>_ MRWdigital

Strategy, operations, and agentic AI — carried from the decision through delivery.

MRW Digital is a practice where the strategy and the software that delivers it come from one place: it sets the operating model, writes the code, and prices operational work to unit cost.

Portfolio

Praxis

A weekly operating-decision tool for small businesses

A decision layer that consolidates a small business's operating data into one weekly brief. Built on Next.js and Postgres with an Anthropic- and Gemini-backed assistant that surfaces a recommendation only once the underlying data supports it. Multi-tenant; deployed.

Next.js 16React 19PostgresAnthropic + GeminiMulti-tenant
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Social Spark

An AI product taken from concept to paid release

A live, monetized AI application. From a brand kit it generates social campaigns, images, and video scripts, priced per action, with authentication, a credit ledger, and an admin console behind it. Built on Next.js, Genkit, and Firebase; deployed and revenue-generating.

Next.js 15GenkitFirebaseBilling / Credits
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Operating chief for an AI education platform

Founding COO of an EdTech venture · scaling a talent operating system toward a university pilot

Founding chief operating officer for an early-stage AI EdTech venture — a student-success platform of 46 capabilities across seven modules, aligned to state workforce-development policy. The work spanned the operating model to scale a founding team, a market-sizing and pricing analysis benchmarked across five platform categories, a cross-board CRM and investor-pipeline audit, and the evidence brief behind a research-university pilot.

Operating ModelPricing Strategy5-Yr ModelCRM / PipelineSector: EdTech
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Patent portfolio commercialization

An IP-commercialization engagement in agri-tech

A patent-landscape and claim-element analysis for a food-supply-chain client, establishing the scope of the portfolio's protection. The findings were translated into commercial positioning — freshness sensing, devices, and network claims framed as a single enterprise narrative for prospective buyers. Client identity withheld.

IP DiligencePatent LandscapePositioningGTM
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Music-tech platform consolidation

A board-ready strategy for an independent-artist platform

An independent-artist music platform had grown into eight separate point systems, each its own source of truth. The mandate was a board-ready strategy to collapse that fragmentation into one platform — designed from the artist backward, writing the future-state press release first and letting the ideal experience dictate the architecture. Confidential client; identity withheld, shown by sector.

Working BackwardsTarget Operating ModelValue EngineeringRoadmapSector: Music-Tech
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DEPLOYED

Praxis

A WEEKLY OPERATING-DECISION TOOL FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

A decision layer that consolidates a small business's operating signals — commerce, inventory, calendar, email, and content — into one weekly brief. An Anthropic- and Gemini-backed assistant surfaces a recommendation only once the underlying data supports it. Built on Next.js and Postgres; multi-tenant and deployed.

Next.js 16React 19PostgresAnthropic + GeminiMulti-tenant
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DEPLOYED · MONETIZED

Social Spark

AI CONCEPT TAKEN ALL THE WAY TO A PAID, LIVE PRODUCT

A live, monetized AI product — taken from concept all the way to a paid, deployed release, built solo. The story below traces what that actually took: the gap between a demo and a product, the call to reject freeform chat for structured tool-forms, and the full commercial stack — auth, credits, billing, admin — that makes it a business. The running product follows.

Next.js 15GenkitFirebaseBilling / Credits
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FRACTIONAL COO

Operating chief for an AI education platform

FOUNDING COO · OUTCOME-FIRST PRODUCT STRATEGY FOR A UNIVERSITY PILOT

Founding chief operating officer for an early-stage AI EdTech venture. The distinctive work was the product method: rather than starting from features, the platform was designed by working backwards from the outcomes the business needed — a self-reinforcing loop between students, the university, and employers — to the user experience each outcome required, to the minimum platform that could produce them.

The exhibit below traces that reasoning against a real institutional analysis — Central Connecticut State University — using its public IPEDS and College Scorecard figures. Alongside it, the engagement spanned the operating model to scale a founding team, market sizing and pricing across EdTech categories, and a cross-board CRM and investor-pipeline audit.

Operating ModelPricing StrategyGTMCRM / PipelineSector: EdTech
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IP DILIGENCE

Patent portfolio commercialization

IP DILIGENCE → A NARRATIVE RETAILERS WOULD BUY

Took a food-supply-chain client's patent portfolio and made it sellable to retailers. A patent-landscape and claim-element analysis established what the IP actually defended; from there, the commercial positioning turned freshness sensing, devices, and network claims into one enterprise narrative a buyer could act on. Demo concept shown; client identity withheld.

IP DiligencePatent LandscapePositioningGTM
concept demo
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TRANSFORMATION STRATEGY

Music-tech platform consolidation

A FRAGMENTED MUSIC-TECH ESTATE, REIMAGINED AS A UNIFIED PLATFORM

An independent-artist music platform had grown into eight separate point systems, each its own source of truth. The mandate was a board-ready strategy to collapse that fragmentation into one platform — and the method was the discipline that made it work: design from the artist backward, writing the future-state press release first and letting the ideal experience dictate the platform. The exhibit below traces that story end to end.

Working BackwardsTarget Operating ModelValue EngineeringRoadmapSector: Music-Tech

Services

Four defined engagements. Each is a body of work with a clear mandate and scope — taken on as a package, not an open-ended retainer.

Investment & Transaction Diligence

Start this engagement

The decision before the money moves — for acquirers, boards, and investors, an independent read on whether the deal holds up, written to stand up in the data room.

ENGAGEMENT COVERS

  • Technical diligence on the technology and architecture
  • Commercial diligence and the real cost to run it
  • Value case and TCO model for the data room
  • A defensible go / no-go recommendation

IT Estate Modernization

Start this engagement

Bringing an aging technology estate forward as a coordinated transformation — not a stack of projects — so the change holds after the program ends.

ENGAGEMENT COVERS

  • Portfolio disposition — retiring and rationalizing what no longer earns its place
  • Executive visioning and product innovation
  • Gen AI roadmap
  • Operating-model redesign
  • A dedicated data & analytics workstream

Transformation & Operational Leadership

Start this engagement

An embedded executive — Chief Transformation Officer or COO — for organizations of any size carrying change that has to land.

ENGAGEMENT COVERS

  • Running the operating model the strategy demands
  • Holding the program together across the business
  • Accountability for the result alongside the team

Agentic AI & Value Engineering

Start this engagement

AI and agentic spend earns its business case before it earns a platform — and both get built.

ENGAGEMENT COVERS

  • The value case that justifies the investment
  • The production system that delivers it
  • Cost-to-value engineering across the build

See the work in Portfolio.

Field Notes

Total cost of ownership

Drag the four inputs; net savings updates live. Open it for the full model.

$1.2M
$700K
$900K
5 yrs
NET SAVINGS · OVER HORIZON · ILLUSTRATIVE $1.6M
OPEN THE CALCULATOR ›
BACK TO FIELD NOTES

Total cost of ownership

Model a transition case over your own horizon. Set today's annual run cost, the target run cost, what the move costs once, and how many years you hold it. The tool returns cumulative cost on each path, net savings, and the year the investment pays back. Figures are illustrative — drag the inputs to your own.

NET SAVINGS OVER HORIZON

$1.5M

after the one-time transition cost

$1.2M
$700K
$900K
5 yrs
Stay — cumulative
Move — cumulative (incl. transition)

The transition cost is paid once; the lower run rate compounds every year.

MODEL: stay = current × years · move = transition + target × years · net = stay − move · payback = transition ÷ annual saving · illustrative ranges

BACK TO LIBRARY

About

A BUILDER IN THE BOARDROOM

Matt Wagner

The foundation was built in the United States Marine Corps, leading as a Non-Commissioned Officer. That experience forged a baseline that scales to any environment.

Take responsibility for the mission, earn the team's trust, own the outcome.

From there came two decades driving enterprise transformation. Before AWS, that track record spanned building a scratch P&L as an agency owner, turning around a $95M global program delivery at State Farm, serving as Head of IT Strategy at AMD to build their first data-driven investment portfolio, and coaching vice presidents through AT&T's massive agile network transformation.

That path culminated at Amazon Web Services. As a Senior Advisory Consultant and Transformation Executive, I guided enterprise leaders through complex cloud and operating-model shifts. The mandate was to navigate the C-suite to secure the decision, tie the investment to measurable FinOps outcomes, and then sit at the table with the teams delivering the architecture.

Today, through MRW Digital, I build the operating model and write the software that runs it. By working backwards from the outcomes the business needs — often writing the future-state press release first — I let the ideal experience dictate the platform architecture. One accountable lead sits on every engagement, with a global development team and former AWS architecture colleagues building alongside. Beyond the practice, I am a founder and an investor with an ownership stake in an early-stage venture, and a strategic advisor to an AI company.

CERTIFICATIONS

AMAZON WEB SERVICES

  • Solutions Architect — Associate
  • SysOps Administrator — Associate
  • Cloud Practitioner — Foundational

DELIVERY & QUALITY

  • Project Management Professional (PMP)
  • Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)
  • Lean Six Sigma — Black Belt

EDUCATION

B.A., Lincoln College — Normal, IL · with Honors

Contact

START WITH THE HARDEST DECISION

One conversation is usually enough to know whether there's a fit — and where to start. Bring the decision you keep turning over: a transformation that has stalled, a complex deal that needs shaping, or an AI investment you're not yet sure how to justify.

AUSTIN, TX

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