Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
Canva's internal valuation fell 20% to US$31B ($43.5B AUD) in its latest employee share grant, down from $38.9B a year ago. That is $11B wiped off the books. The drop comes as the company navigates AI cost pressures and volatile late-stage private markets, with IPO plans now looking less certain than they did 12 months ago.
Jason Lemkin's team cancelled Notion after seven years. No complaints, no support tickets, no competitor win. Their AI agent absorbed the product's last use case: running staff meetings. Usage went to zero before customer success could intervene.
Gold Coast AI receptionist startup Sophiie AI closed $5 million seed at $30 million valuation. Archangel Ventures, Admiralty Capital Group, Antler, Gandel Invest and Aussie Angels backed the round. Company is hiring for US market entry and product expansion.
Sydney travel-tech startup Visaible.ai closed $1 million seed (Blacksheep Capital) to help hotels track and fix how they appear in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI search tools. Founder Sam Rich is running sales solo with a team under 10 people. The play: protect hotel direct bookings as travelers shift from Google to AI assistants.
Jason Lemkin breaks down the three-part system that separates sales orgs where average reps hit quota from those where they close nothing. Product-market fit, tight process, and sales support are not optional. Missing any one and your hires from high-performing companies will fail.
Sydney's $42B design unicorn cut its 2026 growth forecast from 30% to 20%. The real story: customers are churning without switching to a competitor. AI agents are building creative workflows that never consider Canva at all. Worth noting for anyone selling product-led SaaS in the AI era.
New Zealand's venture-backed tech sector hit NZ$133 billion enterprise value across 400+ companies, including eight unicorns. The problem: founders relocate, investors are offshore, and the local market struggles to retain the economic upside it creates. For sales professionals, that means fewer local enterprise roles and comp that lags trans-Tasman benchmarks.
Gamma scaled to $100M ARR, 600,000 paying subscribers, and 50 million users without a sales team. Product-led growth worked. Then CEO Grant Lee got on stage and said the reactive approach cost them. Here is what happened when virality replaced go-to-market strategy.
The Sydney-founded design platform slashed its revenue growth target by a third as AI feature costs blew out. The company pulled back on some AI launches when unit economics did not work at scale. Worth noting: Canva has since cut those costs by 90%, but the growth hit matters more than the margin fix.
Databricks crossed $7 billion run-rate in Q2, growing 80% year-over-year. That is a 30-point acceleration from 50% growth four quarters ago. Companies at this scale are supposed to slow down. Databricks went the other way.
Klaviyo's 2,400-person team, including sales and marketing, had to reach L3 AI proficiency by end of June. That means running multiple agent sessions simultaneously, not just searching with ChatGPT. The company is betting its $1.5B run rate on agents building agents, including Composer, which hit 95,000 users in month one.
ASX-listed VC Bailador Technology Investments delivered 2.8% post-tax portfolio return for FY26, down from 7.8% prior year. Portfolio revenue grew 32% to $735m across expansion-stage SaaS and tech companies. Property investment platform PropHero led portfolio gains with 69% uplift.