Global Day Zero – Weekly Newsletter – 14 June 2026

Week of 14 June 2026

Welcome to Global Day Zero – my new brand to help founders think, build and communicate globally from day zero. This is also the first edition of Global Day Zero Weekly, so consider it the introduction: what the brand is, and what we’re about.

Global Day Zero is hopefully exactly what you’d expect – helping founders go global across every part of their startup, from the very beginning.

For founders who genuinely want to build a global business, that means navigating the build a little differently from day zero than you would a lifestyle business or one built only for your local market. Nothing wrong with either of those – but they’re a different game.

How you design your startup, set up the product, validate, market and communicate – doing all of it from a global perspective means applying a different lens, in ways you may not have considered yet. That lens is what this is about.

Each week we’ll look across Japan, Australia and the wider world for the things worth knowing: bootstrapping wins, capital raises, headlines, an ecosystem builder profile, events, programs and more.

Glad to have you here. Let’s get into it.

Bootstrapping spotlight

No term sheets. Just revenue.

• STM Goods (AU) has gone global and stayed founder-led, private and debt-free for 26 years, no VC. (SmartCompany) ↗
• BoostDraft (JP) bootstrapped a legal-tech to profit in year one and now runs in six countries. (Buffett Code – Japanese only) ↗
• Flodesk (US) hit US$36M ARR on its email platform without taking a cent from investors (and being rejected from YC). (Inc) ↗

Raises from Japan, Australia and the globe …

Quantum chips out of Sydney. AI agents out of Tokyo. Mega-rounds everywhere else. Here’s the week.

🇯🇵 Japan raises

• GenerativeX – raised ¥650M (A$5.8M / US$4.1M) to roll out enterprise AI agents for big finance, pharma and manufacturing. (PR Times – Japanese only) ↗
• Nekonome – raised ¥110M (A$1.0M / US$0.7M), a Tokyo game studio shipping a new shogi title. (GameBusiness – Japanese only) ↗
• 株式会社U-ZERO – raised ¥950M (A$8.5M / US$5.9M) in a seed close for its AI-powered employee-engagement software, backed by Fujitsu Ventures. (PR Times) ↗

🇦🇺 Australia raises

• Silicon Quantum Computing – pulled another A$40M (US$28M / ¥4.5B) from the NRF to build quantum chips with atomic precision. (Startup Daily) ↗
• Amber Electric – raised A$13.6M (US$9.5M / ¥1.5B) to let households sell EV battery power back to the grid. (Startup Daily) ↗
• Oscorp Energy – raised A$1.3M (US$0.9M / ¥150M) for AI robots that pull materials out of waste streams in real time. (Startup Daily) ↗

🌎 Around the world

• Ramp (US) – raised US$750M (A$1.07B / ¥120B) for spend-management software, now valued at US$44B. (Crunchbase News) ↗
• CargoX (UAE) – raised US$250M (A$358M / ¥40B) to scale driverless delivery across Abu Dhabi and Dubai. (Wamda) ↗
• Supabase (US) raised US$500M (A$715M / ¥80B) for its open-source backend platform for AI app builders. (Crunchbase News) ↗
• PhysicsX (UK) raised US$300M (A$429M / ¥48B) for AI that turns day-long engineering simulations into seconds. (TechNode Global) ↗
• FirstClub (India) raised US$55M (A$79M / ¥8.8B) for its quality-first grocery and quick-commerce platform. (DealStreetAsia) ↗

Headlines

• Japan: The government’s first national AI plan kicks in this fiscal year, a ~¥1T (US$6.3B) push to build domestic foundation models and back AI startups. (Asia Tech Daily) ↗
• Australia: Back in the world’s top 10 startup ecosystems for the first time in three years, ranked 9th, with Sydney and Melbourne climbing. (SmartCompany) ↗
• Australia: Canberra axed its $15M Startup Year loan scheme after just eight students signed up. (Startup Daily) ↗
• India: Zepto filed for a ~US$960M (Rs 8,010 crore) IPO, the first quick-commerce pure-play heading to local markets. (Outlook Business) ↗
• Global: Anthropic’s mega-round helped push global startup funding to a near-record US$92B in May. (Crunchbase News) ↗

Ecosystem profile

Welcome to my very on self-interview 🫡 – to be featured in a future edition, we’d love to hear from you!

1. Give us your 15 second intro and what you’re working on 🙂

Hey all, I’m Matt, I have lived in Sydney, Perth and Tokyo and travelled across the globe. I have experience across product, marketing, sales, tech and comms and have a passion for all things startups, community building and helping people.

I have kicked off an initiative I call ‘Global Day Zero’ to help founders from the very early stages, really consider the key aspects of building product for local, domestic or beyond your own borders, how to think, communicate and develop the business.

2. Are you avoiding AI, somewhat into AI, or all in on AI? (or somewhere in between)

I am heavily into AI, transitioning from ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, building my own chatbots, automations and more. However, when it comes to AI there is still a time and a place for everything, and so the use case is very dependent on what you’re trying to achieve.

AI is great for automating repetitive tasks and handling the tech side of many aspects of a build. Yet, when it comes to building trust, sales and marketing, especially in the early stages, there is still a lot of manual work required to figure out what lands and what doesn’t.

Building a business is still hard, AI has just helped accelerate some aspects of it.

3. Where can people usually find you?

In Sydney, I am usually hanging around Tech Central for coffees, I am back in Tokyo, Japan often for startup related conferences and events, and travel around Australia for some of the national startup conferences as well.

I don’t mind the inner-west (of Sydney) either, which has some cool cafes and pots to hang out as well.

4. What’s one thing people find surprising about you?

These days everyone has been to Japan for travel, but when I mentioned I have lived there and can speak the language (enough … 😅). Everyone is always curious about my experience there and what I did.

Perhaps the other thing is my love of cars, I had my own car in Japan, used to visit Daikoku PA from time to time and attended my fair share of car-related events and drift comps. So, next year I definitely want to attend the Auto Salon 2027 again, for old times sake, in Japan early next year.

Announcing the Global Day Zero Sprint

This is what I’ve been working on behind the scenes.

For years I watched founders across Australia and Japan build one of two ways: for their own market only, or with the US as the end game, because Silicon Valley has always been, in many people’s eyes, the milestone of success.

For Japanese founders, staying domestic is sometimes all too easy: a large home market, a clear path to capital via IPO, and English as a real hurdle. For Aussies, it’s a mix of tall-poppy syndrome, feeling like a small island a long way from everywhere, and a quiet discomfort with stepping outside the comfort zone. Different reasons, same result: global never quite gets designed in.

And for the founders who’ve cracked the US, genuinely, that’s a fantastic milestone. But slowly I’m seeing more startups across Japan and Australia look past it, to other markets entirely, for their next stage of growth.

Here’s the thing though. The easiest time to build for global isn’t after you’ve won one market. It’s before you’ve locked into any. Once the product, the pricing, the whole company is shaped around one place, going global stops being a decision and becomes a retrofit, and the retrofit is brutal. I’ve watched it quietly hold good companies back for years.

That’s why I’m doing this. Not another “expand to Asia” playbook for later-stage startups, but something for founders right at the start, when building global is still a set of small, cheap decisions rather than an expensive rebuild.

So we’re helping a small group of very early founders, whether you’re in Australia, Japan or anywhere else, build globally from day zero.

The Global Day Zero Sprint is an 8-week cohort that takes a vague, home-only idea and makes it clear, proven, and designed to travel from the start. Not “expand later.” Built global from the first decision.

We define the idea, validate it with real people, design it to travel, then, and only then, build. Eight founders per cohort. Two ways in: group, or group plus 1:1 with me.

The founding cohort opens now. Eight spots, closing 30 June, with founding pricing for this first round only.

So if you’ve got an idea you believe in but it’s still a bit fuzzy, or it’s only ever lived in your home market, this one’s for you.

Apply / read more about the program →

Upcoming sessions, programs and events

New Event: World-Ready Pitch Night – 7pm JST | 8pm AEST

We’re launching a new pitch format with a different lens. The World-Ready Pitch Night is for founders who want to know if their pitch and positioning actually work beyond their home market. Bring your deck, share your screen, pitch in English. Aim for 3 minutes – at 5 you’re cut off, because in the real world so will your investor.

Feedback from special guest judges, this time we have Ryan Ahamer founder of ORBWEVA with real global GTM and communication experience. Open to AU and JP founders and anyone building with global ambitions. Facilitated by Thom Peace and myself.

Details and registration via Luma.

New Workshop: Why Your Pitch Loses the Room in the First 60 Seconds

Most founders don’t lose the room at the ask. They lose it in the first minute – before they’ve even explained what they do.

This workshop breaks down exactly what’s happening in those first 60 seconds, why it matters more than any other part of your pitch, and what to do instead. Whether English is your second language or you’re a native speaker who still struggles with public speaking – this is built for you.

We’ll cover:

• Active listening – how to read the room and adapt in real time
• Persuasion skills – what actually moves people to a yes
• The elevator pitch – how to make your first 60 seconds do the work it needs to do
• Story structure for case studies – how to turn customer wins into narratives that land

Practical, specific, and built around real examples. Not a theory session. Ft – David Castillo and myself – we look forward to having you with us.

Details and registration via Luma – Newsletter readers can get 10% off via this link.

Finally, my simple thought of the week

You don’t need to build a business to please others. You can build whatever business you want – whether that’s for your local area, your country, or the world.

Build what works for you. But build something that also serves a need in your community, or helps solve a problem you’ve actually observed.

Wanting to make a real problem better – that’s one of the best ways to show how much you care.

That’s it from me this week.

Cheers,

Matt – ☕️