Co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins told staff that growth "has slowed for the first time in a decade" and that small changes wouldn't be enough. The product, growth, and platform teams are being merged. Most hybrid staff will be back in the office two to three days a week from January, and Sydney becomes the main Australian hub for more product roles, so some Melbourne staff face a choice between relocating and taking a redundancy. Canva hasn't said how many of the 1,271 will actually lose their jobs.

Departing staff get at least six months' salary, a year of health insurance, their MacBooks and access to US$10,000 (about $14,000) equity-free grants if they want to start something of their own.

The day before, it was reported that annualised revenue was about US$3.69 billion (about $5.3 billion) near the end of October, roughly where it started the year and well short of an internal 2026 goal of US$5.2 billion. Monthly active users are down about 12 million from a year ago.

Its big local backers are publicly supportive. Blackbird's Rick Baker points to Canva's two new in-house AI models, Craft and Brush, bringing its AI costs down significantly, and Square Peg's Paul Bassat reckons the smart money should be on growth re-accelerating.

CEO Thomas Kelly, now the only founder in the business, said he'd been "too optimistic" about how quickly hospitals and large health systems would buy and had put too many people into enterprise roles ahead of those deals. The team's growth was drastic. Headcount went from about 80 at the end of 2024 to more than 600.

Heidi says its tools are used in 2.8 million patient visits a week across 190 countries.

It's also fighting on another front with GP software provider Best Practice, backed by Sonic Healthcare and an investor in local rival AI scribe Lyrebird Health, which has told doctors that using Heidi's new admin agent, Heidi II, with its Bp Premier software would breach their licence, citing patient safety and data risks. Kelly has called that potentially anticompetitive. (AFR)

They come from its interim report on 'business dynamism', which is about making it easier for businesses to start, grow and close.

First, let VC funds do deals that fall outside the rules. Many local VC funds are set up as ESVCLPs or VCLPs, government-registered structures that give the fund and its investors tax breaks. The catch is they can only back companies that meet strict eligibility rules, such as size limits and bans on sectors like property and finance (which is why lending and insurance fintechs are awkward for many VCs). If a manager wants to do a deal that doesn't fit, they currently have to run a second, parallel fund alongside it, which adds cost and paperwork. The PC wants registered funds to be able to make those investments too, just without the tax break on that particular deal.

Second, let experience count, not just wealth, for sophisticated investors. To be a 'sophisticated investor', you generally need to pass a wealth or income test. That matters for angel investing because sophisticated investors get much better access to the tax offset for backing early-stage startups (the ESIC scheme), while everyone else can only put in up to $50,000 a year and still claim it. The PC wants people with relevant industry or startup experience, such as former founders and operators, to qualify even if they don't meet the wealth bar.

Third, judge SAFEs when the money goes in. A SAFE is a simple agreement where an investor hands over money now in exchange for shares later, usually at the startup's next priced round. At the moment, whether that investment qualifies for the angel tax offset is checked when the SAFE converts into shares, by which point the startup may have grown too big to qualify. The PC wants eligibility checked when the money goes in instead.

Important to note, this is an accounting surplus, not cash handed back to the state. Breakthrough was set up by the state in 2021 to invest a $2 billion fund and merged with LaunchVic in July to become Innovation Victoria.

Over five years, Breakthrough Victoria committed $529.3 million across 103 investments, and net assets rose 36% to $824.2 million last financial year.

The gains came from US quantum company Infleqtion, which listed on the NYSE in February, and stratospheric balloon maker World View, which Nasdaq-listed Ondas bought in April for about US$150 million (about $215 million), mostly in shares.

Launched with $50 million in 2016 and doubled to $100 million in 2018, NAB Ventures still lists 21 portfolio companies on its website, though Amberdata has since been bought by Kaiko: Amberdata, Archistar, Athena, Banked, BioCatch, Bugcrowd, Cito+, DataMesh Group, Edstart, Figured, Greener, Hometime, Lighter Capital, Own Home, SafeStack, Slyp, Spriggy, Stash, Trovata, Veem and Zodia Custody.

Its 12 exits include Basiq (to Cuscal), Medipass and Thriday (both to Tyro), BrickX (to Thundering Herd), ActivePipe (to MoxieWorks), Amitree (to Inside Real Estate), Wave (to H&R Block) and Poynt (to GoDaddy). Its last publicly confirmed new investments were in late 2024, and NAB itself bought Banked, which NAB Ventures had backed in three rounds, in May.

That leaves CommBank's x15ventures as the last big-four venture operation publicly known to be actively backing startups, after ANZ closed 1835i and Westpac's Reinventure wound down its original partnership with the bank.

Its accounts show revenue up 7% to US$189 million (about $271 million) for the financial year, with its operating loss narrowing to US$9.2 million from US$30.4 million and the business turning cash flow positive. Existing underwater options have been repriced to the new level.

Culture Amp says the figure is an independent valuation for US tax purposes, not an enterprise valuation. It hasn't raised since 2021, when it took US$100 million at a valuation of more than US$1.5 billion.

It opened in 2017 in Fortitude Valley's TC Beirne building with $6 million from Advance Queensland and now spans more than 8,000 square metres, home to dozens of startups and investors.

It caps a tough year for Brisbane's startup hubs. River City Labs, one of The Precinct's founding tenants, stopped offering co-working in 2024 and retired the brand earlier this year after supporting more than 1,200 companies over 14 years.

AWS research shared with Forbes Australia shows local AI natives growing at the same pace, and 60% of them generate more than $400,000 in revenue per employee, double the rate of non-AI natives.

Daiwa Corporate Investment, part of Daiwa Securities Group, is forming the Sakura Fund (a working name), which it and Main Sequence first announced in August, and expects to appoint Main Sequence as manager. It will back Australian deep tech companies at Series B and later in space, decarbonisation, food and agriculture, quantum and AI, healthcare and industrial tech, connecting them with Japanese capital and industry. Size and timing haven't been disclosed.

Main Sequence has also signed an MOU with Singapore's Economic Development Board, alongside Singapore's S$800 million Decarbonisation Grand Challenge, to give portfolio companies access to commercial plants and shared infrastructure as they scale into Southeast Asia.

Uluu has already melt-spun its seaweed-derived, biodegradable material into yarn and fabric using existing manufacturing processes, and will look at producing it from kelp farmed in Norway. Norrøna CEO Jørgen Jørgensen says the goal is materials that behave like polyester and nylon but break down.

Uluu is led by co-founders and co-CEOs Dr Julia Reisser and Michael Kingsbury. It raised a $16 million Series A led by Burda Principal Investments in October last year, with Main Sequence and Startmate among the backers, to build a commercial facility. (SmartCompany)

Founder Colin Wong, a former corporate lawyer, started the funeral comparison site Gathered Here in 2017 before launching EveryWill. Wills are free for individuals and take about 10 minutes, while charities pay for branded platforms, advertising and data on gifts pledged to them. Its charity partners have grown from 74 at the end of 2021 to more than 1,400, and it has launched in the US.

It's another player in the growing death-tech space, alongside Willed, which raised at a $100 million valuation last month, and estateXchange, which NAB went live on last week.

Sladen was Koala's first technology hire in 2016 and became director of engineering, building the platform behind its four-hour metro delivery promise, while Shillinglaw worked on product experimentation, analytics and Koala's Japanese business.

Dilog turns one-to-one interviews into what it calls Anonymised Reflective Profiles, then combines them into reusable panels that teams can query. It reports 86% to 93% accuracy in validation testing and says it's designed to complement human research, not replace it.

It streams news clips from partners such as Bloomberg, CNBC and Reuters into in-car dashboards in Mercedes-Benz, Skoda and Volvo vehicles and through its own apps, letting users ask for a specific clip by voice. It now wants to partner with TV manufacturers and has a deal with CommBank to bring CommSec's daily content to connected TVs.

Price and co-founder Cheyne Wallace previously raised a US$2.5 million (about $3.6 million) seed round at a $32.5 million valuation. The company is backed by CP Ventures and Checker Media, founded by former VICE Media executive Jesse Angelo. They're now pitching VCs and family offices in Australia and the US.

SohoAI CEO Jonathan Lui, who co-founded Airtasker, will run the combined business, and Inspace CEO Justin Liang will join the board. The two will share AI and data infrastructure but keep separate brands. Saverin first backed Inspace three years ago.

Lui says the aim is to be bigger and better, not to save money or cut teams. It comes amid a sharp downturn in the local property market.

There are five judged categories (Impact, Newcomer, Woman in Climate Tech, Champion and Global Growth), plus a new People's Choice award decided by public vote. Nominate here.

The awards night is on Wednesday, 25 November, from 6 pm at Ashurst Perkins Coie, Level 8, 39 Martin Place, Sydney. Get tickets here.

It's an eight-week, full-time program where founders find a co-founder or come in as a team, and successful teams get a pre-seed investment.

Eligible women founders can also get $60,000 in non-dilutive funding from Coaxial on Antler's first cheque and another $60,000 at follow-on. Applications run until early February. Apply here.

Six months after its seed round and close to $1 million in ARR, Cuttable cancelled and refunded its enterprise contracts to rebuild as a self-serve product because the founders knew what they had couldn’t scale.

In this podcast, Sam explains why they needed to rebuild, how they approached the pivot, and how they narrowed in on their ICP to lift average contract value eightfold this year.

👔 Connect with me on LinkedIn: Overnight Success, Will Richards

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