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Matt Saraceni Digital & AI Product Leader.

Taking product strategy end-to-end — building high-scale consumer products millions love. Sport Industry, Broadcast Media, Startup and Telco experience.

Melbourne, AustraliaHead of Digital Products
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Years in digital
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Brands digitally led
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Sectors served
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Users reached

From Strategy
to Screens.

I'm a digital and AI product leader obsessed with the intersection of technology, media, and people's passion — whether that's for their favourite team or their favourite show. Fifteen-plus years building digital experiences that scale, and turning product strategy into apps and websites used by millions (sometimes at the same time).

The through-line

Audio-on-demand at Omny. Streaming at LiSTNR. Long-horizon innovation at Telstra. Identity-led digital fandom at the AFL. Different sectors, same discipline — find the real problem, design for the person, ship at scale.

At the AFL I own the entire digital ecosystem — afl.com.au, the AFL Live app, AFLW, Fantasy, Tipping, Marvel Stadium and all 18 club apps and websites — reaching a record 2.2 million fans a week. I reshaped the 15-person product team to be fit for purpose and future-proof, authored the six-pillar product strategy, and created the logged-in state that took sign-in from 17% to 100%.

Before that I directed product for iHeartRadio at ARN, took LiSTNR from zero to a million signed-up users at SCA, stood up the long-term innovation function at Telstra Labs, and was an early employee at Omny Studio — deployed in 50+ countries, through to acquisition by Triton Digital.

I've sat on both sides of the investment table: taking equity as a startup employee, and growing that venture money to an eventual successful exit. Then deploying it from the other side as a corporate venture investor — investing in both Sonnant and Sourse, and taking a board seat at Sonnant.

Product Strategy AI & Machine Learning Org Design & Leadership Digital Transformation Consumer Platforms First-Party Data CDP & CRM Personalisation CX / UX Product Discovery Agile Delivery Vendor Management P&L & Finance Ad-Tech & Monetisation Omni-Channel Marketing Board Governance
Sport
Broadcast & Streaming
Telco
Digital Audio
Startups
Media
Ticketing
Ecommerce
Current Role
Head of Digital Products @ AFL
Based In
Melbourne, Australia
Team
15 people — product, UX, data, commercial, live ops
Budget Management
Multi-million dollar capex & opex budgets
Also
Investor and Board Director
Mode
Product Sherpa. Data Leader. ROI Campaigner.

Problem first.
Technology second.

High level: I run the same loop every time. Discovery to find the real problem, design to shape it around the person, then co-creation to build it alongside the coders.

STEP 01
🔍
Product Discovery

Find the real problem before committing to a solution. I ran LabX at SCA, a cross-functional discovery team turning ideas into incubated products. At Omny Studio I went deep with customers to understand the workflow they actually had, not the one we assumed. At the AFL I stood up a dedicated Transform the Product function so discovery had a protected lane of its own.

STEP 02
✏️
Design

Managing teams of UX, UI and human-centred design — working the double diamond properly rather than treating it as a diagram on a wall. Diverge to understand the problem, converge on a definition, diverge again on solutions, converge on the one worth building. Design is where the concept gets pressure-tested against real human behaviour.

STEP 03
🤝
Co-creation with Engineering

The best output comes from building with engineering, not throwing requirements over a fence. Joint ideation from the start, and tech spikes to de-risk the unknowns before anyone commits to an estimate. Engineers who helped shape the idea build a better version of it than engineers who were handed a spec.

01
Leaning into AI — design and product
AI belongs in both halves of the craft: in how products get designed and in what the product does for the user. I build with it hands-on, which is how I can tell a real capability from a demo — and where a model genuinely beats a simpler answer.
02
Data & analytics as a foundation
GCP, Adobe and first-party data — the measurement layer and the data foundations that make product decisions arguable with evidence rather than opinion.
03
Activating that data
Data is only worth what you do with it. Activation through CDP, CEP, CRM and ad-tech — turning a first-party data foundation into personalised experiences, lifecycle journeys and commercial return.
04
Regulatory fluency, especially privacy
A law background put to practical use: consent, transparency and portability by design, and a working command of privacy reform as it lands. Regulation read early is an opportunity; read late it's a rebuild.

Products at the heart
of Australian digital life.

Every one of these is live. Click through and have a look.

Brands digitally led
All 18 AFL club apps and websites — shipped, plus Tasmania

Judgment born
of actually building.

"

The most valuable product people are the ones who know what AI is good at, what it isn't, how to avoid the pitfalls, and how to write the prompt that actually gets the outcome. AI is a solution. What matters more is the problem you're pointing it at.

Personal Build 🏀
Hoops4

A prototype arcade game bridging physical and digital: sensors in basketball hoops driving a Connect Four-style two-player competition on a TV screen. Hardware input, real-time game state, screen output — designed and built end-to-end.

Sensors / IoTReal-timeGame logic
Personal Build 🎙️
Live Transcription → AI Commentary

An app that transcribes live audio and turns it into an AI commentary feed in real time. Built to test where the latency and quality ceilings actually sit when you push speech-to-text and generation together.

Speech-to-textStreamingLLM generation
Personal Build 🚋
Personalised Tram Tracker

A tram tracker built for exactly one station — mine — and tuned to my actual walking speed. A deliberately tiny piece of software that a general-purpose app could never justify building. That's the point.

AI-assisted codingTransit APIsPersonalisation
Venture 🛒
AI-Built E-Commerce Venture

Helping a friend get a DTC e-commerce business off the ground — I built the Shopify stack, holding pages and email flows, plus five Slack-based AI agents running day-to-day operational tasks. A working answer to what a two-person business can actually run on in 2026.

Slack AI agentsShopifyEmail automationOps agents
Personal System 🛰️
Agentic Job-Market Scanning

A set of AI agents that continuously scan the job market, filter roles against my criteria and surface what's genuinely worth a look. Agent orchestration applied to a real problem I have — which is the only way I trust a pattern before recommending it at work.

Multi-agentScheduled runsFiltering & ranking
Platform Scale 🎧
AI/ML at LiSTNR Scale

Directed AI/ML recommendations and transcription across a platform serving over a million signed-up users — personalisation driven off a first-party data stack on GCP with Salesforce Data 360. Production ML with real consequences, not a pilot.

Recommender systemsTranscriptionGCPCDP
Built Tool 🗺️
Digital Roadmap & RICE Scoring

A tool I built to customise and communicate the digital product roadmap to executive and external stakeholders. Separately, I used AI to parse an intake form and produce a RICE score for new feature requests from internal stakeholders, so prioritisation started from a consistent quantitative baseline instead of whoever asked loudest.

Built toolGitHubRICE prioritisationIntake automation
Where my AI capability actually sits
🧭
Problem selection over tool enthusiasm
The Telstra Labs discipline applied to AI: desirability, feasibility and viability tested honestly before anyone writes a prompt.
🤖
Agent design & orchestration
From five Slack agents running e-commerce ops to enterprise agentic AI over live match data — designing what each agent owns and where humans stay in the loop.
AI-assisted building & rapid prototyping
Tram tracker, transcription app, Hoops4, a full Shopify stack. I ship working software with AI, which is why I can tell a real estimate from a hopeful one.
📐
ML product at platform scale
Recommendations, transcription and personalisation in production for a million-plus users — including the data foundations that make any of it possible.
🔐
Data, consent & governance
First-party data strategy, OneTrust consent management and CDP architecture taken to board approval. Privacy reform fluency. CISM course completed (accreditation pending).
🎓
Enablement & mentoring
Mentoring teams through internal AI hackathons and bringing product people up the curve — capability that stays after I leave the room.

What I walked into,
and the change I created.

🏉
Head of Digital Products
AFL — Australian Football League
● Aug 2023 — Present
A portfolio reaching millions of fans a week, but anonymous — 0% signed in, ~90% of engagement locked inside the Match Centre, and AFLW and the 18 club platforms years out of date.
Tie identity to behaviour with AFL ID, and rebuild the roadmap around transformation rather than match day.
  • Reshaped a 15-person team to be fit for purpose and future-proof — product, UX, data & analytics, commercial and live operations — splitting it into Transform and Run arms with synced roadmaps and a board-endorsed three-year view. Comfortable structuring teams around AI workflows.
  • Authored the six-pillar product strategy: data, personalisation, UX modernisation, club strategy, platform unification and consumer-facing AI.
  • Created the logged-in state — AFL ID and a first-party data foundation on Salesforce (CRM, Data 360 CDP, Marketing Cloud) with OneTrust consent management — taking sign-in from 17% to mandatory 100%.
  • Delivered all-time records: 2.2M weekly users, ~10% YoY growth — while shipping new apps and websites for all 18 clubs and launching vertical (16:9 → 9:16) video.
  • Managed the $21M/year Telstra strategic delivery partnership (22 partner engineers) plus a persistent data agency, from board strategy through to live-game ops at millions concurrent.
Product LeadershipOrg Design First-Party DataSalesforce CDP Agentic AIIdentityLive Ops
📱
Digital Product Director
ARN — iHeartRadio AU
Feb 2023 — Jul 2023
A licensed US platform with no marketing activation journeys and limited say in the global roadmap.
Win locally — adapt the product to Australia and make every decision data-driven.
  • Localised the experience — CarPlay, Android Auto, local content and music representation.
  • Built the metrics, analytics and AI strategy behind decisions across podcasts, streaming, smart speakers, YouTube and CarPlay.
  • Hands-on lifecycle and engagement with Braze, with early strategic adoption of generative AI as it first arrived.
Licensed PlatformsAdobe Analytics BrazeIn-Car
🎧
Digital Product Director, LiSTNR
Southern Cross Austereo
Jan 2020 — Dec 2022
A brief to build a youth-focused audio app, just as COVID collapsed traditional listening and podcast consumption surged.
Go bigger. Replatform the entire broadcast business, digital-first, as LiSTNR.
  • Took LiSTNR from zero to 1M+ signed-up users (forced login, not downloads) on an in-house platform, building the first-party data stack on GCP with Salesforce Data 360 driving personalisation.
  • Directed AI/ML recommendations, transcription and digital audio ad-tech — dynamic ad insertion including premium host-read formats, and programmatic audio via Triton and AdsWizz.
  • Led LabX, a cross-functional discovery team (CX, UX, product) incubating new products. 4 direct reports leading larger cross-functional squads.
  • Investor in Sonnant (audio transcription) and Sourse (AI/ML) through SCA's corporate venture vehicle, taking a board seat at Sonnant.
ReplatformingAI/ML Personalisation Dynamic Ad InsertionProgrammatic AudioDiscovery Teams
📡
Senior Product Manager, Innovation & Incubation
Telstra — Telstra Labs
Mar 2017 — Dec 2019
The Chief Technology Office — a closed-door internal technology team, with no standing function for looking beyond the current planning horizon.
Establish "Telstra Labs" as the telco's long-term horizon innovation function — an open space where emerging-tech technologists work alongside innovation and digital product professionals.
  • Built the long-horizon innovation function and its portfolio across emerging technology — 5G, IoT, drones, VR/AR, robotics and blockchain — running discovery against real customer problems rather than technology for its own sake.
  • One project in that portfolio: a consumer personal-data platform giving people visibility, transparency and portability over their own data, anchored to the Consumer Data Right.
  • Product owner for Connected Supply Chain (IoT), with container tracking taken into production. The provocation: what if receiving a shipment felt like watching an Uber approach?
  • Scaled the innovation team 5 → 12 and built the ecosystem engagement strategy connecting startups, universities and enterprise customers to the emerging-tech pipeline.
Long-Horizon InnovationEmerging TechIoT Consent & Data RightsOpen InnovationIncubation
🚀
Head of Content — early employee through to exit
Omny Studio
Sep 2014 — Feb 2017
An early-stage startup whose B2C product had arrived too early for the market.
Pivot to digitising the entire audio workflow — capture to publish — just as podcasting exploded.
  • Grew from zero to deployment in 50+ countries with a team of three, through to acquisition by Triton Digital.
  • Wore marketing, sales, customer success and product hats — often in the same day.
  • Represented Omny at Radio Days Europe and RAIN Summit Las Vegas.
Startup 0→1Pivot Customer DiscoveryExitGlobal Deployment

I've sat on both sides
of the table.

Took venture money as a startup employee. Deployed it as a corporate venture investor. That perspective changes how you read a pitch — and how you govern one.

⚖️
Investor and Board Director
Sonnant & Sourse
Investments in two early-stage companies — Sonnant (audio transcription) and Sourse (AI/ML) — through Southern Cross Austereo's corporate venture vehicle, with a board seat at Sonnant providing corporate governance to founders navigating early scale. Genuine governance learning, not a vanity seat.
Investment & Governance
🌱
Advisor, Media Fellowship
Startmate
Mentoring media-tech founders on content and growth strategy through Startmate's community-driven media fellowship — helping founders build at the intersection of content, technology and product.
Mentoring
🎡
Interactive Audio Installation
Art Processors × Eureka Skydeck
Worked with design studio Art Processors on a choose-your-own-audio-adventure installation at Eureka Skydeck, designed for kids exploring the space. Physical space, interaction design and audio branching logic in one experience.
Creative Tech
💡
VC Catalyst Executive Education
Wade Institute of Entrepreneurship
Executive education in venture capital and early-stage investment — the formal grounding behind the board work. I remain actively interested in the investment space.
2019

What I bring
to the table.

Strategy to Screen, at Scale

I take product strategy all the way through to shipped software — 0→1 and 1→n. Board-endorsed strategy documents on one end, live-game operations at millions concurrent on the other.

🧬
First-Party Data & Personalisation

Built identity and data foundations twice over — AFL ID from 17% to 100% sign-in, and LiSTNR's forced-login platform from zero. CDP architecture, consent management and the personalisation that data unlocks.

🏗️
Org Design & Team Building

Reshaped a 15-person team to be fit for purpose and future-proof when the old shape stopped working — including structuring around AI workflows. Scaled an innovation team 5→12. I design the org around the outcome.

📡
Media, Streaming & Ad-Tech

Deep across the full content-to-consumer stack: streaming platforms, podcasting, sports media, digital publishing — plus dynamic ad insertion, premium host-read formats and programmatic audio.

🔬
Innovation & Incubation

Ran open innovation spaces, incubation projects and startup ecosystems. Desirability, feasibility and viability tested honestly — including being straight about when a project fails and why.

🤝
Partnerships & Vendor Management

Managed a $21M/year strategic delivery partnership with 22 partner engineers, plus agencies and platform vendors. Getting outcomes from teams you don't directly employ is its own discipline.

The stack I've worked in
Data & Analytics
GA4Adobe AnalyticsGCPSnowflakeGoogle Tag Manager
CRM · CDP · Martech
Salesforce CRMSalesforce Data 360Marketing CloudUnify SDKBrazeOneTrust
Ad-Tech
Google Ad ManagerTritonAdsWizzDynamic Ad InsertionProgrammatic Audio
AI & ML
Agentic AIRecommender SystemsSpeech-to-TextLLM IntegrationAI-Assisted Coding
E-Commerce
ShopifyBigCommerceStackSports

The foundations
behind the work.

📊
Bachelor of Commerce
University of Western Australia
Major in Management · Minor in Marketing
⚖️
Bachelor of Laws — 2A Honours
University of Western Australia & University of Melbourne
Law
🔐
CISM — Course Completed
Certified Information Security Manager
Accreditation pending

Got something
interesting? Let's build it.

Open to conversations about bold digital products, senior leadership roles, board seats, and ideas worth backing.

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