Experience
What I’ve Built
When I joined Native Instruments in 2017, the company didn't work with influencers at all. I argued for it during my hiring, and they trusted me to build the whole function from nothing. Here's everything I built, ran, and grew over more than nine years.
Building and scaling the function
The foundation of it all: the program, the systems behind it, and the revenue they drive.
Grew the affiliate program from zero to nearly €11M in tracked revenue.
Launched affiliate programs for two additional brands (iZotope, Plugin Alliance) and consolidated all three onto a single platform in 2025, growing revenue 31% year over year.
Created the entire infrastructure behind it: affiliate tracking, recruitment, briefing, and process.
Negotiated and structured hundreds of creator partnerships, from one-off campaigns to long-term deals.
Made creators part of every campaign the company ran, built into everything we did, not bolted on.
Ran the whole function single-handedly, across Native Instruments and its sister brands (iZotope, Plugin Alliance, Brainworx): every relationship, brief, campaign, and payout.
The network
Everything I've built runs on relationships, and the network behind it is the part I'm proudest of. None of it was bought or scraped. Every relationship in it, I built myself.
Built a network of 250+ professionals across the music industry, one person at a time: producers, DJs, sound designers, content creators, recording and touring artists, music directors, studio engineers, and film, TV, and game composers.
Real, long-term relationships, not a contact list: many spanning the better part of a decade, some longer still.
Generated thousands of pieces of creator content, much of it evergreen and still converting years later.
Impact and influence
The revenue was only half of it. The bigger shift was changing how the company (and the wider industry) treats creators in the first place.
Made the internal case that turned creator marketing into a core channel, prioritised for budget and product ahead of other channels.
Helped pioneer creator partnerships in music tech, the approach much of the industry now follows.
Got Native Instruments hardware onto the stages of major touring acts (through industry relationships built over years, even though Artist Relations wasn’t part of my role), earning visibility across stadium screens, music videos, live broadcasts, and social media that no paid placement can buy.
"Mick is the reason I started using Native Instruments hardware and software in my live rigs. He was always on hand to make sure I had the keyboards I needed, wherever I was in the world. A true professional, a great person, and after working together for years, someone I'd call a genuine friend."
Beyond the campaigns
The clearest sign the relationships were real: creators kept showing up in ways no contract ever asked them to.
Grew the network largely by referral: creators vouching for me to other creators, which is how trust actually travels in this world.
Earned the kind of loyalty where creators defended the brand unprompted, in their own comments and communities.
Watched some of these working relationships turn into real friendships, including creators from my very first campaigns who I’m still close with today.
Turned creators into product testers, feeding insight back into what got built before release.
Created real community, including flying 15 creators to Berlin for a week, purely to say thank you.
Became a sounding board creators came to for advice on their own work and careers, conversations with no brief attached.
"Whenever I gave feedback on gear, Mick actually took it back to the team, it was never just a formality. I've seen input from creators like me genuinely shape how products got developed. That's rare, and it says a lot about how seriously he takes the people he works with."
What I'd bring to a team
Most people bring one or two of these. Bringing all of them at once is the rare part.
Built from the inside. Not theory: a program built from zero and run at scale, hands-on, for over nine years. You'd be hiring someone who's already done it and knows what works.
A network you can't buy. 250+ hand-picked relationships across the music industry, plus routes onto major touring stages, and it comes with me.
Both sides of the table. The commercial discipline of a seasoned brand marketer and the earned trust of an insider, almost never in the same person.
Revenue-first. I measure attributable sales and the long tail of evergreen content, not vanity metrics.
Music tech native. The DJ and producer world is where I come from, so I don't have to learn what artists and creators care about. I already speak their language.
“Mick is the best representative of a company I have ever dealt with in my 22 years of running Groove3. He has made a direct impact in Native Instruments’ success regarding working with industry partners.”
Next
The part that doesn't show up on a CV, and the reason I never start cold.