Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
Jason Lemkin's SaaStr ran 20 AI agents with minimal human oversight. A rogue PR firm nearly torched a key relationship. The lesson: AI SDRs and human agents both need active monitoring, not just approved scripts from six months ago.
Six companies showed the actual GTM playbook at SaaStr AI 2026. The pattern: build and sell in parallel, price outcomes not seats, treat agents as buyers. Stripe's top AI customers grew 175% in 2026. Cloudflare reports non-human traffic crossed 50%. The old seat-based model is done.
Siva Rajamani has seen 300+ enterprise sales comp plans. Most are too complex, reward the wrong behavior, or both. He breaks down the hidden math that makes reps avoid your best deals, quota-to-OTE ratios that work, and why your top performers should out-earn almost everyone.
Jason Lemkin breaks down a pattern he sees across SaaS startups: the number one rep, already earning top 1% money, quits when the environment shifts. Not because of pay, but because change itself makes staying less attractive. New VP, harder quota, or leadership turnover are the top triggers.
Big Tech buys your rival. Your AE panics. The prospect goes quiet. Except the data says something different: acquirers validate categories, slow down GTM, and hand you runway. Here is what changed in 2025, and what it means for your pipeline.
Melbourne longevity startup Everlab closed a $65M Series A led by Airtree. The three-year-old company, which raised $15M seed in July 2025, is hiring for UK market entry and scaling its clinical and tech teams. Worth noting: they are selling preventive health diagnostics direct-to-consumer and through corporate wellness programmes, including BCG, BHP and Bain.
Queensland fintech Flyweel closed $2.41M pre-seed led by Ten13 to build embedded lending for ad spend. The company processed $110M in ad spend across 1,000 businesses and is launching US-first. Worth noting: this is a different entity than the digital commerce company Omnicom acquired for $835M.
SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin, a Marketo customer since 2006, built a replacement for a broken unsubscribe feature using Claude and Replit in an afternoon after weeks of escalations produced no fix. The move highlights a broader retention risk: long-tenured customers get worse support than new logos, and AI tools now make workarounds trivial.
The AI company behind Claude just raised $65B at a near-trillion-dollar valuation without a traditional sales org. No CRO, no SDR team, no account executives cold-calling enterprise. Here is how they scaled to enterprise deals without carrying a bag.
New Energy Transport closed a $5 million equity round led by Jekara Group to deploy 20 electric prime movers across NSW by end of 2026. The company is bringing forward its launch timeline by 6 months and will base operations south-west of Sydney with mobile charging infrastructure along freight corridors.
Victoria's new work-from-home law covers regular casuals and part-time staff, creating Australia's first statutory remote work entitlement. Two days per week starts September 2026 for businesses with 15+ employees, July 2027 for smaller teams. Disputes go to state commission, not Fair Work.
Australians lost access to Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models after a US government order citing national security. The block hit locally distributed AI tools mid-deployment, raising questions about regulatory risk for any vendor selling frontier tech into ANZ.