Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
Seven ANZ startups closed funding this week, totalling $17 million. South Australian quantum sensing startup QuantX Labs led with a $7 million seed round from Serendipity Capital. Two startups are headed to Y Combinator in San Francisco.
Maleka Momand, CEO of policy management startup Esper, broke down the reality of selling to government: expect three-year sales cycles, win trust before business, and treat professional services as competitive advantage, not cost center. The company has raised $10.7M and is expanding into Kansas and NYC.
Jason Lemkin's SaaStr AI team replaced most of their go-to-market function with AI agents. The stack handles outbound, inbound, and RevOps across 2.25M sessions. Here is what worked, what broke, and the actual numbers behind each agent.
Agentic AI usage just overtook human chat in real production data from OpenRouter, which routes 28 trillion tokens weekly. The problem: one agent task burns more tokens than 100 human chats, and most sales teams budgeted for chat, not agents. If your AI spend forecast still models people typing into boxes, you are about to blow your annual budget early.
Sydney hotel-tech vendor SiteMinder (ASX:SDR) is pushing AI-enabled distribution channels after getting caught in the 2026 software selloff. The company serves 41,000+ hotels across 150 countries with channel management and booking software. Share price jumped recently, but the path to profitability remains unclear despite consistent revenue growth.
SaaStr updated its classic VP of Sales hiring guide for 2026. The new questions screen for AI agent deployment, hybrid team management, and whether candidates can run modern GTM motions. The shift: title inflation is worse, capital is tighter, and VPs who can't speak fluently about Clay, Artisan, or Qualified are now filtered out at interview stage.
Meta fixed a security flaw that let attackers manipulate its AI support bot to take over Instagram accounts, including high-profile business profiles. The exploit worked by social-engineering the chatbot into sending password-reset codes to attacker-controlled emails. Meta did not disclose how many accounts were affected.
Giant Leap's Will Richardson says AI-generated pitch emails are killing credibility. When every founder uses ChatGPT to write cold outreach, none of them stand out. The irony: AI-focused VCs are now drowning in generic, homogenous pitches that fail to convert.
ASX-listed Scalare Partners acquired Fishburners brand and IP after the Sydney startup hub collapsed under $2 million in rent arrears to NSW government. Cash-only deal adds third coworking asset to Scalare's accelerator portfolio. No employees transferred, no liabilities assumed.
ASX-listed logistics software firm WiseTech Global is making 30% of its workforce redundant as part of an AI transformation. The company wants departing employees to sign non-compete clauses preventing them from joining four smaller competitors for at least a year. Union pushes back.
Property investment advisory Dashdot collapsed into voluntary liquidation last week, cutting more than 40 jobs. CEO cites federal budget tax reforms and Meta ad changes as contributing factors. Clients who paid thousands in upfront fees are waiting for answers.
Jason Lemkin's SaaStr is running four specialized AI SDR platforms instead of one all-in-one tool. Three Artisan instances for outbound (40,000+ messages sent), Qualified for inbound ($1M+ closed), Agentforce for reactivation (200,000 messages, 72% open rates), and Monaco for net new logos. The take: specialized tools beat generalist platforms once you hit scale, but most companies should start with one.