Nick Ward · Astral Assets · Seattle, WA

Nick Ward

Growth/product hybrid operator focused on ecosystems, data-driven marketing, and scalable systems.

Over the past 13+ years, I’ve helped scale platforms across gaming, media, SaaS, and DTC commerce — from building a 3M+ MAU music media platform from the ground up to leading growth and product ecosystem initiatives at companies like Corsair/Elgato and Blitz/TSM.

My background blends performance marketing, product strategy, lifecycle systems, and creator-led commerce. I’m especially interested in how acquisition, retention, and monetization can work together as a cohesive product experience rather than isolated marketing channels.

I’ve led initiatives ranging from global product launches and monetization systems to growth experimentation frameworks, behavioral segmentation, and community-driven engagement loops — including campaigns and launches responsible for millions in revenue.

Nick Ward
Product Growth Monetization Strategy Creator Ecosystems Lifecycle Marketing AI Workflow Automation Marketing Systems
The System Architect Approach

Revenue engines, not campaigns.

My background spans performance marketing, monetization strategy, lifecycle systems, and community-driven commerce — with an emphasis on how acquisition, retention, and product experience work together over time.

At companies like Corsair/Elgato and Blitz/TSM, I’ve worked across global product launches, growth experimentation, creator programs, monetization models, and engagement systems tied directly to revenue and user behavior.

At Astral Assets, I’ve increasingly moved toward more technical and operational work: building AI-assisted workflows, prototyping internal tools for enterprise processes, and developing products without relying on large engineering teams. Astral Assets is not meant to be a high growth company; it is the forge in which revenue engines and autonomous systems are built.

01 — Growth Systems
Acquisition to Retention

Designing acquisition, retention, and monetization systems that work together across the customer lifecycle — from paid acquisition and onboarding to engagement and repeat conversion.

02 — Product & Monetization
Behavioral Commerce

Building product and commerce experiences around behavioral incentives, creator ecosystems, limited-release launches, and community-driven engagement loops.

03 — AI & Operations
Lean Execution Systems

Using AI-assisted workflows and lightweight automation to accelerate execution, experimentation, content systems, research, and product development across lean teams.

Career

13 years of building at scale.

Jan 2026 — Present
Astral Assets
Founder & CEO
BuiltNova, an AI brand-partnerships agent, and deployed it against live creator-marketing programs.
Partneredwith Rhystic Media as a design partner, standing up their operational systems from the ground up while shaping Nova against real-world partnership work.
DeliveredAI-assisted operational systems and creator-marketing workflows for partners including Wizards of the Coast.
Builta fleet of internal AI agents and tooling spanning engineering, marketing, finance, and strategy, coordinated through Clu, the orchestration layer.
Developedinternal knowledge and review-vault systems that let a small team run enterprise-scale operations without a large engineering org.
2023 — 2025
Elgato · Corsair
Senior Manager, Growth Marketing
Improvedrevenue efficiency by 12% across core product lines through funnel optimization, creator partnerships, and product discovery improvements.
Builtperformance reporting and experimentation systems connecting acquisition, conversion, and retention data to product and marketing decisions.
Managedpaid media strategy across Meta, Google, TikTok, LinkedIn, and X with a focus on audience segmentation, product adoption, and efficient customer acquisition.
Ledglobal launch cycles including Prime Day and seasonal promotional events through cross-functional coordination between growth, product, and ecommerce teams.
Developedaudience segmentation models identifying high-value customer cohorts and repeat purchase behaviors.
12%Revenue efficiency increase
2020 — 2023
Blitz App · TSM
Director of Marketing · Arena PM · SaaS Lead
Launchedand scaled Blitz Pro subscription systems, improving adoption through onboarding, UX, and in-product engagement improvements.
Ledmonetization initiatives for Blitz Arena, including limited-release systems and engagement mechanics that generated 50% ROI across campaigns.
Builtsegmentation frameworks to identify high-value user cohorts and inform roadmap prioritization, monetization, and retention strategies.
Managed70+ influencer campaigns across 5 languages, integrating creator feedback directly into product and marketing initiatives.
Directedregional go-to-market coordination for China expansion efforts, including localization strategy and product positioning.
Oversawapproximately $3M in annual paid media budget ownership across multiple channels and campaign types.
$9MQ1 booked revenue (Arena)
30MUser ecosystem
$3MAnnual budget owned
2011 — 2020
Your EDM
Co-Founder
Grewthe platform to 3M+ monthly active users and 7B+ total impressions across editorial, social, live event, and partner distribution channels.
Builtmerchandise, ticketing, and promotional systems around fandom behavior, limited-release launches, and community engagement.
Ledpartnerships and activations with brands including Amazon and AWS, generating millions of impressions across large-scale campaigns and live events.
Directedproduct, content, monetization, and audience growth strategy while managing a distributed global team across 10 countries.
Developedlong-term audience engagement systems that sustained community retention between major releases, events, and campaigns.
3M+Monthly active users
7B+Total impressions
40Global team members
Current Work

Building at Astral Assets.

Currently building AI-assisted products and workflow systems focused on creator productivity, automation, and operational efficiency.

In Production
Nova

An AI brand-partnerships agent built for creator marketing programs. Runs the operational layer of a partnership — intake, deliverable tracking, and reporting — so the people running the program spend their time on the relationships instead of the spreadsheet. Deployed and running against live partnership work.

In Development
Rhystic Media

A ground-up, 0-to-1 build of the operational backbone for a creator-media company — standing up the functional systems, workflows, and infrastructure that let their business run and scale. Rhystic Media is also a design partner for Nova, shaping the agent against live brand-partnership operations.

Released
Clu

The central AI system at Astral Assets. Orchestrates a distributed AI workflow layer across all active projects, enabling continuous engineering and product execution. Clu manages the Astral Assets AI workforce and coordinates workflows across engineering, marketing, business development and strategy.

Expertise

The full stack.

Growth & Product
Product Growth Monetization Strategy Product Lifecycle Management Growth Experimentation Lifecycle Marketing Behavioral Segmentation Retention Strategy Subscription Growth Go-To-Market Strategy Cohort Analysis
Creator & Commerce
Creator Ecosystems Influencer Programs Community-Led Growth Creator Partnerships Fan Economy Strategy Limited-Release Commerce Product Launch Campaigns
Paid Media & Analytics
Paid Social Multi-Channel Acquisition Attribution & Reporting Funnel Optimization Conversion Rate Optimization Google Analytics 4 Looker Tableau Power BI
Product & Technical
AI Workflow Automation Marketing Systems Claude Code Linear Figma TypeScript Next.js Supabase
Open to new roles
Let’s build.

Seeking opportunities at the intersection of growth, product, creator ecosystems, and AI-assisted workflows — particularly roles evolving toward Product Growth or Marketing Engineering.

LinkedIn → nick@nickward.biz →