Matt Saraceni · Melbourne
Digital Product & AI leader. Every neighbourhood below is a chapter of my career - from the stadium representing the sports industry, the broadcast towers representing my time in media and the garage where I cut my teeth in startups.
▸ Click a building. Drag to explore.
// the map
The city is laid out chronologically: the oldest chapters sit at the back, today's work at the front. Everything you can click in the city is written out below — the whole story, in plain text, no scrolling through a skyline required.
Stop 01 · Welcome Plaza
Fifteen years turning strategy into apps and websites that millions of people actually use. I've led digital for a national sport, a broadcast network and a telco's innovation arm.
This city is my career. Every neighbourhood is a chapter, and every building inside one is a piece of the detail. Take the tour, or wander wherever you like.
Welcome Plaza · Town Hall
Matt Saraceni · Head of Digital Products, AFL · Melbourne
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: startup experience at Omny. Media streaming at LiSTNR. Long-horizon innovation at Telstra. Identity-led digital fandom at the AFL. Different sectors, same approach - find the real problem, design for the human at its centre, ship at scale reliably.
Welcome Plaza · The Monuments
Four monuments stand in the middle of the square
15+ years in digital. 5 brands digitally led. 8 sectors experienced — sport, broadcast and streaming, telco, digital audio, startups, media, ticketing, ecommerce. And a reach measured in millions of people a week.
Led a team of 15 across product, UX, data, commercial and live ops, with multi-million dollar capex and opex budgets. Also an investor and board director.
Welcome Plaza · The Post Office
The lights are on and someone's home
Open to conversations about bold digital products, senior leadership roles, board seats, and ideas worth backing.
Send a message ↓Stop 02 · AFL Stadium Quarter
For three years I owned the AFL's entire digital ecosystem — the website, the Live app, AFLW, Fantasy, Tipping, Marvel Stadium and all eighteen club platforms. It reached an all-time record of 2.2 million weekly app users.
It's the most senior digital role in Australian sport — a national audience, a live event calendar with no room for downtime, and an executive and board that the product strategy has to carry. That's why it sits at the front of the city.
AFL Stadium Quarter · The Stadium
Australian Football League · Aug 2023 — Jul 2026
Walked into 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.
The play: tie identity to behaviour with AFL ID, and rebuild the roadmap around transformation rather than match day.
I owned the entire ecosystem — afl.com.au, the AFL Live app, AFLW, Fantasy, Tipping, Marvel Stadium and all 18 club apps and websites. Delivered all-time records: 2.2M weekly app users, ~10% YoY growth — while shipping new apps and websites for all 18 clubs and launching vertical (16:9 → 9:16) video.
See the product ↗AFL Stadium Quarter · The Gatehouse
Scaling identity, and a logged-in state built for the app
AFL ID already existed when I walked in — the play was to roll it out at scale and tie identity to behaviour, backed by a first-party data foundation on Salesforce — CRM, Data 360 CDP and Marketing Cloud — with OneTrust consent management underneath it.
I created the logged-in state for the AFL Live app itself. Sign-in went from 17% to mandatory 100%. Anonymous millions became known fans — broadcasting to people and building the fan journeys that matter most to them.
I ran the product data team behind it — analysts and data product people — and owned the first-party data strategy end to end: what we collect, the consent it rests on, how it is modelled in the CDP, and what the business is allowed to do with it.
AFL Stadium Quarter · Club Row
Eighteen apps and eighteen websites — plus Tasmania
Every AFL club's app and website, rebuilt and shipped on a unified platform. Eighteen sets of stakeholders, eighteen sets of colours, one platform strategy — and Tasmania added as the nineteenth.
Platform unification is one of the six pillars of the product strategy I authored and took to board endorsement.
AFL Stadium Quarter · The Operations Building
15 people · six pillars · a $21M/year delivery partnership
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. Managed the $21M/year Telstra strategic delivery partnership (20+ account dedicated FTE partner employees) plus a persistent data agency — from board strategy through to live-game ops at millions concurrent.
AFL Stadium Quarter · AFLW Arena
Platform modernisation
Brought years up to date alongside the men's platform — the women's competition treated as a first-class digital product, reaching digital parity with the functionality of the men's elite competition platform rather than trailing it as an afterthought.
See the product ↗AFL Stadium Quarter · Marvel Stadium
Event discovery · ticketing pathways · venue experience
Marvel Stadium's digital presence sits inside the AFL digital portfolio: event discovery, ticketing pathways and the venue experience — the moment digital fandom turns into a person walking through a gate.
See the product ↗Stop 03 · The Workshop
Every product I've built has gone through the same loop. Find the real problem before committing to a solution. Shape it around the person who actually has to use it. Then build it alongside engineers, rather than handing them a spec over a fence.
The three buildings here are those three steps.
The Workshop · The Observatory
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.
The Workshop · The Design Studio
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.
The Workshop · The Build Site
Build with engineering, don't throw 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. Every time.
Stop 04 · AI Foundry
I don't sponsor AI work from a distance — I build with it. Enterprise agentic AI running over live match data on one side of the street, and things I've made myself on the other: a tram tracker, a live transcription app, a basketball game, a shop run by AI agents.
Building it myself is how I can tell a real capability from a demo, and a real estimate from a hopeful one.
AI Foundry · The Forge
Hands-on with AI, not sponsoring it from a distance
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. 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.
AI Foundry · The Agent Hive
Enterprise flagship · Azure · agentic AI over live data
The flagship enterprise AI initiative in my current portfolio: agentic AI working over live match data during games. I was hands-on in the build and mentored teams through internal workshops — not a sponsor watching from a distance.
Consumer-facing AI is one of the six pillars of the product strategy I authored and took to board endorsement.
AI Foundry · The Signal Room
Personal systems · multi-agent orchestration
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 actually have — which is the only way I trust a pattern before recommending it at work.
Designing what each agent owns, and where humans stay in the loop, is the whole discipline.
AI Foundry · The Court
Personal build · hardware meets screen
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.
AI Foundry · The Booth
Personal build · streaming speech-to-text + generation
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.
AI Foundry · Tram Stop 12
Personal build · deliberately tiny software
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 coding changes what's worth building at all.
AI Foundry · The Corner Store
Venture · what two people can run in 2026
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 the question of what a two-person business can actually run on now.
AI Foundry · The Drafting Office
Built tool · prioritisation with a spine
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 — so prioritisation started from a consistent quantitative baseline instead of whoever asked loudest.
AI Foundry · The Refinery
Recommendations, transcription and personalisation for 1M+ users
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.
I've since added the governance experience to take first-party data further — consent management, CDP architecture taken to board approval, and a working command of privacy reform — so the personalisation and the permission to do it are designed together rather than retrofitted.
Stop 05
Three industries, in order. I started in startups, moved into telco innovation and product management, then spent years in media and broadcast.
The next three neighbourhoods are that path — and in this city the oldest chapters sit furthest back.
Stop 06 · Startup Row
I was an early employee at Omny Studio — three co-founders, one big disruptive vision for how audio should work, and a first product that had arrived ahead of its market. We pivoted to digitising the entire audio workflow just as podcasting took off, reached fifty countries, and were acquired by Triton Digital.
I wore marketing, sales, customer success and product hats, often in the same day.
Startup Row · The Garage
Head of Content · early employee · Sep 2014 — Feb 2017
Walked into an early-stage startup whose B2C product had arrived too early for the market.
The play: pivot to digitising the entire audio workflow — capture, edit, monetise, publish — just as podcasting exploded.
Wore marketing, sales, customer success and product hats, often in the same day. Went deep with customers to understand the workflow they actually had, not the one we'd assumed.
See the product ↗Startup Row · The Container Yard
Through to acquisition by Triton Digital
From zero to deployment in 50+ countries with a team of three, powering audio networks worldwide, through to acquisition by Triton Digital. I represented Omny at Radio Days Europe and RAIN Summit Las Vegas.
Taking equity as a startup employee and watching venture money grow into a successful exit is the first half of a lesson. The second half is over in Exchange Square.
Stop 07 · The Labs
I launched Telstra Labs, rebranding what had been the closed-door Chief Technology Office into a long-horizon disruptive innovation function with a public face, and grew the team from five people to twelve. We ran real discovery against real customer problems across 5G, IoT, drones, VR, robotics and blockchain.
Some of it shipped — including container tracking that made receiving a shipment feel like watching an Uber approach.
The Labs · Innovation Dome
Senior Product Manager, Innovation & Incubation · Mar 2017 — Dec 2019
Walked into the Chief Technology Office — a closed-door internal technology team with no standing function for looking beyond the current planning horizon.
The play: establish Telstra Labs as the telco's long-horizon innovation function — an open space where emerging-tech technologists work alongside innovation and digital product professionals.
Scaled the team 5 → 12 and built the ecosystem engagement strategy connecting startups, universities and enterprise customers to the emerging-tech pipeline.
The Labs · The Drone Pad
5G · IoT · drones · VR/AR · robotics · blockchain
A portfolio across every emerging technology worth a serious look — run as discovery against real customer problems, never technology for its own sake. Desirability, feasibility and viability tested honestly, including being straight about when a project fails and why.
That discipline is the one I still apply to AI: the tool is never the point, the problem is.
The Labs · The Freight Yard
Product owner · IoT container tracking, taken to production
The provocation: what if receiving a shipment felt like watching an Uber approach? Container tracking built and taken into production — physical logistics given a consumer-grade real-time interface.
The Labs · The Data Vault
Anchored to the Consumer Data Right
A consumer platform giving people visibility, transparency and portability over their own data — the law degree and the product job meeting in one project. Built while the Consumer Data Right was still being drafted, and well ahead of the privacy reforms now reshaping how every Australian business handles personal information.
Stop 08 · Broadcast Bay
At Southern Cross Austereo I replatformed an entire radio business digital-first as LiSTNR, and took it from zero to more than a million signed-up users. Then at ARN I directed product for iHeartRadio in Australia.
Streaming, podcasts, personalisation, and the ad-tech that pays for all of it.
Broadcast Bay · LiSTNR Tower
Digital Product Director · Southern Cross Austereo · Jan 2020 — Dec 2022
Walked into a brief to build a youth-focused audio app, just as COVID collapsed traditional listening and podcast consumption surged.
The play: go bigger. Replatform the entire broadcast business, digital-first, as LiSTNR.
Took it from zero to 1M+ signed-up users — forced login, not downloads — on an in-house platform, with the first-party data stack built on GCP and Salesforce Data 360 driving personalisation. Directed AI/ML recommendations and transcription across it. Led LabX, a cross-functional discovery team incubating new products, with four direct reports leading larger squads.
See the product ↗Broadcast Bay · iHeart Studio
Digital Product Director · ARN · Feb 2023 — Jul 2023
Walked into a licensed US platform with no marketing activation journeys and limited say in the global roadmap.
The play: win locally. Localised the experience — CarPlay, Android Auto, local content and music representation — and built the metrics, analytics and AI strategy behind decisions across podcasts, streaming, smart speakers, YouTube and in-car. Hands-on lifecycle and engagement with Braze, with early strategic adoption of generative AI as it first arrived.
See the product ↗Broadcast Bay · The Billboard
Dynamic ad insertion · programmatic audio
Directed the monetisation layer under the listening: dynamic ad insertion including premium host-read formats, and programmatic audio via Triton and AdsWizz. Audience is only half a media business — the other half is what the audience is worth, and how honestly you can prove it.
Stop 09 · The Academy
A Bachelor of Laws with Honours and a Bachelor of Commerce, both from the University of Western Australia.
The commerce half means a roadmap in my hands always arrives with a business case attached. The law half taught me to work through a problem in detail — read the source, follow the reasoning, and build something that stands up to compliance scrutiny the first time rather than the third.
The Academy · The Law Library
University of Western Australia & University of Melbourne
Law taught me to read a regulation early rather than late. Twenty years on it's the most practically useful thing I own: 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.
The Academy · Clocktower Hall
University of Western Australia
Major in Management, minor in Marketing. The commercial half of the toolkit — the reason a product roadmap in my hands always has a P&L attached to it and a business case that survives contact with a CFO.
The Academy · Security Institute
Certified Information Security Manager · Wade Institute of Entrepreneurship
CISM — Certified Information Security Manager — course completed, accreditation pending. Security literacy for a product leader who owns identity systems. Plus VC Catalyst executive education at the Wade Institute (2019), the formal grounding behind the board work over in Exchange Square.
Stop 10 · Exchange Square
I took venture money as a startup employee, then deployed it as a corporate venture investor — backing Sonnant and Sourse, and taking a board seat at Sonnant. I also mentor media-tech founders through Startmate.
Having sat on both sides changes how you read a pitch, and how you govern one.
Exchange Square · The Exchange
Sonnant & Sourse · via SCA's corporate venture vehicle
Investments in two early-stage companies — Sonnant (audio transcription) and Sourse (AI/ML) — with a board seat at Sonnant providing corporate governance to founders navigating early scale. Genuine governance learning, not a vanity seat.
Having sat on both sides of the table changes how you read a pitch — and how you govern one.
Exchange Square · The Greenhouse
Advisor · mentoring media-tech founders
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.
Exchange Square · The Skydeck
Art Processors × Eureka Skydeck · a one-off contract
A fun one-off contract, and the odd one out in this city. I worked with design studio Art Processors on a choose-your-own-audio-adventure installation at Eureka Skydeck, made for kids exploring the space.
Creative direction, content and technology in a single brief — physical space, interaction design and audio branching logic, all at once. Not the day job, but the skills stack up.
// let's talk
Open to conversations about bold digital products, senior leadership roles, board seats, and ideas worth backing.
Drop a note and it lands straight in my inbox.
This city is the scenic route. The main site is the straightforward, fast-loading version — the same story, plus the full career timeline, with no skyline in the way.
Melbourne, Australia. Open to senior product leadership roles, board seats and ideas worth backing.