Payment Expert’s ID Check: Payments Professionals offers insight from industry leaders and experts on how they got their start in the financial industry, from their early years in education, to how they have been able to climb the corporate ladder.
This week, Mark Fieldhouse, Chief Revenue Officer of Form3, details his journey from technology to payments, the similarities and differences of the two industries, and why you should always be prepared to speak to people… a job opportunity may be round the corner.
What was the first job you had in the industry and are there any lessons from this you still draw on?
I don’t come from a payments industry background, but from a technology background. In this sector, my first job was as a software engineer with IBM. In this role, I was writing code for mainframe systems and working on voice recognition telephony systems.
I am very proud of my technology heritage, as I’d always built my own computers and been interested in coding. The lessons that I draw on from IBM that I use in my current role at Form3 are based on core leadership skills. Being a leader that is always calm, measured, and open to change, has always served me well in the scale up industry.
Who was your biggest role model – inside or outside of your industry – who continues to inspire you in your current career?
There was a business leader that I worked with early on in my career at IBM. He won’t know this, but I reflect weekly on two pieces of advice that he used to tell me.
Firstly, he would say that nothing is ever as bad as it seems; in other words, step back from your work problems, get some space, and get some perspective. Secondly, he would say to me that always do the job that you want to, not the one that you’re in. Very sound advice that I still use today.
When was your first big break in the industry? Why was this such a significant moment for you?
My first role in payments is my current job as Chief Revenue Officer at Form3. This was significant, as I’d always sold products to financial services companies and fintechs, but I hadn’t worked directly in the industry.
What attracted me to Form3 was that their technology looked amazing. They were solving really big problems in the industry. In addition, the company’s culture and leadership looked incredible.
My expertise is to scale up companies after investment, to take them through that next phase of their evolution, and this is what I hope to achieve with Form3.
Was there a moment you faced in the industry that really challenged you? How did you overcome this?
Drawing on my experience working in technology, I worked for Tivoli Software, which was a startup at the time. It’s quite an amusing story about how this job offer came about. I was at IBM on a work trip, running on a treadmill in a gym. Someone next to me started talking to me about work. He then asked if I wanted to join a startup based in Austin, Texas. This was a challenge, as I’d never worked for a startup at the time.
So, I accepted the offer, left IBM, and went to live in Austin. This was a cool experience as it gave me the taste for scale up companies. Subsequently, IBM then acquired Tivoli Software – small world!
What are some of the skills you deem essential to starting in your industry and how have yours developed over the years?
So when I looked at Form3, I saw a company steeped in financial services skill and experience that happened to be building a great software product. I wanted to turn them into a fantastic software-as-a-service (SaaS) business that had this incredible financial services knowledge to draw on.
Therefore, the main skill that I am bringing to Form3 is scaling up experience and knowledge. In practice, you take an industry such as payments that is ready for disruption, which is going from a very heavily regulated, old world, old tech approach, to the very modern world of cloud infrastructures, agility and scale.
Lastly, what is some advice you would give to an aspiring person looking to get a start in your respective industry?
It’s always worth remembering that every industry, including fintech, can be changed for the good. No matter how long an industry has done something in a particular way, there is always a different perspective to change it for the better.
The financial industry is always going to be highly regulated – but it can develop. It’s about looking at ways that you can introduce agility and modern technologies while still working in the confines of a highly-regulated industry. Never assume that you can’t adapt to new operations or be more agile.
