Simon Fishley uses the word squiggly to describe his career path, a term he and his team often use at Luno to explain things aren’t in a straight line. And if he had to live life over, he says he wouldn’t change much.
From the get-go Simon Fishley, IT director at Luno, has always had a natural affinity for computers. But as a somewhat naive teenager in the early ‘90s, he didn't realise he could create a lucrative career off his passion for IT, so he studied law. After graduating, however, he firmly decided that law was not for him.
A friend he’d studied with reached the same conclusion so the two of them moved from KwaZulu-Natal to Cape Town and started a computer company in 1999.
“Neither of us knew much about running a business, so we learnt everything on the fly. And that's how I got into hardware and building PCs,” he adds.
“It was perfect timing in a sense, because the Y2K bug was on everyone's lips and we spent about six months running around, working 16-hour days upgrading clients' machines to be Y2K compliant. Exhausting, but great for business. I like to think we, along with our IT colleagues around the world, saved civilisation – something the youth of today will never fully appreciate,” he says.
“From there we started a small Internet Service Provider (ISP), which sent me down a Linux rabbit hole. We’d been handing our hardware clients off to local internet providers and eventually decided we’d rather do it ourselves, so I taught myself how to build web servers and mail servers, how to secure mail transmission, and eventually how to deal with spam. Quite a steep learning curve, as always,” he explains.
His business partner eventually reached the point where they realised that the business either needed outside investment and more staff, or they would have to sell. They decided to sell, and suddenly Simon found himself at a loose end so he set off travelling.
The journey to Luno
When he got back from his travels he re-entered the IT world and started working for a couple of IT companies, ran an ISP for a while and eventually joined the South African Astronomical Observatory, which he describes as being “on the bleeding edge of scientific research”.
“Doing a lot with a little was always the challenge there. It was semi-governmental, so spending was heavily regulated, which forced us to be creative. I became a big advocate of open-source technologies because of the cost-effectiveness. It was also the first time I stepped into a genuine leadership role – very much a trial by fire – but I had strong support from senior colleagues, and I learnt an enormous amount. I spent 10 years there,” he says.
And then the opportunity at Luno came up in 2019, which Simon describes as being a crazy adventure ever since he set foot in the company: “I went from an organisation where everything was on-premises, bricks and mortar, to 100 percent cloud company operating across more than 40 countries. A completely different scale. Building out a team and the services to support a modern, cloud-first company was genuinely a dream come true.”
After nearly seven years at Luno, Simon says he is still learning.
Leading at Luno
Luno is a popular, regulated global cryptocurrency exchange and wallet provider founded in 2013, designed for securely buying, selling, storing and trading digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. The company serves over 15 million users across 40+ countries and is renowned for its beginner-friendly app, strong security and integration with local banking systems.
“We’re a heavily regulated organisation now because we look after a lot of our customers’ money so we can’t afford shortcuts or unnecessary risks,” he says.
He and his team work hard and if there’s a problem to solve, they’ll all pitch in, even if it means being up at two in the morning solving it together.
“No excuses, no ‘that's not my job’. It’s everyone’s job,” he says. “My job as a leader is to remind the team that even if what they’re doing isn’t directly moving the needle, if they aren’t doing their jobs properly, the customer-facing colleagues who rely on our tools can’t do theirs. My team is a critical part of the entire system. They may not be writing the code that ships a new feature or talking directly to customers, but they’re integral to the operation,” he explains.
On a personal level, Simon says his approach to leadership reflects how he sees work generally: “I’m not a work stays at work type. My whole team has been to my house. I know their families. We socialise; we go away for weekends. I think it matters that people know you outside of a professional context – it means they can share when something in their personal life is affecting their work, and you can understand what motivates them.”
