The former Seven West Media, Shazam, Optus executive Clive Dickens has launched Meliora Company – a global three-pronged consultancy that aims to accelerate AI enablement, innovation and creativity.
Aussie industry leaders, including Today the Brave co-founder Celia Wallace, former IAB chief Vijay Solanki, Future Media’s Ricky Sutton, and ex-Optus and News Corp executive Brendan Collogan have been enlisted as associates.
Dickens, who most recently served as VP of TV, content and product development at Optus, said he wants to help brands in the telecom, media, and technology (TMT) sectors “accelerate transformation through design-centric product solutions and accelerated AI enablement”.
The Meliora Company has three operating pillars:
● Meliora Advisory: A new boutique product dev. and strategic AI advisory.
● Meliora Ventures: Investing in early stage CTO lead technology startups.
● Meliora Creative: An IP fund championing rising creative industries talent.
It launches in three regions, with teams in Sydney for APAC, London for EMEA and Los Angeles for the Americas.
Meliora Advisory has already signed nine international ‘innovators’ from across digital video, digital audio, telecommunications and ecommerce.
In Australia, this includes former Today the Brave co-founder Celia Wallace, former IAB chief Vijay Solanki, Future Media’s Ricky Sutton, and ex-Optus and News Corp executive Brendan Collogan.
“I’ve been in Australia for about 12 years and have had three phenomenally enjoyable jobs, but myself and five business partners decided about a year ago that we really wanted to go off and shape a wider range of businesses across a wider set of jurisdictions in the categories where we have experience,” said Dickens, who is well known in this market for his role as chief digital officer at Seven.
“The reason for that is that we’re in this period of unprecedented technological change that we’ve not seen in the market since the arrival of the iPhone and app stores in 2007. In November 2022 when Gen AI started being available, the rate of change has accelerated enormously.
“It’s an incredibly exciting time to be in technology, and we see the fusion between human intelligence and artificial intelligence as something that really drives us.”
Australia’s AI sector: ‘A huge opportunity’
Meliora Advisory plans to work with a wide number of medium to larger-sized companies across the TMT space to accelerate their transformation. He said it is about “digital products in an AI enabled world”, using Gen AI to improve customer experience, client outcomes and shareholder returns.
The ventures business will target early stage start-ups to help get them off the ground.The Meliora Company already has invested in 11 start-ups, including Sonder, Tribe Holdings, Chronosphere, Edrolo and GXE.
Dickens believes that Australia has a vibrant and dynamic Gen AI startup sector.
“In the last six months, though, all of the money is moving towards what’s called the Gen AI application layer. So this isn’t about LLMs. These are the businesses that sit on the top of the LLMs and request billions and billions of tokens to do what we are all using across ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude or Perplexity,” he said.
“This is like going back to the 1990s and people saying to you, ‘I need a website’. Or going to 2008 and saying, ‘I need a mobile app’. Fast forward to 2025, everybody needs a Gen AI application layer product to actually allow their businesses to grow.
“There are hundreds and hundreds of Gen AI apps being launched every single month across the world, including some phenomenal products in Australia, and we expect to do a lot more investing in those amazing CTO founders over the coming months and years.”
The third pillar of Melioria Company is about investing in rising talent in the creative industries.
Dickens admits that AI technology will lead to fewer traditional jobs and wants his business to double down on especially talented creatives that do work AI cannot do.
“We wanted to make sure that we were investing in jobs that only humans can do,” he explained. “Whether it is writing a song that can make you cry, writing a book that will still be read in 100 years time, or a script that can move the narrative.
“It’s that real combination of human intelligence, artificial technology, art and science. And we’re trying to bring that together as a really unique service offering for our clients.”
