Blackpearl Group announces acquisition + Bizzy launches
Plus: A.I slop is drowning us all and Bitcoin continues historic run.
Happy Tuesday!
Kia ora Caffeinators, hope your week has started as productively as possible and at least a few of us are getting a respite from this weather. Real classic Caffeine spread in your daily shot today. We have acquisition news, exciting startup launching and some mildly bleak A.I analysis at the back end.
Here’s what’s brewing in your Daily Shot:
Scaling Without Selling Out: The Systems and Stories of Scale
Blackpearl acquire B2B Rocket, announces it will dual list on the ASX
NZ’s first small business lending hub launches
Bitcoin hits $200k NZD as it continues its historic run
A.I slop is drowning the internet, YouTube tries to fight back
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Finn and the CAFFEINE team
Have you got your ticket for our event: Scaling Without Selling Out: The Systems and Stories of Scale?
Don’t forget to join us for an insightful and revealing fireside chat with James Hurman (Previously Unavailable) and Shannon Scott (SVP, Global Head of Product at Airwallex). Together, they’ll unpack the hidden infrastructure behind scale: payments, workflows, capital flow and the equally essential brand scaffolding: positioning, emotional resonance, and customer connection. Perfect for founders wondering how to scale both what they do and how they’re remembered.
Date and time
Wed, 30 Jul 2025 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM NZST
Location
The Assembly at Britomart 11 Britomart Place #level 10 Auckland
Cost
$55 but free for Caffeine community + 1 with promo code CAFFEINEFRIENDS
Blackpearl acquire B2B Rocket, announces it will dual list on the ASX: More good news out of Blackpearl Group this morning, a company clearly going from strength to strength. It has signed a conditional agreement to acquire 100% of B2B Rocket Inc - a fast-scaling US-based AI sales automation company. In parallel with this transaction, Blackpearl has confirmed it is preparing to file an application to dual list on the ASX. NBR reports the deal is potentially worth up to $13m USD (21.6m NZD).
Riding the emerging agentic AI boom, B2B Rocket specialises in intelligent outbound sales agents that can generate, qualify and engage leads without human input. The platform has already achieved over US$2.1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
“Relentless ambition is the common thread. B2B Rocket is cut from the same cloth as us - founder-led, customer-obsessed and unapologetically focused on delivering results. Their AI-powered outbound engine is the perfect complement to what we offer with Pearl Diver,” says Blackpearl CEO Nick Lissette.
“This is far more than just a bolt-on,” says Lissette. “It’s an investment in category leadership where humans and AI work together to power customer acquisition at scale. This acquisition and our ASX ambitions reinforce our trajectory. Our platform, our people and our playbook are all geared toward sustained, scalable growth,” adds Nick.
Congrats to the team and can’t wait to see what comes next.
NZ’s first small business lending hub launches: I’ve had my eye on this one for a while after my catch up with founder Corinna Stukan (read it here). Now together with her co-founders, the group of seasoned tech and finance founders has launched Bizzy, New Zealand’s first unified online marketplace for business lending aimed squarely at helping SMEs bridge cashflow gaps, fund expansion and navigate finance with confidence.
The free-to-use platform enables small business owners to submit one simple application and compare multiple finance offers from a growing panel of trusted lenders (currently eight). The application process is fast, transparent and designed specifically for business use cases - from short-term working capital to long-term growth investment.
"Running a business is hard enough. Getting finance shouldn’t be," says co-founder Corinna Stukan, who has worked with hundreds of small businesses across New Zealand and previously built a cashflow insights tool launched through ASB in NZ and Commonwealth Bank in Australia for SMEs. “What I kept hearing was: ‘I don’t know where to go, I don’t understand the terms and I don’t have time to fill out five different applications.’ We built Bizzy to solve that,” she adds.
Congrats to Cori and the team.
Bitcoin hits $200k NZD as it continues its historic run: As I may have mentioned before, I wrote the first ‘What the hell is crypto?’ story for Newshub back in 2018 back when Bitcoin was a fringe asset that required articles with headlines like that to explain it. Back then it had a couple fewer decimal places in its price and we still thought it was overvalued in the newsroom. Idiots. Now it’s broken through into the mainstream in a way few people could have predicted and breached the $200k mark. This surge represents a dramatic climb for Kiwi investors. Bitcoin is up 18% YTD and over 100% in the last 12 months. As the team over at Easy Crypto note, a good part of the reason for this is the regulatory certainty for crypto emerging around the world with Europe, the UK and many parts of Asia providing investor certainty and confidence in the asset class. Even the US, which was largely antagonistic toward the sector has flipped positive.
A.I slop is drowning the internet, YouTube tries to fight back: As someone who makes a living through producing things on the internet, this story is a little close to home for me. As A.I generation take the cost of producing content to zero in time and money, the internet is drowning in an ocean of cheap, instantly produced AI slop. Some research suggests up to 90% of online content could be A.I generated by as soon as next year.
I’ve sure many of you have had the surreal experience of watching a YouTube video on some niche subject only to click something is off when the voiceover mispronounces a basic word and you realise you aren’t watching a cool up and coming creator discuss something weirdly specific to your interests but a cheap AI trying to game the algorithm.
Hopefully, there will be at least some push back on this now. YouTube will update its policies later today/tomorrow to clarify monetisation categories and crack down on ‘inauthentic’ content. There is still a level of irony in a company owned by Google, who is producing leading AI models, in fighting this fight. But I will take what I can get.
That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Want to get in touch with a news tip, bit of feedback or just to chat? Email hello@caffeinedaily.co