Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
Australian fintech Thriday warned customers Tuesday that a phishing email sent from its official address contains a fraudulent link requesting banking credentials. The timing matters: it hit during tax season, when small business owners are most vulnerable to credential harvesting attempts.
New ATO taxation data shows who got real pay rises during the cost-of-living squeeze. Some roles saw income jump 15-20% while most treaded water. Here's what the numbers say about which patches are worth targeting.
Anthropic rebuilt their enterprise motion around AI and now closes 54% of new logos without a rep. Owner.com is running reps at $2M ARR each, 20x their OTE. PayPal pointed agents at 8,000 leads per month no human would touch. The war stories from SaaStr AI 2026 show what happens when sales teams actually ship AI, not just talk about it.
ICONIQ data shows three-year contracts fell from 28% to 23% of new logos between 2023 and 2026, while sub-one-year deals jumped from 4% to 13%. The shift is driven by AI replacement cycles compressing to 18 months. Translation for AEs: stop forcing long commits, focus on fast ROI and NRR instead.
Stripe's 2025 numbers: $6.8 billion revenue (up 33%), $3.2 billion free cash flow (47% margin), and Q1 2026 running at $8 billion annualised. The company is private, profitable, and reportedly bidding $53 billion for PayPal. Its Revenue suite (Billing, Tax, Invoicing) is tracking toward $1 billion ARR, which matters if you are selling into payments or infrastructure.
Australian exports to the US face a new 12.5% tariff starting today, replacing the temporary 10% levy. The Trump administration claims Australia has not done enough to stop forced labour imports. Australian government says the findings lack credible evidence.
ASIC data shows business insolvencies up 75% since 2019, with cash flow cited as the main failure driver. The core issue: small businesses are financing their customers' operations through extended payment terms while their own bills are due immediately. Payment Times Reporting shows large businesses now pay 69% of invoices within 30 days, but 60-day cycles remain standard in many B2B segments.
BNPL provider Zip is shutting down New Zealand operations effective 16 August, citing strategic focus on Australia and US markets. The company posted $65.1m cash EBITDA in Q3 FY26 (up 41.5% YoY) but did not disclose headcount impact or sales team changes from the NZ exit.
University of Canberra AI expert Ryan Payne says workers over 50 are unlikely to retrain for AI-heavy roles, while employers see under-25s as over-reliant on AI. The federal government's 'jobs created, not lost' promise ignores reality: roles are changing faster than workers can adapt.
Dropbox guided to revenue decline. PagerDuty ARR is dead flat at $496M. Net dollar retention below 100% means the existing base is shrinking. This is what happens when AI agents replace headcount and seat-based models break. Your expansion motion just became a retention problem.
Auckland-based Tracksuit bought Sydney's Hall to track how brands appear in ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini responses. The acquisition adds AI visibility tools to Tracksuit's existing brand-tracking platform, which already monitors consumer perception through surveys. Hall founder Kai Forsyth joins as product lead for AI visibility.
New RBA research shows which Australian businesses are acquisition targets. Medium-sized firms ($10m-$50m turnover) face highest acquisition probability. Counter-intuitively, acquirers prefer unproductive targets, looking to cull staff and merge functions while keeping revenue.