Brook Warner · Product & Technology Leader

01

How I operate

01 / See it

I take in more than most: not just customers and users, but a competitor's pivot, a podcast, the real job nobody's named, a hunch of my own. Out of all of it I find the single thread, and the move it points to.

When the agentic world started to proliferate, with every provider racing to ship another agent and another tool, I could see it becoming a race to the bottom we were not going to win. So I made the case for a different position. Not another agent, but the embodiment layer that sits on top of all of them. That reframe became the company's strategy, and the exit proved the call right.

When a children's education charity that had run for 80 years was closing at the very start of my career, the boldest idea in the room was a website. I saw that the real job was to make the learning genuinely fun, and the way to do it was a game that taught through its mechanics rather than lecturing. That became The Aetherlight, and the start of my product career.

02 / Say it

Most teams have a quiet part that no one quite says. I have found that naming it, plainly and with the evidence to back it, is often what frees a group to move. I do it in a way that brings people with me rather than putting them on the defensive, so the hard thing becomes a shared decision instead of an argument.

When the company was set on the buyer as the customer, I made the case that the end user was the one who decided whether the product worked. Rather than leave it as an opinion, I led the build of a consumer product to prove it. It reached millions of conversations and reshaped where the company invested.

When we were a third of the way into a hard enterprise deadline, it was clear the scope that had been specced would not all make it. I told the CEO plainly that we had to cut the feature she cared about most, and brought three options rather than a verdict so the call was hers to make with me. We shipped on time.

03 / Build it

I reconcile the worlds that have to agree before anything ships. The commercial case, the technical reality, the people, the politics. Seeing it and building it are different skills, and doing both is the rare part. I go hands-on, in the code or the design, so it is a real thing and not a deck, and I hold the thread from the top-level down to the detail.

When the mandate was a single line, “move upmarket”, I owned everything after it. Built the enterprise product strategy, brought the executive team along, and shipped Digital Workforce with a small team in five months. Five enterprise customers and the ServiceNow Innovation Award 2025 followed.

When every digital avatar was a bespoke six-month build by a team of artists, I owned the retool that broke the bottleneck. I codified what they did by hand into a self-serve generative stack, with the engine, business logic, and QA around it, so a new avatar went from months of craft to minutes of configuration.

04 / Guide it

I take people through the ambiguity to a place they could not reach on their own. The builders get a route and the nerve to take the first step. The people backing it get the confidence to keep backing it. I have hiked enough real trails to know the feeling I am managing. You cannot see the top, the weather is turning, and someone has to keep the group moving and calm.

When the avatar pipeline needed five squads and the company would not add product headcount, I deputised an engineer in each one as a product owner. I coached them weekly, handed over real ownership of the backlog and the calls, and kept the strategy myself. They grew into leaders, several carried it into later careers, and production went from a handful of avatars a year to effectively unlimited.

When the CTO left, I became the engineering team's anchor, holding them together and keeping the roadmap on track.

02 / Experience

Soul Machines

Lifelike digital people. Avatars with a proprietary digital brain, connected to generative AI.

Jan 2025 to Jun 2026

Director of Product

Led Digital Workforce, an enterprise AI agent platform, from zero to one. Five enterprise customers in five months, and the ServiceNow Innovation Award 2025.
Owned the full product portfolio, from a consumer app to the enterprise platform and its API layer.
Drove the product and technical case behind the 2026 exit.
Became the engineering team's anchor when the CTO left, keeping the roadmap on track.

Jan 2024 to Jan 2025

Group Product Manager

Built a consumer AI product that reached millions of conversations and kept investors at the table.
Sharpened the self-serve product's unit economics: free-to-paid 27% to 42%, CAC $2,018 to $278, MRR $105k to $137k.
Grew three product managers across growth, monetisation, and core product.

Dec 2020 to Dec 2023

Product Manager / Senior Product Manager

Pivoted the company from sales-led to product-led growth, with self-serve signup and in-product onboarding. My throughline was activation: I moved the aha moment into onboarding, so people felt the value before setup friction could lose them.
Re-tooled the entire avatar production pipeline into a self-serve generative stack. A six-month bespoke build became a fifteen-minute self-serve flow, capacity went from six a year to thousands, and signups reached 114k.
Led the build as the sole PM across five to six squads, deputising engineers as product owners rather than waiting on headcount that was not coming.
Delivered regulated enterprise AI for JPMorgan Chase, Pfizer, and the World Health Organization.

Jan 2018 to Dec 2020

Senior Project Manager

Won 15 enterprise contracts worth around $4M, delivered 100% on time across 2019 and 2020.
Brought agile value streams into an organisation that had never worked that way. Delivery waste down around 25%.

Warner and the Wild

Independent AI product and enablement practice, embedding with leadership teams.

2025 to Present

Principal

Ran an AI Foundations engagement for the CSL Group leadership team and built a portfolio of production agents hands-on.

Scarlet City Studios

Venture-backed game studio building learning games that teach through play.

Mar 2012 to Dec 2017

Co-Founder & Head of Studio Operations

Raised $5M in seed funding and grew the studio to 35 people. Directors of art, technical, design, and sound reported to me; I owned culture, operations, process, and product.
Shipped The Aetherlight, an online action-adventure MMO on iOS, Android, and desktop, to 30,000 players at 69% Day-30 retention, twice the industry average.
Shipped two augmented-reality museum games in Washington DC alongside it, three titles in all.

Education

MSc Medical Science (Microbiology), First Class Honours, University of Auckland.

03 / Selected work

Digital Workforce

Enterprise AI platform with ServiceNow, Salesforce, and Zapier integrations.

Product

Creator Studio

PLG platform taken from activation to retention and enterprise readiness.

Product

Consumer AI Gallery

Consumer reference product proving real value for digital people.

Product

The Aetherlight

Learning-game MMO. 69% Day-30 retention, twice the industry average.

Product

cmd deck

Task management built for coordinating AI agents via MCP.

Build

Wildcraft

AI-automated web design studio.

Build

04 / What people say

I started at Soul Machines in 2018 at the same time as Brook, and from day one he's been my product owner and product director. Over the years, I've learned more about engineering from him than from many engineers - not the syntax and tools, but the things that truly make software successful. Brook has a rare ability to ask the right questions without prescribing the answers, forcing you to ground solutions in the customer's story, the data, and the 'why.' What makes him stand out most is his ability to be a connector - not just glue between teams, but growing the team into becoming part of the solution. He can operate at 10,000 feet strategically, then jump into a design sprint, prototyping in code or Figma to bridge gaps. He has an uncanny ability to grok things across disciplines, quickly bridging knowledge gaps that would otherwise slow a project down. Brook's influence has been one of the biggest factors in my growth as an engineer - great product leadership isn't about having all the answers, it's about creating conditions for the team to find the right ones.

Reuben SmithContract Developer, 7 years alongside Brook at Soul Machines

I'm fortunate to have collaborated with Brook on a number of projects over the years and have come to trust him as the person to drive effective change. He's quick to grasp new ideas and distil them to wider audiences. His decisions are deeply rooted in strategic vision and substantiated by diligent market research. He can balance the needs of users, customers, stakeholders, engineers, and designers. Brook is a brilliant product manager and a natural people leader. I'd be delighted to work with him whatever the project.

Lia PoolSenior Experience Engineer, Soul Machines

I would commend Brook for any role where you are looking for a combination of creative problem solving & team & project management. In my capacity as a strategic advisor to Scarlet City Studios, I worked alongside Brook in his role as Producer for 2 years. He is diligent, possesses a really broad range of capability & thrives in both structured & unstructured situations. Brook has that quality that you look for in every employee but rarely find; the ability to proactively identify & take responsibility wherever it's needed. He gets my vote.

Mitch OlsonStrategic advisor, Scarlet City Studios

I had the pleasure of working under Brook's supervision in a variety of projects at Scarlet City Studios. Brook is a natural leader and mentor, and created a space where I was able to grow and explore what leadership in a game studio meant to me. I credit Brook for the many good qualities that I show in my leadership in roles that I've held since Scarlet City Studios, and thoroughly recommend him for any role that would see him mentoring more junior staff.

Ludmila Miranda-DukoskiGame Programmer, RocketWerkz

05 / Contact

Open to senior product and technology leadership roles.

Auckland-based. Hybrid, onsite, or remote.

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