The Wire

Real-time updates from ANZ tech sales

about 15 hours ago
News

SaaStr churns Notion after 7 years: AI agent replaced last use case

## The quiet churn SaaStr cancelled Notion last week after seven years. Zero support tickets filed. Zero feature requests. One team member spoke at their user conference. Notion did nothing wrong. Their AI agent, 10K, took over the last job Notion was doing: running Monday staff meetings. The agent already had revenue data, pipeline, campaign metrics. It became the source of truth. Notion's job disappeared to an internal tool, not a competitor. The actual trigger: Notion's re-engagement email asking why they had not logged in. The response was cancelling the account. ## What this means for sales teams Account health scores missed this entirely. Usage decay showed up after the replacement was running. No save motion would have worked because the alternative was not a product Notion could out-feature. It was custom-built, wired into their own data. The pattern inverts traditional churn signals. Quiet, happy, low-touch accounts are now the most exposed. Low touch usually means the product does one narrow job. One narrow job is exactly what an agent can replace. B2B account health models assume unhappy customers complain and quiet customers are fine. Agentic replacement breaks that assumption. The quietest accounts may be building replacements you will not see until usage drops to zero. ## The mirror problem SaaStr found the same blindness running the other direction. Their AI agent found two customers still paying $300 monthly for a product they shut down six years ago. Nobody complained. Nobody churned. They did not know they were still charging for it until the agent surfaced the billing data. That is the same failure: a working, quiet relationship nobody was monitoring. ## What gets missed Notion is an $11 billion company, around $500-600 million in annual revenue. Led by CRO Erica Anderson. Strong product-led motion, adding monetised AI features in 2026. They compete with Microsoft Loop, Coda, Confluence. None of that market position predicted this churn. The product worked. The price was fine. The customer was successful. The job just moved to something that was not on any competitive battlecard. For sales and CS teams: your dormant accounts might not be dormant. They might be quietly rebuilding what you do, and your usage dashboard will tell you after it is too late to matter.

SaaStr
about 15 hours ago
News

Canva valuation drops $11B to $43.5B, IPO timeline now unclear

Canva just wiped $11 billion from its own valuation, putting it at US$31B ($43.5B) in its annual employee share issue. That is down 20% from $38.9B a year ago. The markdown comes from an independent valuation required for US tax compliance before the company issues shares to its 5,000+ global workforce. Worth noting: employee share valuations typically price below investor marks, but the gap here tells a story. Investors are pricing it lower. Blackbird and Airtree, two of Canva's earliest backers, marked it at US$34.9B ($49B), down 17%. Secondary market broker Hiive is showing offers at US$30B, a 29% discount from the 2025 peak of US$42B ($65B). The context: Canva is still massive. Roughly $4B in ARR, 265M monthly active users, Fortune 500 penetration. But AI infrastructure costs are eating margin, and the SaaS valuation reset that hit the market in 2023-2024 is catching up. Blackbird partner Rick Baker says they remain bullish, citing a 90% reduction in AI serving costs and strong early user signals on the AI product. The company is founder-led: Melanie Perkins as CEO, Cliff Obrecht as COO. What this means for sales teams: if you are enterprise selling against Canva, their competitive position has not changed. They are still scaling hard into Fortune 500 accounts, still well-funded, still hiring globally. The valuation haircut is investor math, not a signal they are pulling back from market. For Canva employees: the lower valuation could mean higher tax bills under Australia's changing CGT rules if the company eventually lists at a higher number. The IPO timeline, previously floated for 2026, is now unclear. SaaS IPO windows remain tight, and a $30B-$43B range shows the market has not settled on a number yet. No confirmed CRO or VP Sales in public sources, but at 5,000+ headcount and $4B ARR, there is a sales org worth watching. Sydney HQ, global expansion, enterprise motion against Adobe and Microsoft. The valuation dropped, but the comp plan probably did not.

Startup Daily
1 day ago
News

Why mediocre reps hit 70% quota at one company, 0% at yours

## The 0% Quota Club Jason Lemkin, founder of SaaStr, has watched this pattern play out at hundreds of startups. An AE from a known brand joins an early-stage company. They have experience, they carried a bag at a scaled org, they looked solid on paper. They close nothing. Zero percent of quota. "In sales orgs with extreme product-market fit, tight processes, and substantial support, mediocre reps routinely hit 50% to 90% of quota," Lemkin wrote. "In sales orgs missing any one of those three, those same reps often hit 0% of quota." SaaStr's own data shows only 18% of early-stage teams have 70%+ of reps hitting quota. The majority sit at 20% to 40% attainment or worse. Inside those averages: reps who closed essentially nothing all year. ## Why Average Reps Look Good at Rocket Ships Consider what a rep at a company with real product-market fit actually does. Leads arrive qualified. The buyer knows the category and probably the brand. Competitive research happened before the first call. Pricing is standardised. There is a deck, a demo script, a mutual action plan, a security questionnaire already answered 400 times, and an SE who takes the technical call. The rep's job: keep the process moving, do not screw it up, ask for the order. A mediocre rep can do that at 70% of plan for years. Which is why AEs who look phenomenal on paper produce nothing at your startup. Now put that same person somewhere leads are inconsistent, pricing gets negotiated fresh every deal, the demo changes depending on who gives it, there is no SE, security review takes six weeks, and the product does not quite do what the prospect needs. That rep now has to invent the sales process, pricing strategy, technical story, and objection handling, deal by deal. That is founder work. VP of Sales work. Not something a 50th-percentile AE has done or will do. So they do nothing. Stay busy, run activity, keep a pipeline that never closes, end the year at zero. ## What This Means for Hiring Lemkin's point: mediocre reps are an output of the system, not an input. If your attainment is stuck at 30%, the problem is probably not the talent. It is product-market fit, process, or support. Before you hire that next AE from a unicorn, ask what system they were operating inside. Then ask if you have built that system yet. If you have not, the quota will not fix itself.

SaaStr
1 day ago
News

Canva drops to 20% growth as agents bypass pre-AI products

## The Number and What It Hides Canva revised 2026 growth down to 20% from 30%. Revenue still sits around US$4B annualised, and the company remains one of the largest private software businesses globally. The growth reset reflects AI inference costs and margin pressure, but the tactical problem is worse: customers are not switching to competitors, they are dropping out of the category entirely. Jason Lemkin's SaaStr team churned both Canva and Notion. Not because either product failed. Because their agents built an ad creative operation and never suggested using either tool. That is not a competitive loss you can win back. ## The Pre-AI Product Problem Canva was a no-code design tool. Airtable was a no-code database. Notion was a no-code knowledge base. The entire category solved for "what can I do without a specialist." AI does that natively now. If your product existed to help non-technical users skip engineering or design resources, that value prop is closing. On the enterprise side, Gartner data puts successful agentic deployments under 10% of companies. That gives B2B products a few quarters of cover, not a few years. The prosumer side has no lag at all because everyone is already ChatGPT-fluent. ## What It Means for Go-to-Market Canva's enterprise motion remains lean: roughly 49 quota-carrying reps supporting 265M monthly active users and 31M paying customers. That is product-led distribution working at scale. The company does not need a traditional enterprise sales model because self-serve drives most revenue. For sales teams at pre-AI products, run the agent test. Give an AI the job your product does, with no instruction to use your tool, and watch what it reaches for. If it bypasses you entirely, that is your 2026 problem. Canva is still one of Australia's most important software exports: Sydney-founded, globally scaled, $42B valuation in secondary markets. The growth reset is not an existential event. It is a signal that even category leaders have to rebuild product strategy when AI changes how buyers solve problems. ## Comp and Talent Implications The article flags a new S-tier comp band emerging: four or so people on seven-figure packages with equity 10x standard allocation, building next-generation AI product. At $100M to $200M ARR companies, that does not break the model. It does create visible compensation disparity, and it is still the right call if you are trying to build a skunkworks that prevents exactly the kind of displacement Canva is now navigating. Worth noting: your best people rarely leave over money. They leave when their work sits permanently third in line for resources and executive attention.

SaaStr
1 day ago
News

NZ tech worth $133b, but sales talent and returns flow offshore

## NZ tech worth $133b, but sales talent and returns flow offshore New Zealand's venture-backed tech sector is now worth NZ$133 billion in enterprise value, according to a new Dealroom report. That includes 8 unicorns and 2 decacorns: Rocket Lab and financial services platform FNZ. The sector contributed $23.8 billion to GDP in 2024, employed 119,520 people across 24,012 tech firms, and generated $11.4 billion in exports. Tech is New Zealand's third-largest export industry. The catch: enterprise value does not equal local economic benefit. Dealroom's definition includes companies founded in New Zealand but now headquartered overseas. The report counts more than ten billion-dollar businesses created by Kiwi founders but built offshore, spanning software, fintech, AI, and consumer tech. ### Where the sales jobs actually are Auckland is the centre of gravity. The city accounts for over half of sector GDP and employs more than 68,000 people. Most enterprise buying, hiring, and partner activity clusters there. Wellington and Christchurch pick up the rest, but the concentration is stark. The digital technologies segment, which includes most B2B SaaS and enterprise software, contributed $7 billion to GDP in 2021 and employed 43,750 people, per the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. Most of those roles are in Auckland. For sales professionals, that means the addressable market for tech sales jobs in New Zealand is real but limited. Remote roles with offshore companies are increasingly common, but local enterprise selling opportunities are concentrated in a few hubs. ### Comp and retention pressure The talent issue istwofold. First, offshore acquirers and US-based companies poach sales leadership. Second, when New Zealand companies scale beyond the domestic market, they often relocate sales teams closer to customer concentrations in Australia, the US, or Europe. Comp data is sparse, but anecdotal evidence suggests enterprise AE OTEs in Auckland lag Melbourne by 15-20%, and Sydney by more. That gap widens at VP and CRO level, where equity participation in offshore-owned companies often outweighs local opportunities. The sector is valuable. The question is whether New Zealand can keep the sales teams, customer relationships, and go-to-market ownership at home as those companies scale.

Startup Daily
1 day ago
News

Sophiie AI raises A$5M seed, hiring for US expansion

## Sophiie AI raises A$5M seed, hiring for US expansion Gold Coast-based Sophiie AI closed A$5 million seed funding at a A$30 million valuation. The round was backed by Archangel Ventures, Admiralty Capital Group, Antler, Gandel Invest, and Aussie Angels. The company is hiring for US expansion launching later this year, plus product development roles. Team size sits around 13 employees currently, up from bootstrapped operations through 2024. ### What they sell Sophiie started as an AI virtual receptionist for tradies, handling inbound calls, lead qualification, and booking. The product has evolved into what the company calls an "AI operating system" for trades and service businesses, covering the full workflow from enquiry to payment. Target customer: trades and service businesses losing revenue to missed calls and admin overhead. The company claims 500,000+ calls handled and 12+ hours weekly admin time saved per user. ### Why this matters for sales teams Sophiie sits in the AI sales agent and receptionist category, competing with broader AI assistant and SMB workflow tools. The company reports 10-15% monthly growth and has customers across Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. For sales professionals watching the AI sales tool space: this is another AI-native vertical SaaS company raising seed capital to prove product-market fit can scale internationally. The A$30M valuation on A$5M seed suggests investors see traction in a high-volume, phone-dependent SMB segment. CEO Jake Banks previously built an online marketplace with 35,000+ trades businesses. Co-founder Luke Kelleher runs onboarding, support, and trade partnerships. Juan Castro is CTO. ### Market context Sophiie competes in a crowded AI receptionist and sales assistant market. Related categories seeing funding activity: AI tools for sales prospecting, AI sales lead generation, and AI-native sales software. Y Combinator has backed multiple AI sales agent startups in recent cohorts. For ANZ sales teams evaluating AI tools: Sophiie is focused on trades, not B2B tech sales. If you are selling into trades or service businesses, this is a potential channel or competitor to track. The US expansion and hiring push will test whether the product translates outside ANZ market dynamics. Most AI sales agent startups struggle with localisation and accent handling, especially in trade-heavy verticals where phone quality and terminology matter.

Startup Daily
3 days ago
News

Gamma hit $100M ARR with no sales team, then hired one anyway

## The Numbers Gamma reached $100M ARR with 50 employees. No sales team. $2M ARR per head. 600,000 paying subscribers at roughly $167 annual contract value. 50 million total users. Those metrics work because the product sold itself. AI-powered presentations that went viral on launch, scaled through word of mouth, and converted through self-serve. Classic product-led growth. CEO Grant Lee spoke at SaaStr AI and said the no-sales approach worked. Then he said it was a mistake. ## What Actually Happened Gamma's first launch won Product Hunt product of the day, week, and month. Signups spiked, then flatlined. No organic growth. No word of mouth. They gave themselves three months to rebuild onboarding around one goal: make the first 30 seconds remarkable enough that users tell their friends. The relaunch went viral. 5,000 signups a day became 50,000. Zero marketing spend. Zero sales. Then they made three reactive decisions that Lee now flags as mistakes: **1. They shipped paid plans with no way to pay.** Chat filled with users asking how to buy credits. They spent two weeks reverse-engineering pricing mid-surge, while demand sat waiting. **2. They only hired sales when inbound got embarrassing.** People were writing in asking to buy for whole teams or departments. Nobody could answer. Sales became cleanup work, not growth strategy. **3. They haven't touched the self-serve base.** 600,000 paying subscribers. If 2% sit inside companies that would buy 50 seats, that is a bigger business than the one they built, sitting in their own database. Untouched. Gamma is profitable, growing, and valued at $2.1B after a $68M Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz in November 2025. This is not a failure story. It is about what self-serve growth costs when you let the market decide everything. ## What It Means for ANZ Teams Product-led works until it doesn't. Gamma proved you can hit $100M ARR with no reps. They also proved that waiting to hire sales until you feel like you are dropping deals is leaving money you already earned on the table. The tell: when your inbound starts asking for multi-seat deals and you have nobody to answer, you are past the point where you should have hired. Lee's advice now: word of mouth is the only channel that amplifies every other channel. Until you have it, do not spend on marketing. But once you have it, do not wait for the market to force you into the next motion. Gamma competes in AI presentation tools, not traditional enterprise software. No public ANZ presence. Worth watching for what it says about when product-led companies finally build sales: usually later than they should have.

SaaStr
4 days ago
News

Databricks hits $7B ARR growing 80%: 30-point acceleration at scale

Databricks hit $7 billion revenue run-rate in Q2 2026, growing more than 80% year over year. CEO Ali Ghodsi announced the milestone alongside a $5 billion strategic round at a $190 billion valuation, led by Coatue with Blackstone, MGX, T. Rowe Price, and Sixth Street. The growth number is the story. Databricks posted 50% growth at $4 billion run-rate in mid-2025. Four quarters later, it is running at 80%. Companies at this scale do not reaccelerate 30 points. They slow down. Worth noting: this quarter held at 80% rather than climbing further, so the acceleration arc has flattened. Growing 80% at $7 billion still outpaces everything in enterprise software. It is just not accelerating anymore. The sequential add also slowed. Databricks put on roughly $1.5 billion of run-rate between January and April 2026. The move from $6.9 billion in June to ">$7 billion" in Q2 is a smaller jump, suggesting the pace is normalising even as the year-over-year comp stays strong. Product revenue is concentrating in AI infrastructure. Lakehouse (their data platform) is running at $1.5 billion ARR, growing over 100% year over year. Lakebase (their database product) crossed $100 million run-rate. The company says it remained positive on adjusted free cash flow over the last 12 months. Databricks now competes directly with Snowflake in data platforms. The growth gap is material: Databricks at 80% versus Snowflake in the 30s. The company previously disclosed 500+ customers spending more than $1 million annually when it was at $3.7 billion run-rate. That number is likely higher now, implying a large enterprise-selling motion. For ANZ sales context: Databricks maintains global enterprise coverage, including APAC presence. The company has not publicly disclosed current sales headcount or regional hiring plans in this announcement. Sales teams at companies growing this fast typically scale aggressively. When a vendor goes from $4 billion to $7 billion in four quarters, the sales org is expanding to support that pipeline. The valuation moved from $134 billion in February 2026 to $190 billion now. That is a 42% jump in six months on the back of sustained revenue acceleration and positive cash flow. Reuters coverage noted margin pressure from AI agent deployments. Customers are running more agents, which drives infrastructure and usage costs even as revenue climbs. That is a comp consideration for sales teams: consumption-based models can create volatility in customer spend and commission timing.

SaaStr
4 days ago
News

Klaviyo CEO mandated entire 2,300-person company hit AI L3 by June

Klaviyo co-founder and co-CEO Andrew Bialecki set a hard deadline in early 2026: every employee had to reach "L3" AI proficiency by end of June, or they would not survive the next era at the company. The framework borrows from self-driving car autonomy levels. L1 is using AI to search. L2 is spinning up a session and running an agent. L3 is constantly running multiple sessions or teams of agents, decomposing problems into pieces, and validating output. That mandate applied to all 2,300 people: product managers who used to write wireframes, designers, sales reps, marketers. Everyone commits code now, from Bialecki down to summer interns. The push comes as Klaviyo rebuilds its $1.5B business around AI agents. The company did $370.6M in Q2 2026, up 26% year over year, with full-year guidance raised to $1.53B. Its marketing agent, Composer, hit 95,000 users in its first month, with 25% coming back weekly. Klaviyo built Composer using its internal "Dark Factory" system, which takes a prompt, acts as PM, writes specs, decomposes the problem into engineering subsystems, and runs subagents against each piece. The first working prototype was built over a weekend by other agents. Bialecki's argument to the team was not about Klaviyo. It was about them: very few people will reach L3 in the next year or two, and if you can put a team of agents to work and validate the output, you will be enormously successful whether you stay or not. ## What This Means for Sales Teams Klaviyo is treating agents as power users who sit to the right of their best human users. Onboarding matters less. What matters is what the agent asks you to build next. The company is also building a path to sign up, configure, and pay without ever touching the UI. Anything a human used to log into is now infrastructure, which means it needs APIs. For sales professionals evaluating AI SDR tools like Artisan, 11x AI, or Ample, the Klaviyo playbook shows what enterprise adoption looks like when a public company bets the roadmap on agents. The question is not whether your tool has AI. It is whether your team can operate at L3.

SaaStr
4 days ago
News

Bailador posts 2.8% return, PropHero up 69% while SaaS portfolio softens

## The Numbers Bailador Technology Investments (ASX: BTI) posted a 2.8% post-tax portfolio return for FY26, down from 7.8% the year prior. Net profit after tax fell to $6.9m from $19.3m. Post-tax NTA slipped three cents to $1.61 per share. Shareholders get a fully franked final dividend of 3.5 cents per share, in line with FY25's 3.6c. Annualised grossed-up yield sits at 9.5%. ## What Moved PropHero carried the portfolio. Bailador's $12.5m stake in the property investment platform jumped $8.7m (69%). The company led PropHero's Series A in February 2025 and chair David Kirk sits on the board. Telehealth startup Updoc added $8.3m (22%). Digital health company Mosh rose $5m (50%). The pain: fintech DASH, last year's standout with a 59% gain, dropped $9m (20%). Bailador's small stake in Finnish ecommerce platform Nosto also fell. ## Portfolio Reality Combined revenue across Bailador's portfolio companies hit $735m, up 32%. Recurring revenue accounts for 82% of that, with 63% gross margins. These are established-revenue software businesses, not startups. Bailador itself ran leaner: total costs down from $12.58m to $8.86m. ## What It Means Bailador backs expansion-stage ANZ tech companies that have already proven their models. Typical cheque size: $5m to $20m. The fund takes minority stakes with board representation. This positioning means portfolio concentration matters. PropHero's 69% uplift offset weakness across SaaS holdings. When you are a listed fund with a small number of bets, mark-ups and mark-downs swing performance hard. The SaaSpocalypse narrative (AI jitters hitting software valuations) is showing up in the numbers. Revenue growth is there. Margins are strong. But the marks reflect a tougher funding environment for B2B software. For sales professionals tracking the ANZ tech ecosystem: Bailador's portfolio includes SiteMinder, Updoc, DASH, Rosterfy, and PropHero. These are the companies hiring AEs, SDRs, and CSMs in Australia and New Zealand. When their valuations soften, hiring slows. When they mark up like PropHero, the roles open. Worth noting: Bailador competes with other growth-stage investors for ANZ tech exposure, but its niche is narrow. Established revenue, proven models, local market. Not venture-stage, not pre-revenue. The dividend held. The portfolio grew revenue. But the marks tell the real story: software is repricing, and even strong operators are not immune.

Startup Daily
5 days ago
News

Physical goods software outpacing SaaS: Shopify +34%, Toast +23%, Samsara +30%

# Physical goods software outpacing SaaS: Shopify +34%, Toast +23%, Samsara +30% While AI pressures most public software companies, platforms serving physical commerce are growing 2-3x the median B2B vendor rate. The median public B2B company is up 13%. Salesforce recently reported 13% growth, with 4 points from acquisition. Its full-year guide is 11%. **Shopify** reported Q2 2026 revenue of $3.58B, up 34%. GMV hit $115.6B, up 32%, the fifth consecutive quarter above 30%. B2B GMV grew 76% year over year as the company rolled out native B2B features to more merchants. Operating income was $488M vs $291M a year ago. Free cash flow came in at $654M (18% margin, up from 16%). Stock jumped nearly 20% on the print. **Toast** added a record 9,500 net new restaurant locations in a single quarter. Revenue was $1.91B, up 23%. ARR hit $2.4B, up 25%. Recurring gross profit streams grew 28%, faster than revenue. The company raised full-year recurring gross profit guidance to 23-25% from 21-23%. **Samsara**, selling into connected transportation and logistics, reported ARR of $1.99B, up 30%. Revenue grew 31%. Net new ARR of $101M, itself up 30%. ARR from $1M+ customers jumped 62%, accelerating for the fourth straight quarter. The company posted its third consecutive quarter of GAAP profitability. ## Why it matters for sales teams These companies do not primarily price on seats. Shopify charges on GMV and transactions. Toast takes a cut of payment volume. Samsara prices per connected asset. When customers optimise headcount, these vendors do not take the same hit as seat-based CRM or productivity tools. The second factor: their customers' end products are not being eaten by AI. Restaurants still need point-of-sale systems. Truck fleets still need IoT monitoring. Wholesale merchants still need commerce infrastructure. The efficiency gains from AI have not (yet) collapsed demand in these segments the way they have for knowledge work software. For ANZ context, Shopify has meaningful merchant presence across Australia and New Zealand, particularly in retail and wholesale. Public disclosures on ANZ-specific sales headcount are limited, but the company's B2B push suggests enterprise and mid-market expansion could create more field roles. Toast and Samsara have smaller ANZ footprints but similar dynamics apply: if you are selling software that gets paid when physical goods move or physical assets operate, you are in a better position than if you are selling seats into functions AI is currently automating. Worth noting: Shopify's B2B motion appears more product-led than classic named-account field sales, which helps explain why it is outperforming in a period when many vendors are cutting sales headcount. If your comp is tied to transaction volume rather than seat expansion, the current market is treating you differently.

SaaStr
5 days ago
News

The ACV threshold for dedicated account managers: $8K to $10K

# The ACV threshold for dedicated account managers: $8K to $10K Jason Lemkin, who scaled EchoSign to acquisition by Adobe and later grew Adobe Document Services past $100M ARR, has posted his framework for when B2B SaaS companies should hire account managers. ## The thresholds **Below $8K to $10K ACV:** You cannot afford dedicated account managers. The unit economics do not work when humans spend 30 days embedded per customer. Systematise onboarding and support instead: self-serve plus a lean support team. Exception: if your CAC is near zero (pure PLG), you can afford more human touch at lower ACV. **$10K+ ACV:** Dedicated account management starts to make sense, often from a pooled team. The LTV justifies upfront investment in customer success. **$50K+ ACV:** They deserve a dedicated person. Someone they know by name, email, WhatsApp, and phone. **At $2M to $3M ARR:** Hire your first VP of Customer Success if churn or renewals are a problem, or if you are targeting larger customers. From there, scale a full CS team: onboarding specialists, CSMs, support, and for higher ACVs, forward deployed engineers. ## Why ACV alone is not enough Lemkin's critical point: it is not just about ACV. It is about deployment complexity and expansion potential. A $20K customer going all-in on AI agents with heavy integration needs might justify a forward deployed engineer more than a $100K customer running a cautious pilot with three users. Vertical B2B companies like Toast run a $10K ACV motion without traditional account managers, using support and onboarding teams instead. But they are exceptions. Most companies at $10K+ ACV see CS payoff quickly through improved retention and expansion. ## What this means for sales teams If you are an AE at a company with $8K average deal size, do not expect a dedicated CS team to own onboarding. That is on you, or it is systematised. If you are selling $50K+ deals, you should have a named CSM to hand off to. If you do not, ask why. That is a retention risk. If you are building a CS org, Lemkin's framework gives you cover to push back on "we need account managers for every deal" before the unit economics support it. ## About the source Lemkin is CEO of SaaStr and co-founder of EchoSign. His thresholds come from operating experience scaling both SMB and enterprise SaaS, not generic consulting frameworks. EchoSign hit $50M ARR in 2012 and $100M+ ARR in 2013 under his oversight at Adobe. The $8K to $10K threshold is an operator's heuristic, not a formal benchmark. But it aligns with his broader emphasis on scaling playbooks from high-volume SaaS rather than bespoke services.

SaaStr
5 days ago
News

Farmbot raises $22M Series B, US expansion means agtech sales hiring

## Farmbot raises $22M Series B, US expansion means agtech sales hiring Sydney-born agtech Farmbot closed a $22 million (US$15M) Series B led by Lewis & Clark Partners. The round included Fulcrum Global Capital, Builders VC, Level VC, MLA's Cultiv8 fund, and repeat investor Macdoch Ventures. The company builds satellite-connected sensors that let livestock farmers monitor tanks, troughs, dams, and pumps remotely. Current customer base: 12,000+ farms across Australia and North America, managing roughly 10 million cattle and 15 million sheep. ### What this means for agtech sales teams Farmbot is executing a corporate flip to make Ranchbot Technology Holdings Inc., a Delaware corporation, the new global parent. The company now runs dual brands: Farmbot in Australia, Ranchbot in the US, with headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas. That structure shift plus Series B capital typically signals go-to-market expansion. The company launched via Muru-D accelerator in 2014, raised $2.7M in 2021, $5M Series A+ in 2022, and a $4.6M round in June 2024 before this larger close. Telstra and Macdoch Ventures have backed multiple rounds. ### Agtech sales context The agricultural technology sales segment remains undersupplied with experienced reps who understand both enterprise SaaS motion and farm operations. Farmbot competes in remote infrastructure monitoring, a category where the sales cycle involves convincing producers to replace manual water checks with sensor-based systems. Founders Andrew Coppin and Craig Hendricks have built revenue-stage operations, though public data shows no named CRO or VP Sales. The pitch is operational efficiency: fewer truck rolls to check water levels, consolidated platform instead of multiple farm management apps. Chuck Warta from Lewis & Clark noted water infrastructure management "remains highly manual across much of the industry." That manual process is the wedge for agtech sales reps: quantifiable time savings, reduced fuel costs, early problem detection. For sales professionals tracking agtech hiring: Series B at this scale, dual-market operations, and US investor participation usually precedes AE and SDR buildout in both geographies. The agricultural sales compensation benchmarks in ANZ typically run below general SaaS rates, though enterprise agtech roles with large territory coverage can command competitive packages. No comp details disclosed. Farmbot/Ranchbot hiring pipeline not yet public.

Startup Daily
5 days ago
News

Sterling raises NZ$3.8m, hiring for ANZ and US expansion

## Sterling raises NZ$3.8m, hiring for ANZ and US expansion New Zealand AI finance automation startup Sterling raised NZ$3.8 million (A$3.15 million) in a round led by Blackbird, with participation from angels tied to Trade Me, Pushpay, Xero, and Vend. Founded in 2025 by Nik Wakelin and Ludwig Wendzich, Sterling builds AI workflow automation for finance teams: invoice processing, bank reconciliation, month-end close. The pitch is execution, not co-pilot chat. Wakelin calls it an "autopilot" that works when your laptop is closed. The company says the funding will support hiring and a push into larger enterprise customers across New Zealand, Australia, and the United States. No specific headcount numbers, role breakdowns, or comp ranges were disclosed. ### What this means for sales teams Sterling is entering a crowded finance automation category. Differentiation will likely come down to depth of integration, enterprise implementation speed, and how well it compares against entrenched tools in the CFO stack. Early customers include Manukora, Storypark, and Echelon. Expansion funding usually means go-to-market buildout: AEs, SDRs, customer success, implementation. The US push suggests enterprise sales motion rather than product-led growth. Worth watching for role postings in Sydney, Melbourne, and Auckland over the next quarter. The investor mix (Blackbird plus Kiwi SaaS veterans) signals local product-market fit, but US enterprise is a different game. Sterling will need to prove it can close outside ANZ, which means experienced enterprise sellers who know how to land finance buyers in competitive categories. Wendzich and Wakelin have engineering and product backgrounds (Vend, Lightspeed, Deliveroo, MinuteDock). No named CRO or VP Sales yet, which is typical at this stage but will need to change as they scale into enterprise. ### The broader finance automation market Finance automation and AI ops tools are raising heavily in 2024. The category is hot, which means competitive hiring for sales talent who understand how to sell workflow automation into finance and accounting buyers. Expect more funding announcements and corresponding headcount growth across fintech and vertical SaaS in ANZ over the next six months.

Startup Daily
5 days ago
News

Nick Scali manually processes orders after cyber breach forced systems offline

## What happened Nick Scali, the ASX-listed furniture retailer, took core systems offline after a cyber breach hit mid-last week. The company is now manually processing orders and coordinating deliveries for sofas, beds, and other big-ticket furniture items. Response times are slower. Order tracking is degraded. The company disclosed the incident to the ASX on Thursday and says it is working with the Australian Federal Police and Australian Cyber Security Centre. No evidence yet of unauthorised customer data access, though *The Australian* reports residential addresses may have been compromised. ## Why it matters for sales operations This is what happens when your order capture, CRM, and delivery coordination all go offline at once. Nick Scali is a $1.43 billion national retailer, not a startup: they have stores, inventory, delivery schedules, and customer service commitments that do not pause when the systems do. Manual order processing works, but not at scale. Every AE who has ever had to fall back to spreadsheets during a Salesforce outage knows the drill: slower quote turnaround, no real-time inventory visibility, delayed delivery confirmation, and customer service running blind on order status. For a furniture retailer where lead times are already long and customers expect accurate delivery windows, this is a material drag on conversion and retention. The incident reportedly involved offshore cyber criminals demanding ransom, which means the decision tree is: pay, negotiate, or restore from backup while operating degraded. ## The broader context This hit at a bad time. CEO Anthony Scali recently warned that foot traffic in Australian stores has slumped as buyers delay big-ticket purchases. Discretionary furniture demand is soft, and now the company is running slower operationally while trying to close sales and fulfill orders. The company is restoring systems now, but the playbook here is worth noting: take affected systems offline immediately, shift to manual processes where possible, loop in federal agencies, and communicate transparently with the market. No confirmation yet on how long full restoration will take or whether any ransom payment is in play. For sales leaders: this is your reminder that business continuity planning is not IT's problem alone. When the CRM goes dark, do your AEs know how to capture orders, check inventory, and coordinate fulfillment without it? Manual processes are the floor, not the ceiling.

SmartCompany
6 days ago
News

Why your next CRO hire will probably fail: the AI-era red flags

# Why your next CRO hire will probably fail: the AI-era red flags Jason Lemkin is sounding the alarm again on what he calls "Mediocre Recycled" executives, and this time the problem is accelerating, not fading. The pattern: hot B2B AI startups scale fast, need experienced commercial leaders quickly, and keep hiring from the same small pool of executives who have the right logos on LinkedIn and interview well. But they never actually built the thing. They just worked somewhere it happened. The original red flags still apply. No CEO reference. Too many short VP stints (under a year). No strong operators willing to follow them. Joining from a direct competitor at the same growth stage. Zero homework during interviews. ## The AI-era tells Lemkin now adds three new disqualifiers: **They cannot actually use AI.** Not "do you believe in AI" answers. What tools do they use daily? What workflows have they automated? What have they shipped with AI? A CRO who has never used an AI SDR tool will run your revenue org like it is 2021. **They talk AI in abstractions, never specifics.** "We need to be AI-first" is a platitude anyone can recycle from LinkedIn. Push them: what specific AI tool changed how they worked last quarter? What broke? If every answer is vague, they added "AI" to their vocabulary, not their skillset. **They want to hire big teams before doing anything.** The best AI-era operators are doing more with less, using agents to handle what used to require 3 to 5 headcount. The Mediocre Recycled still want 20 people in 90 days because that is the only way they know how to operate. ## What actually works Lemkin's fix: have the best operator you know in that function interview your candidate. The best CRO you know should interview your VP Sales candidate. Get CEO-level references. Ask who they would bring with them, then verify those claims directly. Network portability matters in high-growth B2B environments. The pace at AI-native companies is 3 to 5 times faster than traditional SaaS. The product changes weekly. Executives who cannot use the tools, cannot demo the product, and run 2019 playbooks do not just underperform. They actively slow you down, hire the wrong people (also Mediocre Recycled), burn 6 to 9 months, then leverage that "VP at hot AI startup" line into another VP role somewhere else. Strong operators get fired. That is not the flag. The flag is someone who never gets anything done anywhere, despite lots of seemingly impressive roles. For ANZ markets where senior GTM talent pools are smaller and leadership teams often include regionally mobile operators, this recycling loop matters even more. Fewer options makes pattern-matching on LinkedIn logos more tempting. The stakes are higher.

SaaStr
6 days ago
News

Australian delivery workers get $34/hour minimum from August 17

## The Numbers From August 17, Australian food delivery workers on Uber Eats and DoorDash get a minimum rate of $33.67/hour plus superannuation. That is Australia's first gig-economy pay floor, covering roughly 250,000 workers. The Fair Work Commission ruling comes after two years of negotiations between the Transport Workers' Union and the platforms. It sets the benchmark for separate proceedings covering rideshare and parcel delivery. ## The Context This mirrors regulatory shifts in other markets. New York City implemented restaurant delivery minimums starting at $17.96/hour in 2023, reaching $21.44/hour by April 2025 and $22.13/hour in April 2026 after inflation adjustments. NYC later extended those rules to grocery delivery, hitting Instacart and Shipt. The pattern is going global. Australia is now the second major market to set delivery platform wage floors, suggesting this is the new regulatory baseline rather than an outlier. ## What It Means for Sales Delivery platforms do not run traditional quota-carrying sales teams. Their go-to-market is merchant acquisition and account management: signing restaurants and retailers onto the marketplace. Minimum pay rules change the unit economics of those partnerships. Higher labour costs mean platforms either absorb margin, pass costs to merchants, or charge consumers more. All three options affect merchant acquisition velocity and retention. DoorDash and Uber Eats initially pushed back on these rules. The platforms settled because fighting city-by-city or country-by-country is not scalable. Worth noting: neither company has disclosed how minimum pay rules in NYC affected merchant count or order volume. ## The Broader Play This is a marketplace supply problem dressed up as labour policy. Platforms need workers to deliver orders. Workers now have a price floor. That floor affects how many merchants the platform can profitably serve and at what fee structure. For context, DoorDash dominates the US market, Uber is the most diversified globally, and Grubhub trails both in scale. None have published ANZ headcount or local executive details, but Australia's 250,000-worker figure suggests meaningful operating scale in the region. Rideshare and parcel delivery rulings are next. If those follow the food delivery model, platform economics shift again.

SmartCompany
6 days ago
News

Pest2Kill closes second Sydney acquisition in 12 months, expands to 34 staff

## Pest2Kill closes second Sydney acquisition in 12 months, expands to 34 staff Sydney pest control operator Pest2Kill acquired South Sydney Pest Control on 3 August, marking its second acquisition in nine months. The company bought Impact Pest Control in November 2025. South Sydney Pest Control will continue operating under its existing brand. All administrative and field staff joined Pest2Kill's team, bringing headcount to 34. Pest2Kill was founded in 2015 by Phil Taylor and Julian Bracewell. The company is tracking $6 million revenue for FY26 and services more than 22,000 residential and commercial clients across Greater Sydney. The business ranked 34th in the 2025 Smart50 Awards and was a finalist in Marketing, Community Hero and People Power categories. ### Market context: consolidation in a fragmented sector Australia's pest control market is highly fragmented, with roughly 2,320 operators as of January 2025. Most are small, owner-operated businesses. Large players like Rentokil Terminix and Flick Anticimex have built scale through repeated acquisitions. Rentokil became a global pest control leader after acquiring Terminix in 2022. Anticimex strengthened its ANZ footprint by acquiring parts of ISS Pest Control. Pest2Kill's strategy mirrors this playbook: acquire established local operators, integrate their customer base and field teams, retain the brand, and build route density across Greater Sydney. ### What this means for sales teams Pest2Kill operates in services, not SaaS, but the acquisition pattern is instructive for anyone selling into consolidating markets: - **Bolt-on acquisitions** typically mean admin consolidation but field team retention. South Sydney's staff joined Pest2Kill, suggesting continuity for existing customer relationships. - **Revenue scale matters.** At $6 million run rate with 22,000 clients, Pest2Kill's average customer value sits around $270 annually. That is recurring revenue with route density economics. - **Fragmentation creates M&A opportunity.** When you have 2,300 competitors, the winning strategy is often buy-and-build, not organic growth alone. No comp details or hiring announcements were disclosed. Revenue and headcount figures are based on company statements as of August 2026.

SmartCompany
7 days ago
News

Fabulate raises $4.5m, hiring across 10 APAC markets

## Fabulate raises $4.5m, hiring across 10 APAC markets Sydney-based influencer marketing platform Fabulate closed a $4.5 million round at an $84.5 million post-money valuation. The round was oversubscribed, with roughly 90% coming from existing shareholders including Centerstone Capital and Nightingale Partners. The company is profitable. That matters because most marketing tech burns cash to scale. Fabulate operates across 10 APAC markets: Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, and Japan. The company has over 100 employees and is adding commercial coverage regionally. ### What this means for sales teams Recent hires signal expansion. Jon Kee joined as Commercial Director for Southeast Asia, Japan, and South Korea. Gabrielle Lawton leads New Zealand. That structure suggests territory-based ownership rather than a centralised sales org. No public CRO or VP Sales listed, which is typical for product-led companies at this stage. The commercial team likely reports directly to CEO Toby Kennett, who co-founded the company in 2017 with Nathan Powell. Fabulate sells to brands and agencies running creator campaigns. Its SparQ AI product handles discovery, campaign management, and measurement. The platform competes in crowded influencer marketing tech, where workflow automation and multi-market execution drive differentiation. ### Market context This is a follow-on round. PitchBook shows Fabulate raised $2.88 million in October 2023 from the same investors. Two years, 10 markets, profitable: that pace matters for B2B sales professionals tracking APAC expansion plays. The company won Best Influencer Marketing Technology Service at the AiMCO Awards, which signals local market recognition in Australia's creator marketing ecosystem. ### Worth noting Influencer marketing platforms sit adjacent to traditional sales prospecting tools like Outreach and Salesloft, but serve a different buyer. Where Outreach targets SDRs and AEs for B2B prospecting, Fabulate targets marketing teams managing creator relationships at scale. The overlap: both are selling workflow automation to teams that live in spreadsheets without it. For sales professionals considering roles in marketing tech, Fabulate's regional expansion and profitability make it worth tracking. Commercial Director roles in APAC growth markets typically carry strong comp and territory ownership.

Startup Daily
7 days ago
News

Sydney defence startup Millibeam ships drone jammer, $4.6m in grants

**Sydney semiconductor startup Millibeam shipped a prototype handheld drone jammer after securing $4.6 million in federal grants and $3 million from Breakthrough Victoria.** The device, called Rakurai, targets multiple drone frequencies simultaneously using custom-designed mmWave chips and antennas. Worth noting: it is a prototype, not battlefield-ready kit. Millibeam is a fabless semiconductor company founded around 2020-2021, focused on mmWave chipsets for 5G/6G, SATCOM, sensing and defence. The Rakurai jammer is built on the same underlying RF silicon work. CEO and founder Venkata Gutta positioned it as sovereign Australian capability, designed and manufactured locally. Funding to date: roughly $7.6m in grants (federal plus state) and a $4.65m Series A in July 2024, plus an earlier $750k seed from Main Sequence, CSIRO's venture arm. PitchBook says total raised is around $5.2m USD, though grant figures push that higher. No public revenue data. The company emphasises engineering and product capabilities over commercial sales team size, and I could not find a listed CRO or VP Sales. **For sales professionals tracking defence opportunities:** Millibeam sits in the dual-use deeptech category, competing in mmWave silicon and counter-UAS/electronic warfare. The ADF is interested. This is not a traditional B2B SaaS sales motion, it is government contracts and defence procurement, where cycles are long, relationships matter, and sovereign capability is a wedge. Defence sales roles in this space typically skew toward business development with government agencies rather than quota-carrying AE work. Comp data for defence BD roles is scarce, but federal contractor sales positions generally sit at $100k-$140k base with performance incentives tied to contract wins, not recurring revenue. Entry-level defence BD roles start around $70k-$90k base. Millibeam's vertical integration story, chip to fielded system, is the competitive angle. If you are tracking DoD funding opportunities or defence AI startups in ANZ, this one is on the radar. Prototype stage means hiring is likely engineering-heavy for now, not sales expansion.

Startup Daily
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