39 | Native Instruments in Berlin
a lowercase b brand building deep, not wide.
For all you kind folks subscribing from the U.S., Not a Playbook is finally on Amazon (with normal shipping rates). Thanks for reading!
Let’s look at a lowercase b brand this week.
WeTransfer co-founder Damian and I arrived at the phrase following some pointed, but helpful criticism I received on an early draft of the book from friend-of-the-letter Ross Martin, who relayed it in the sotto voce sometimes used by New York mafia dons.
In trying to characterize WeTransfer’s story in the greater context of tech companies, we realized their success was less in its ubiquity than the love it captured and held from their core audience.
There was some ubiquity, of course as the file sharing service still boasts more than 80m monthly users. But WeTransfer stayed true to their OGs: the creatives, studios, and agencies that had grown their careers thanks to the seamless file-sharing service.
As a result, they were never close to becoming a capital B brand, like AirBnB, or even DropBox. Look at Squarespace as a comp. They got Adam Driver(s) to do an amazing Super Bowl ad.
WeTransfer never did a Super Bowl ad. They never actually had the massive cash injection from venture capital (like Squarespace has), or multiple fundraising rounds characteristic of their tech contemporaries of the 2010s.
We go into why in the book, SO JUST READ IT. Or listen to it: the audio book is more of an audio documentary that includes a lot of the founders’ story. (Email me for a Spotify code).
That lack of funding meant they weren’t pulled in different directions by outside investors gazing fondly at a massive liquidity event in 10 years’ time.
They could walk before they ran, bootstrapping the company and building revenue for six years before taking on outside money.
They built deep before going wide, focused on a loyal audience that grew with them.
They didn’t just have values; they acted on them and designed with intent, fostering trust, and embracing instinct over data obsession.
They challenged platform dynamics, in creating an editorial platform to reduce dependency on algorithms.
They elevated their community, and created spaces where WeTransfer customers become co-creators and ambassadors.
These aren’t easy to maintain. They require consistency of vision and leadership over a long period of time. Many companies start with an intention beyond simple product-market fit or profitability, and then watch their founding culture fray as new hires are brought on board, or outside forces pull them in different directions in the search for market share.
This week’s brand hasn’t (yet), despite taking on tens of millions in private equity funding. I wonder if the city it calls home has something to do with it.
Native Instruments 🎹 The year 1996 was an especially good time to start a music software company in Berlin. Clubs bloomed in abandoned department store vaults and power stations, populated by DJs and dancers who had squatted dilapidated apartment buildings in the former East, heating their bedrooms with coal stoves and scrounging together Deutschmarks for Becks and frozen pizza. Detroit Techno had already been embraced in the capital, which was incubating other genres that would go on to dominate dance floors. “Berlin was a perfect place … it was already pushing the boundaries of electronic music,” says Mate Gallic. The former DJ was among the early group at Native Instruments, which has spent the last 29 years setting the gold standard in music production software and hardware. Founded on a belief that the computer would eventually become a musical instrument that democratized music-making (true), NI has managed to retain its core identity.
Walk, before you run. Their first product was a successful synthesizer software called Generator (definitely the name of a Berlin club night). Then they built around it, adding virtual instruments and sample libraries before debuting their first piece of a hardware, a DJ controller called Maschine in 2009 (since used by everybody, including Kaytranada and Fred, Again). In 2017, after more than two decades, they brought in their first round of private equity investment (and another in 2021). “It didn’t always go smoothly,” co-founder Daniel Haver, who served as CEO until retiring in 2020, told German newspaper Handelsblatt. But rather than product revamps or a slew of acquisitions, the new capital has been used to expand NI’s sound libraries, plug-ins and workflow integrations through strategic partnerships and mergers.
Build deep, not wide. Those moves only added to the brand’s consistent product narrative. They’ve told that story well on their Instagram and YouTube (with more than 1.5 million subscribers between them). Each channel features artist-led tutorials, advice, and inspiration (NI has megawatt producers like Alicia Keys and Diplo sitting on their artist’s advisory board). And while the social handles jump on to the occasional trending topic, the brand still speaks a specific language, intended for a specific audience.
Act on values. They built their products with intentionality, seeking feedback and validation from their core audience. This is how they grew their portfolio at the beginning, listening to the needs and wishes of a professional class of beat makers and DJs. That kind of trust takes decades to build, and can disappear overnight. Some believe it’s already fraying and private equity is beginning to have its effect: slowing innovation, flagging customer support, and adding subscription models to maximize revenue. A glance through the community section of the company’s web site features some robust debate. If Native Instruments loses market share and brand love over the coming years, it will be easy to point to the roots of that discontent.
I certainly hope not.
As I dug into their story this week, I came away with another parallel to WeTransfer: geography. In the same way Amsterdam provided a more forgiving environment for the company to grow, Berlin seems to have provided a buffer (so far) against the kind of scale-obsessed exuberance prevalent in Silicon Valley. The German capital (only since 1990 by the way) maintains an anarchic, working class streak that provides an effective counterpunch to tech’s utopian evangelism. Native Instruments calls Kreuzberg home, the same neighborhood that successfully repelled Google’s effort to set up their Berlin HQ there. Berlin keeps it real, in other words. And I imagine the hundreds of people that work for NI do as well.