💫 Ramplify: July Wrap Up
SV Social Construct, Amazon's 1mm robots, $0→$2M ARR Playbook
🤖 Reinforce, Not Reboot: Keeping Silicon Valley’s Social Contract Intact
If there ever was a time to reboot Silicon Valley on HBO, it would be today.
Windsurf is a red-hot coding IDE, one of the most talked-about developer workflow tools, and it has been on an M&A ride so surreal it could be a plotline straight out of the show’s parody of our industry.
Here’s the Windsurf saga in dots:
OpenAI launches a ~$3B bid for Windsurf.
Microsoft shows interest in accessing the IP, lawyers circle—but it stalls.
Google swoops: buys talent for ~$2.4B, plus ~$100M paid to the company.
Vested founders and investors get paid, while many with unvested options are left with nothing.
A holding company remains: product, distribution, and $100M cash, minus most people.
Cognition (a new buyer) steps in and acquires the holding company.
Fun fact: Windsurf shared the same building that inspired the Silicon Valley TV show.
The real story isn’t the M&A headline; it’s the unravelling of Silicon Valley’s social contract. When companies win, everyone should win. But if employees, especially non-founding team members, don’t share the reward, why would they ever roll the dice again?
Case in point: Tim Doyle, cofounder of Eucalyptus, called out short expiry windows on options as “punishing staff” and pointed out they’re totally avoidable.
Ben Thompson sums it up best (paraphrased): when Big Tech cherry-picks survivors from shut-down startups, keeping the IP and top talent while ditching the rest, they’re not reacting to some legal requirement. They’re redesigning the rules. It might benefit founders and investors, but it screws over rank-and-file employees and destroys the incentive to bet on startups.
If this becomes the norm, the social payoff that fuels the startup ecosystem, trust, shared upside, and compounding success, starts to erode. And when that erodes, the compounding stops. The next generation of founders, employees, advisors, angels, investors, LPs (all of them) lose the momentum that built Silicon Valley in the first place.
Founders and investors, consider structuring exit scenarios so every team member gets a slice, even the ones who haven’t hit full vest. Accelerated vesting cliffs? Pro-rated carve-outs? Let’s bake that into term sheets and culture. Because reinforcing the social contract is how the ecosystem survives and keeps paying it forward.
Are you building a generational company? We’d love to be a partner with you. Let’s chat.
🗞️ Tech News:
AWS is launching an AI agent marketplace next week with Anthropic as a partner.
On July 15, AWS will unveil its AI agent marketplace, partnering with Anthropic, to let startups list, price, and sell autonomous AI agents directly to enterprise customers via the AWS Summit in New York City. The platform centralises discovery, comparison, and deployment of agents, cementing AWS’s role as the one-stop hub for AI infrastructure, models, and now agentic workflows.
“Startups will set prices for their AI agents like SaaS products, and AWS will take a small revenue cut—opening new distribution channels and monetisation paths.”
xAI debuts Grok 4 AI model boasting PhD-level reasoning.
Elon Musk’s xAI launched Grok 4, and its premium Grok 4 Heavy plan ($300/month), as a direct competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, scoring 25.4% on Humanity’s Last Exam (vs. 21.6% for Gemini 2.5 Pro) and 16.2% on the ARC-AGI-2 benchmark. Nearly twice the next best model. The multi-agent Grok 4 Heavy further boosts performance to 44.4% with tool use, signalling xAI’s entry into frontier-model territory despite early moderation challenges on its public X account.
“With respect to academic questions, Grok 4 is better than PhD level in every subject—no exceptions.”
Tipping Point: Amazon Warehouses Are Close to Having More Robots than Humans.
Amazon has deployed over 1 million robots across 300+ fulfilment centres, bringing its robot population nearly on par with the 1.56 million human employees who power its e-commerce operations. This surge in automation has driven facility headcount to a 16-year low, averaging 670 workers per centre, and boosted productivity from 175 to 3,870 packages per employee annually since 2015. Among the latest additions is
Vulcan, a tactile robot capable of picking individual items by feel, underscores Amazon’s push toward ever-more specialised robotics.
🛠️ How to Startup:
The Founder’s Guide to Building a V1 of Customer Success.
When customer volume grows enough to consume founders’ days with support issues, it’s time to formalise your CS function. Stephanie Berner of Atlassian shares how to hire your first Customer Success manager, build the right team structure, and set metrics that drive retention and expansion. Her tactical playbook covers profiling hires for speed, curiosity, and communication; deciding whether CS reports to the CEO or CRO; tracking renewal rates; and embedding rituals that keep the entire company customer-centric.
“Customer success is all about getting your product into your customer’s hands as fast as possible.”
— Stephanie Berner, SVP Customer Success, Atlassian
Som Mohapatra’s Tactical $0→$2M ARR Playbook.
Som Mohapatra, CEO of Hadrius (YC W23), shares a nine-step guide for scaling from $0 to $2 million ARR faster than major peers by focusing on weekly revenue tracking, founder-led customer support, cofounder feedback loops, and short-term optimisation strategies that compound into sustainable growth.
The (TL;DR):
Weekly revenue visibility drives urgency 🚨
Cofounder 1:1s reveal blind spots 👀
Founder-led customer support (daily) 🛡️
Optimise for the short term, obsess about 20% MoM 📈
Don’t delegate 📝
Hiring: grit > experience > likability 💪
👕 VC in Australia/New Zealand:
Australian Startup Funding Falls to 18-Month Low of $812 M in Q2 2025. Australian startups raised $812 million across 76 deals in Q2 2025, which is a drop of 18% QoQ and 47% YoY, marking an 18-month low in both funding and deal count. The pullback was driven mainly by a scarcity of megadeals: only eight rounds topped $20 million, led by Airwallex’s $232 million, RayGen’s $75 million, and Amber Electric’s $45 million.
Despite the Q2 slowdown, H1 2025 funding remains on par with H1 2024 at $1.8 billion, even as Australia trails its peak momentum from 2024’s record highs. On the bright side, early-stage rounds are closing faster - pre-seed deals now wrap within weeks, reflecting rising quality and investor confidence in AI-enabled ventures.
🤩 Portfolio News
JigSpace brings learning alive!
The Inspired Entrepreneur dove into JigSpace’s journey, detailing how the tool, influenced heavily by game design, moved from a classroom tool to a training and demonstration tool for large corporations like PepsiCo and Alfa Romeo. The startup enables storytelling via spatial computing and just how powerful Aussie ingenuity can be, landing them on the global stage as they were showcased as part of Apple Vision Pro’s Keynote demo.
What drives someone to spend years building tools that most people didn’t even know they needed? For Duff, it comes to one simple belief: communication shouldn’t be limited because of outdated tools.
Angie Judge chats about building something with passion and purpose.
Startup Dexibit was in conversation with the Startup Theatre Podcast last week. Angie is super open about being a founder and shares real perspectives on the roller coaster journey.
Hatch has had a big upgrade! Check out the Hatch website to see its glow up and read about how it is helping to ensure no Job Seeker gets ghosted.
Founder, Adam Jacobs, says he wants people to find the right job and team culture match through a “more human experience — a bit like a dating app but without the heartbreak of ghosting”.
💼 Portfolio Job Board
Location & type: Austin, Full Time
What they do: Restoke.ai modernises restaurant operations by providing a platform that automates and streamlines back-of-house workflows, including ordering, inventory management, recipe preparation, and reporting.
What you’ll do: You'll engage in full-cycle sales, targeting SMB and mid-market multi-location restaurant groups, all while collaborating closely with marketing, onboarding, and product teams to refine outbound processes.
National General Manager at Goterra
Location & type: Sydney, Full Time
What they do: Goterra is an Australian startup transforming food waste management using autonomous, modular systems powered by insects.
What you’ll do: You’ll lead Goterra’s operational functions, ensuring systems, teams, and processes align with safety, compliance, and performance goals. Managing senior staff, you’ll drive efficiency, build scalable systems, and foster a high-performance culture to support the company’s growth.
Location & type: Sydney or Hybrid, Full Time
What they do: Insightech is a leading digital experience analytics company empowering teams to drive exceptional digital experiences through actionable insights and real-time data.
What you’ll do: Key responsibilities include understanding client needs, coordinating with internal teams to deliver tailored solutions, and identifying opportunities for account expansion.
Software Engineer (Backend) at Skedulo
Location & Type: Fortitude Valley, QLD (Hybrid) & full-time
What they do: Skedulo creates cloud-based software to allow any company in any industry to schedule, manage, engage, and analyse their deskless workforce.
What you’ll do: You'll develop and maintain backend systems as part of Skedulo’s Plan Squad, collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver high-impact features.
Do you have a job you’d like us to promote? Add it to Hatch and share the link with us.
See all jobs across the Rampersand Portfolio.
🌏 Rampersand Travel Diary:
Everyone is in their normal offices in Sydney and Melbourne. Reach out for coffee.
🎉 Upcoming Events:
Startup Founder & Funder Connect - Melbourne, July 23. Join Paul and a fantastic group of investors and advisors at the "Startup Founder & Funder Connect" event on Wednesday, 23 July at Cremorne Digital Hub. A group of 50+ founders will be looking to raise funds and connect with the Australian investor community. Register for free
But First, Coffee — Epic Stories of Hustle – Melbourne, Aug 12
What’s the wildest thing you’ve ever done for your business? Snuck into a conference you weren’t invited to? Pretended to be your own assistant? Sent a gutsy cold email you definitely weren’t qualified to send?
Join us for a morning of good coffee, better conversations, and a chat between Helen Souness and Renece Brewster about the scrappy, unpolished moments behind their careers in leadership, startups, and investing.
50 spots only. RSVP to secure your place.
Can’t make it? Subscribe to our Substack for future “But First, Coffee” dates.
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