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Amazon’s annual shopping event, Prime Day, has kicked off for 2025 and is now in full swing, with deals running across Amazon Australia until July 14. That means seven whole days of discounts on just about everything under the sun, from robot vacuums to headphones to a new TV.
Best robot vacuum deals
Best smart home deals
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Amazon Echo (Newest gen) – A$79 (was $169, 53% off)
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Amazon Echo Spot (2024 release) – A$94 (was $149, 37% off)
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Amazon Echo Show 8 (Newest gen) – A$141 (was $249, 43% off)
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Google Nest Doorbell (Battery) – A$181.99 (was $329, 45% off)
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Ring Battery Video Doorbell – A$79 (was $149, 47% off)
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Ring Spotlight Cam Pro Battery by Amazon – A$187 (was $329, 43% off)
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TP-Link Tapo D230S1 Smart 2K Video Doorbell – A$149 (was $229, 35% off)
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Blink Outdoor 4 Wireless smart security camera – A$90 (was $139.95, 35% off)
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D-Link DCS-8302LH FHD Weather Resistant Wi-Fi Camera – A$71 (was $199.95, 64% off)
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Google Nest Cam Wireless Camera – A$247 (was $329, 25% off)
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Ring Spotlight Cam Pro Battery – A$187 (was $329, 43% off)
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WUUK 2K Battery Operated Outdoor Security Camera – A$249.99 (was $369.99, 32% off)
Best smartphone and tablet deals
Best wearable tech deals
Best headphone and speaker deals
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Bose QuietComfort SC Wireless Noise Cancelling Headphones – A$232.74 (was $499, 53% off)
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Samsung Galaxy Buds2 Pro – A$239.99 (was $349, 31% off)
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Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless Headphones – A$258.40 (was $549, 53% off)
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Soundcore by Anker Q20i Hybrid Active Noise Cancelling Headphones – A$59.99 (was $119, 50% off)
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Sony WH-CH720N Noise Cancelling Wireless Headphones – A$220.96 (was $259, 15% off)
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Bose SoundLink Flex Bluetooth Speaker – A$151.95 (was $249.95, 39% off)
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JBL Charge 5 – Portable Bluetooth Speaker – A$123.50 (was $199.95, 38% off)
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JBL Flip Essential 2 Waterproof Speaker – A$79 (was $129.95, 39% off)
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Ultimate Ears Boom 3 Portable Bluetooth Speaker – A$131 (was $229.95, 39% off)
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Sony SRS-XB100 Wireless Bluetooth Travel Speaker– A$58(was $99.95, 41% off)
Best TV and home cinema deals
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LG 55″ QNED86 4K UHD LED Smart TV – A$899 (was $1,799, 50% off)
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Edifier R1280DB Powered Bluetooth Speakers – A$170 (was $199, 15% off)
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Panasonic 2.0 Channel 20W Compact Micro System – A$279 (was $369, 24% off)
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Gaimoo Mini Projector 1080p w/ 4K Support – A$119.99 (was $179, 33% off)
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XuanPad 1080p, 4K upscaled Mini Projector – A$128.99 (was $199, 36% off)
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YABER 4K (1080p native) Portable Projector – A$262.99 (was $428.98, 39% off)
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Philips 7100 Series 75″ 4K UHD LED Google Smart TV– A$1,290(was $1,799, 8% off)
Best laptop deals
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HP OmniBook Ultra AI 14” – A$1,799 (was $2,999, 40% off)
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MSI Thin 15 B13VE-2622AU Gaming Laptop – A$1,299 (was $1,799, 28% off)
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Apple 2024 MacBook Air 15-inch – A$2,197 (was $2,499, 12% off)
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Apple MacBook Air with M2 chip: 13.6-inch– A$1,199(was $1,599, 25% off) -
HP Chromebook 14a, 14″ HD Touchscreen 64GB– A$298(was $479, 38% off)
Best gaming deals
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With thousands of deals to trawl through, we’ve done the hard yards for you and tracked down the best deals on everything tech. You can also check out Amazon’s Prime Day page and have a scroll yourself.
You will need to be an Amazon Prime member to partake in the fun. If this isn’t you, fear not! You can grab a no-obligation 30-day free Prime trial and still get in on the action.
Happy hunting!
What is Amazon Prime Day? Is it different in Australia?
Prime Day is an annual online sales event, like Black Friday or Click Frenzy, but exclusive to Amazon Prime customers. It started as a one-day event in the US in 2015, but has since expanded to a five-day event that takes place across the globe, including Australia.
The first Prime Day Down Under happened in 2018, and has grown every year since. Australia is unique in that it gets one of the longest Prime “Days” in the world – this year’s event goes for a whopping five days, and because of our time zone, for us it’s 5 and a half. This is because Australian users get access to deals on both Amazon.com.au and the Amazon Global Store until the conclusion of the event in the US.
Additionally, the Shop Local Businesses store highlights a number of small Australian businesses that are also partaking in the Prime Day fun.
What will be on sale this Prime Day?
While it can be difficult to predict specific products that go on sale, Amazon has promised over 100,000 deals in Australia from big brands, small local brands, and everything in-between. The brands that Amazon has confirmed will be a part of Prime Day include Apple, Samsung, Lenovo, Bose, and more – a pretty hefty list!
Expect deals across all categories, including tech, such as TVs, Smart Home, Headphones, Gaming, as well as homeware, sports, fashion, beauty and more.
How to find the best deals during Prime Day in Australia
Amazon is often the cheapest place to find a particular product in Australia, but the really good deals can sometimes be a bit elusive. Of course, our list above features some of the very best tech deals available during Prime Day. However, you can also properly prepare for the event to make sure you truly get the most out of it.
Mashable Deals
Before Prime Day kicks off, you should put together a shopping list of items that you are after, then ‘wishlist’ those products on Amazon and set deal alerts on the Amazon app. This will ensure you don’t miss top deals on products that you especially want.
Ensure you are subscribed to Amazon Prime, or else you won’t be able to secure the products for the Prime Day deal price. A subscription costs A$6.99 per month, but there is a 30-day free trial available if you are just looking to take part in Prime Day and nothing else.
It is also worth spending a bit of time on Amazon and familiarising yourself with its interface and how it works. This can save you time and hassle when the deals start dropping (many of which are only available for a limited time).
How to shop on Amazon Prime Day
Of course, we’ll be keeping track of all the best Prime Day deals we spot in the lists above. But if you are keen to trawl through some deals yourself, here’s how to best shop during the event.
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Amazon app: If you’ll be out and about on Prime Day, download Amazon’s mobile app, log in, and you’ll be ready to shop wherever you are.
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Amazon Wishlist: Add items to your wishlist in the product interface to get alerted if it goes on sale.
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Ask Alexa: Why move at all? The main idea behind Amazon’s Echo devices is to sell you stuff, so Alexa is more than willing to help you add things to your cart.
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Amazon Global Store: Check out the best deals from the US and across the world on the Amazon Global Store.
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Support Local: Amazon’s Shop Local Business initiative highlights deals curated from small Aussie businesses across Amazon.
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#Prime #Day #Australia #deals #live
![Mercor’s Brendan Foody calls out Sequoia over ‘dual-pricing’ valuation tricks | TechCrunch
In recent days, founders and founders-turned-investors took to X to share horror stories about being mistreated by VCs. Their complaints ranged from VCs falling asleep during pitch meetings to investors suggesting a founder fire a co-founder.
Brendan Foody, co-founder of the AI talent platform Mercor, which was last valued at billion, went so far as to call out Sequoia, arguably one of the most elite VC firms in the world.
“The “sequoia scam” is worse than a single horror story,” Foody wrote on X. “in the last 6 [months] ive seen a half dozen rounds where sequoia invests in 2 tranches. everyone pretends they only did the higher valuation. founders misrepresent this to their employees & then shop it to angels too.”
TechCrunch has previously reported on VCs investing in the same round at different valuations. Under this mechanism, the lead VC firm invests a significant chunk of its capital at a lower, preferential valuation, while putting a much smaller portion of capital in at a drastically higher price. The massive “headline” valuation that gets announced manufactures the perception of a dominant market winner, masking the fact that the lead investor’s actual average entry price was significantly lower.
The disparity can be stark. For example, when the AI-driven IT helpdesk startup Serval announced a million Series B at a billion valuation, the announcement didn’t tell the whole story. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sequoia’s actual lowest entry point valued the company at just 0 million — less than half the headline figure. The gap between those two numbers is the gap between perception and reality that Foody is pointing at.
Serval isn’t alone. At Aaru, a startup that uses AI to simulate user behavior for market research, lead investor Redpoint backed the company at a 0 million valuation despite an announced billion headline price.
Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire pushed back on Foody’s characterization directly. “TBH I have seen some of this behavior but I think it’s unfair to call it the ‘Sequoia scam,’” Maguire wrote in response to Foody on X. “This has happened approximately five times during my seven years at Sequoia. What happens is other investors are willing to pay a high price for a hot company — usually AI — at multiples above what we’re willing to pay. So we try to decouple the company-building relationship with our partner from the capital, and this leads to two tranches at different valuations in close succession.
“I’m not aware of anything shady here,” Maguire continued, “but if you’ve seen it I’d love to know. VC is a repeated game, so it just doesn’t make sense for us to try to mislead people. And if anyone has, I’d love to know. And in general, congrats on the success of Mercor — it was a miss for us.”
Maguire’s response frames the practice as a market reality rather than a deliberate maneuver — Sequoia, he suggests, is simply unwilling to pay what competitors will pay for the hottest deals, so it structures its participation differently. Whether that explanation fully holds up depends on a question Maguire doesn’t address: what founders are telling the people who don’t already know about the lower tranche.
Although Sequoia appears to use this pricing mechanism most frequently, Foody acknowledged it isn’t the only firm using this tactic. And while the dual-pricing structures certainly inflate a startup’s perceived worth and help attract top talent, calling the practice a “scam” may be going too far.
That’s because employee stock options should theoretically be priced based on the blended value of all tranches — not the headline number — according to Jason Woo, partner in valuation and financial modeling at Armanino, whose firm provides the independent 409A appraisals startups use to set option prices. A 409A is supposed to reflect a company’s fair market value, giving employees a strike price that’s insulated from whatever valuation gets announced in a press release.
There’s a catch: 409A valuations are widely understood to skew low. Because a lower strike price means a smaller tax bill for the company, there is a structural incentive to keep that number down. The appraisal that’s supposed to protect employees from an inflated headline valuation is also, by design, not trying particularly hard to reach the top of the range.
The angel question is more complicated. Unlike employees, angels are writing checks, not receiving options. There is no independent appraiser standing between an angel investor and whatever number a founder chooses to share.
The dual-pricing structure is just one of way VCs and founders game the perception of success in a hyper-competitive market. Another, more pervasive tactic involves manipulating or outright overstating annual recurring revenue (ARR).
The VC Niko Bonatsos, a longtime veteran of General Catalyst who more recently founded Verdict Capital, addressed this issue during one of TechCrunch’s events in Athens last month. “We [at Verdict] mostly invest before metrics, before product, before the company [has fully taken shape] but I do have a past portfolio, and sometimes the conversations are telling. I’ll get a call or an email with a very high ARR number. I’ll think: I didn’t remember that company doing so well. So I reach out to the founder: ‘What happened? Why are the numbers so strong?’ And the answer is: ‘Oh yeah, it’s 365 times the revenue we made yesterday because one of our campaigns hit.’ So yeah, some of these terms have lost meaning.”
Foody declined to comment further. Sequoia didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
— With additional reporting from Connie Loizos
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Mercors #Brendan #Foody #calls #Sequoia #dualpricing #valuation #tricks #TechCrunchMercor,Sequoia Partners,Valuations](https://i2.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/GettyImages-1258486979.jpg?w=1024&ssl=1 "Mercor’s Brendan Foody calls out Sequoia over ‘dual-pricing’ valuation tricks | TechCrunch
In recent days, founders and founders-turned-investors took to X to share horror stories about being mistreated by VCs. Their complaints ranged from VCs falling asleep during pitch meetings to investors suggesting a founder fire a co-founder.
Brendan Foody, co-founder of the AI talent platform Mercor, which was last valued at billion, went so far as to call out Sequoia, arguably one of the most elite VC firms in the world.
“The “sequoia scam” is worse than a single horror story,” Foody wrote on X. “in the last 6 [months] ive seen a half dozen rounds where sequoia invests in 2 tranches. everyone pretends they only did the higher valuation. founders misrepresent this to their employees & then shop it to angels too.”
TechCrunch has previously reported on VCs investing in the same round at different valuations. Under this mechanism, the lead VC firm invests a significant chunk of its capital at a lower, preferential valuation, while putting a much smaller portion of capital in at a drastically higher price. The massive “headline” valuation that gets announced manufactures the perception of a dominant market winner, masking the fact that the lead investor’s actual average entry price was significantly lower.
The disparity can be stark. For example, when the AI-driven IT helpdesk startup Serval announced a million Series B at a billion valuation, the announcement didn’t tell the whole story. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sequoia’s actual lowest entry point valued the company at just 0 million — less than half the headline figure. The gap between those two numbers is the gap between perception and reality that Foody is pointing at.
Serval isn’t alone. At Aaru, a startup that uses AI to simulate user behavior for market research, lead investor Redpoint backed the company at a 0 million valuation despite an announced billion headline price.
Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire pushed back on Foody’s characterization directly. “TBH I have seen some of this behavior but I think it’s unfair to call it the ‘Sequoia scam,’” Maguire wrote in response to Foody on X. “This has happened approximately five times during my seven years at Sequoia. What happens is other investors are willing to pay a high price for a hot company — usually AI — at multiples above what we’re willing to pay. So we try to decouple the company-building relationship with our partner from the capital, and this leads to two tranches at different valuations in close succession.
“I’m not aware of anything shady here,” Maguire continued, “but if you’ve seen it I’d love to know. VC is a repeated game, so it just doesn’t make sense for us to try to mislead people. And if anyone has, I’d love to know. And in general, congrats on the success of Mercor — it was a miss for us.”
Maguire’s response frames the practice as a market reality rather than a deliberate maneuver — Sequoia, he suggests, is simply unwilling to pay what competitors will pay for the hottest deals, so it structures its participation differently. Whether that explanation fully holds up depends on a question Maguire doesn’t address: what founders are telling the people who don’t already know about the lower tranche.
Although Sequoia appears to use this pricing mechanism most frequently, Foody acknowledged it isn’t the only firm using this tactic. And while the dual-pricing structures certainly inflate a startup’s perceived worth and help attract top talent, calling the practice a “scam” may be going too far.
That’s because employee stock options should theoretically be priced based on the blended value of all tranches — not the headline number — according to Jason Woo, partner in valuation and financial modeling at Armanino, whose firm provides the independent 409A appraisals startups use to set option prices. A 409A is supposed to reflect a company’s fair market value, giving employees a strike price that’s insulated from whatever valuation gets announced in a press release.
There’s a catch: 409A valuations are widely understood to skew low. Because a lower strike price means a smaller tax bill for the company, there is a structural incentive to keep that number down. The appraisal that’s supposed to protect employees from an inflated headline valuation is also, by design, not trying particularly hard to reach the top of the range.
The angel question is more complicated. Unlike employees, angels are writing checks, not receiving options. There is no independent appraiser standing between an angel investor and whatever number a founder chooses to share.
The dual-pricing structure is just one of way VCs and founders game the perception of success in a hyper-competitive market. Another, more pervasive tactic involves manipulating or outright overstating annual recurring revenue (ARR).
The VC Niko Bonatsos, a longtime veteran of General Catalyst who more recently founded Verdict Capital, addressed this issue during one of TechCrunch’s events in Athens last month. “We [at Verdict] mostly invest before metrics, before product, before the company [has fully taken shape] but I do have a past portfolio, and sometimes the conversations are telling. I’ll get a call or an email with a very high ARR number. I’ll think: I didn’t remember that company doing so well. So I reach out to the founder: ‘What happened? Why are the numbers so strong?’ And the answer is: ‘Oh yeah, it’s 365 times the revenue we made yesterday because one of our campaigns hit.’ So yeah, some of these terms have lost meaning.”
Foody declined to comment further. Sequoia didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
— With additional reporting from Connie Loizos
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Mercors #Brendan #Foody #calls #Sequoia #dualpricing #valuation #tricks #TechCrunchMercor,Sequoia Partners,Valuations")
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