Xero to acquire Melio for $4.1b
Plus: AI blueprint webinars to duck into on your lunchbreak and is it time for a four day work week?
Happy Thursday!
Kia ora Caffeinators, hope the global torrent of wild headlines we’ve all seen for the past few weeks isn’t bumming you out too hard.
Consider this newsletter an anxiety free shot of optimism to get you through the day. Straight off the back of Halter’s exceptional news we’re kicking off with another announcement worth celebrating - Xero making major acquisition worth over $4b.
Here’s what’s brewing in your Daily Shot:
Xero to acquire Melio in $4.1b deal
Events: AI Blueprint Lunchtime Webinars
Cluely, the startup to help you ‘cheat on everything’ raises $15m USD Series A
Is it time for us to seriously think about a four day work week?
As always, thank you to everyone who has upgraded to a paid subscription or simply recommended Caffeine to friends and whānau. We couldn’t do any of this without you.
Finn and the CAFFEINE team
Xero to acquire Melio in $4.1b deal: Straight off the back of Halter becoming Aotearoa’s freshest unicorn, one of our most venerable has dropped some exceptional news also worth celebrating.
Xero has struck a landmark deal to acquire U.S.-based fintech Melio in a transaction valued at US $2.5 billion upfront, with the potential to reach US $3 billion including performance earn‑outs over the coming three years. Melio, founded in 2018, boasts 80,000+ small and mid‑sized business clients, processed over US $30 billion last fiscal year, and generated roughly US $153–187 million in annualised revenue.
Once the deal is approved (pending regulatory clearance) Melio’s leadership, including CEO Matan Bar, will remain in place. RNZ has a good quick wrap here.
Events: AI Blueprint Lunchtime Webinars: Sector updates from AEC, Creative Industries & Agriculture & Sector updates from Education, Environment and Health: I don’t care if I sound like a broken record, I think there are few better uses of your time as a founder right now than getting up to speed in how your sector is responding to emerging technology. The AI forum does great work in this area and have some handy lunchtime webinars coming up covering the latest in a broad swathe of sectors.
Each session will be moderated by Tom Maasland, Minter Ellison (Chair of the AI Blueprint Working Group), featuring insights from Tim Bradley, AWS, Madeline Newman, AI Forum, and sector-specific updates.
The first session spotlights Creative Industries, Agriculture and Architecture, Engineering & Construction (AEC), with sector updates from:
Paula Browning, WeCreate
Craig Pattison, Capability Collective
Maria Mingallon, Mott MacDonald
The second session spotlights Education, Environment and Health, with sector updates from:
Kevin Ross, Deloitte
Albert Bifet, University of Waikato
Susana Tomaz, Westlake Girls High School
Just pop on during your lunch break, it’ll be worth it. Check out more details here.
Cluely, the startup to help you ‘cheat on everything’ raises $15m USD Series A: It’s Thursday and the day we like to check in on the wider global ecosystem and the story of Cluely, the startup who pledges to help you ‘cheat on everything’ is ongoing. It just raised a $15 million USD Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz.
They’ve made headlines with a fairly irreverent marketing approach even by Silicon Valley standards (see above) and for the co-founders being suspended from Columbia for developing an early version of their tool to help engineers cheat on technical interviews. I think their story speaks to the wider issue no-one is quite sure how to grapple with: When does AI ‘disruption’ become unethical even if not illegal and how much can/should a startups be profiting?
The argument from a startup like Cluely tends to be that institutions like education are slow moving to respond to technology and it is providing the kind of service which is obviously going to be become the standard once policy adjusts. Of course you can justify an awful lot with logic like that. They’ve certainly convinced investors thus far, we’ll see if they fly too close to the sun.
Is it time for us to seriously think about a four day work week?: Maybe it’s just because we’ve had New Zealand’s annual allocation of public holidays mostly crammed into the past couple of months but I have been thinking a lot about the four day work week recently.
It’s a recurring conversation in New Zealand particularly and is often touted as a solution to our low productivity. Big names like Crimson Education have flirted with it and multiple trials have returned positive results but as AI wave washed over us, it’s time might be returning. Economists have been predicting for over a century that modern technology could make us so productive we would work steadily less and less while still growing the economy. Of course, the opposite has proven true with the ubiquity of the internet and smart phones meaning we are permanently on call.
However there is a world where A.I tools are so powerfully productive in such a short space of time that it essentially shocks our economy into a different format.
Bernie Sanders has just called for a four day work week in the US and Poland has launched its own trial. It feels like the absolute antithesis of how many founders operate, doing not just 5 day weeks but essentially working multiple jobs at once, always. However the evidence is fairly compelling that with more enforced down time, you can be more productive at work and less likely to burn out.
What do you think, can a four day work week and a thriving startup community co-exist?
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