Miles Schwartz never expected to find himself in the payments industry. In fact, after a challenging experience in his first corporate job, he didn’t think he was cut out for the traditional workforce at all.
“My first taste of the 9-5 sales world was when I was 23. I was two weeks into a job at Salesforce when I found myself being escorted out the door after playing ping pong on my lunch break,” he recently shared with us in an interview.
According to Schwartz, he’d worked late the night before and figured he had “hours in the bank.” Plus, “I figured a quick lunch match would give me more energy afterwards.”
This kind of logic had worked for him in school when he was doing self-led activities like buying and flipping hockey cards. “I made my own schedule and the sales kept pouring in.”
But he would soon learn that the typical sales role was nothing like his hockey card business.“That was my last day at Salesforce,” he concluded.
Fast forward to now. Miles is the co-founder of Zūm Rails, a fintech company that works with the likes of Visa, Mastercard and Fiserv to process over $1 billion in payments through its platform each month.
But for Schwartz, discovering his true entrepreneurial potential would only come after exploring a few non-traditional career options — including a brief stint as a model for Fendi — and grappling with the idea that he might just be unemployable to the corporate world.
It was on this journey that Schwartz realized that what made him unfit for a company like Salesforce was precisely what would propel him to the top in the less-structured technology startup space. With Zūm Rails now at a nine-figure valuation, Schwartz is sharing his story with the goal of helping other high performers who, like him, beat to their own drum.
Grit Daily recently spoke with Schwartz about the wisdom he gained along his unconventional path from Salesforce to Fendi to fintech.
Bet on Yourself, and Be Right About It
Schwartz would eventually find his niche selling companies on aggregating their customers’ data to improve their payment offerings. But before that, he had to convince someone to hire him.
“Even though I still had no sales experience, I was able to convince the founders of a fintech startup called Flinks to take a chance on me. Their only condition was that I would be 100% measured on tangible business outcomes. They didn’t care what hours I worked or how I did it, I just needed to show results fast — especially considering that I was their entire sales team at that point.”
It was during his time at Flinks that Schwartz realized that the more freedom he had, the more productive he was. The more pressure he was under, the better he performed.
“Even though they didn’t give me a set schedule, there were several days that I didn’t leave my office for 12 hours straight,” he told us.
Schwartz realized that working under the extreme pressure of knowing that he alone was responsible for generating the company’s revenue was far more comfortable to him than working seemingly arbitrary hours.
That structure (or lack thereof) is what ultimately motivated him to grow Flinks’ business to a nine-figure valuation in just two years, earning it recognition as one of Canada’s fastest-growing fintech companies.
Now, he’s doing it again at Zūm Rails — only with far bigger ambitions than Canada alone.
Start Preparing for Success Well Before It Actually Happens
With a growing client list and a recent funding round under its belt, Zūm Rails is currently on track for a $500M valuation. In order to lay the groundwork for this milestone, however, Schwartz shared that he had to do some work on himself first.
“At Flinks, I started unknowingly developing a personal work philosophy that I’ve been evolving ever since. Some of the core tenets were quietly working in my favor as I began dreaming up Zūm Rails. Now, they’re a concrete part of the company’s trajectory,” he said.
He shared a few specific mantras with us that he says have helped him embrace the free-spirited side of his personality that always seemed to rub employers the wrong way. Now, he’s using it to create a path forward with exponential possibilities for growth:
- Work as though you have what you want before you actually have it.
- You can develop any skill with practice.
- Do the thing that you’re most afraid of until you’re no longer afraid of it.
- Make sure you have the best product and/or are the best version of yourself so that you’re in a position to win once opportunities start arising.
- You don’t have to do things the conventional way (and most people who do don’t win).
Even when building Zūm Rails, a platform that’s based around the ability to merge open banking with instant payments — two financial capabilities that have historically only existed separately from one another — Schwartz and his co-founder Marc Milewski had to transcend the early opinions of investors, colleagues and others who told them that their idea wouldn’t work.
“I’ve heard countless times in my life that my expectations are too high and that I was bound for disappointment. But any time I’ve reached a goal, it’s because I first envisioned myself accomplishing it — sometimes years before it actually happened,” he said.
He continued, “Had we been wedded to doing things the conventional way or unwilling to venture out on our own, I think the payments industry would still be waiting around for a platform like ours that brings these two things together.”
Rinse and Repeat
Schwartz is now focused on outperforming the success Zum Rails has experienced in Canada in the U.S. market. To do so, he knows he’ll need to put himself under pressure once again.
“We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished so far, but we never let ourselves get too satisfied with that success,” he said. “I always have my sights set on the next step for myself as an individual and for our company.”
Part of Zūm Rails’ plans for the U.S. includes a “feet-on-the-ground approach” to growing the company from Miami, Florida, where the company has officially planted its U.S. headquarters.
Over the past few years, South Florida has evolved into an attractive destination not only for startups and venture capitalists but for some of the biggest names from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, including Amazon, Uber, Tesla, and JPMorgan. With the move, Zūm Rails will be positioned at the center of that growth.
In addition to expanding their work to process payments for U.S.-based companies, Schwartz and Zūm Rails will be focused on deepening the company’s partnerships with leading financial services organizations, as well as making several key hires in specific areas such as product, risk, and sales.
As for his individual growth, Schwartz has learned that being entirely out of his comfort zone is where he finds the most success.
