57% of R&D to AI, versus 38% for average-growth peers. That gap compounds every quarter. AI-native companies are reaching $100M ARR in 1 to 2 years. Historical benchmark: 5+ years. Top-quartile AI-native companies achieve 360% new logo velocity year over year versus 71% for non-AI peers. CIOs are actively evaluating which vendors to replace, by category, right now. The vendors getting replaced share a common characteristic: they do not have a credible AI story that delivers measurable ROI. The vendors winning replacement decisions have production deployments, not roadmaps. ## What This Means for Your Patch If you are selling for a company that is not growing, your territory is shrinking whether leadership admits it or not. Budget is being pulled toward AI winners. Contract lengths are compressing. Buyers are more willing to switch than they were 18 months ago. The good news: if your product has a credible AI agent in production, with measurable ROI, you are selling into the fastest-growing budget category in enterprise software. The bad news: if you are carrying a bag for a company that is stalling out, no amount of hustle changes the trajectory. Worth noting: Jason Lemkin co-founded EchoSign, scaled it past $100M ARR, and sold it to Adobe. He founded SaaStr, the largest B2B SaaS community globally. This is not theory. This is pattern recognition from someone who has seen what separates winners from everyone else.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Boldstart VC: AI agents killing old sales playbooks, bottleneck now distribution

Ed Sim has backed Clay, Snyk, and Front over 30 years in VC. Right now, he says this is the most terrifying moment he has seen in enterprise software. The thesis: engineering bottlenecks are collapsing. AI agents ship code faster than your roadmap. The new constraint is distribution. Specifically, how you reach customers before they know they need you. Sim runs Boldstart Ventures, a New York micro-VC writing first checks into developer-first SaaS. Recent fund: $250M doubling down on AI founders from day zero. Portfolio includes Snyk (valued at $7.4B) and Protect AI (acquired by Palo Alto for $700M+). His framework: the Five Ps (people, potential, product, process, price). But potential and TAM are moving targets now. Markets that did not exist 18 months ago are already crowded. The companies winning are inside the "AI jet stream," not chasing it. **What this means for GTM teams:** Old playbooks are dead. The Clay model (agencies, community, attribution before scale) is replacing traditional SDR-led growth. Clay went from $600K to $100M ARR staying lean. No massive SDR team. No enterprise AE army at Series A. Sim's board meetings all sound the same now: "How are you using AI agents?" If the answer is vague, the company is behind. AI-native leadership is survival. Predictive CS, dynamic segmentation, outcome-based engagement. If you are waiting for a ticket, you already failed your customer. **The autonomous enterprise thesis:** Companies will rebuild entire industries, not sell software to them. The question is not "what tool do we buy?" It is "what process disappears entirely?" Incumbents adapting: Intercom, Snowflake. They are embedding agents, not bolting them on. The ones that survive will look unrecognisable in 24 months. **Bottom line:** Distribution is the new moat. Engineering is commoditising. If your GTM motion still assumes humans do prospecting, you are playing the wrong game.

Sales Hacker
about 2 months ago
News

Anthropic signs Australian government AI deal, includes workforce usage data

Anthropic signed a memorandum of understanding with the Australian government that differs from previous AI partnerships in one key way: usage data transparency. The deal, closed during CEO Dario Amodei's Canberra visit, commits Anthropic to share Economic Index data with the government. That means actual metrics on how Claude is being used across the economy, broken down by task, sector, and occupation. Natural resources, agriculture, healthcare, and financial services are flagged as priority sectors. This structured usage tracking has not been a visible part of Australia's AI partnerships to date. OpenAI and Microsoft signed earlier deals. Neither included comparable data-sharing commitments in their public agreements. ## What the deal includes Beyond usage data, Anthropic will collaborate with Australia's AI Safety Institute on model evaluations and risk testing. The company committed $3 million for research support to Australian institutions. The MOU positions AI as a driver of economic growth and public services, part of Australia's National AI Plan. Anthropic agreed to uphold Australian laws and maintain social licence for its investments. Technical exchanges with the Safety Institute follow similar models in the US and UK. The goal: shared understanding of emerging capabilities and risks. ## Why usage data matters The Economic Index tracks AI adoption in practice. It classifies activity by task, sector, and occupation using large volumes of model interactions. For government: insight into job displacement, productivity shifts, and skills gaps. For Anthropic: data to shape product development and market positioning. Worth noting: this happens as Anthropic faces headwinds in the US. The company lost a $200 million Department of Defense contract. The US Treasury and federal housing agency terminated Claude usage following a Trump administration directive. Anthropic is challenging a Pentagon supply-chain risk designation in federal court. The Australian deal suggests Anthropic is prioritising international partnerships as US government relationships deteriorate. The usage data component could become a template for future government AI deals, assuming the government can actually use the data to inform policy. No word yet on Anthropic's ANZ headcount, local sales leadership, or enterprise sales plans beyond government contracts.

SmartCompany
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