Seth Weissman, chief legal officer of Marqeta. Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM

A veteran startup general counsel with experience in solar energy and software is taking on a new industry, leading the legal team at payment card platform Marqeta Inc.

Seth Weissman is the new chief legal officer of Oakland, California-based Marqeta, the company announced Friday. He oversees all legal strategy and operations, as well as a legal team of five. He reports directly to Marqeta chief executive officer and founder Jason Gardner and sits on the company's executive team.

One of Weissman's main goals as CLO is developing Marqeta's in-house team through mentorship and support, a job responsibility he said was a “major part” of his decision to join the company.

“I will focus on my team, getting my team happy with what they do. … That's one really important tenet,” he said in an interview. “The other is scale.”

Weissman has led fast-growing companies' legal teams before, as the more than eight-year general counsel of solar services company SolarCity. He led the San Mateo, California-based company through its 2012 initial public offering and its 2016 sale to Tesla Inc., developing in-house legal talent along the way.

In 2017, following SolarCity's sale to Tesla, Weissman temporarily left the legal industry and focused on developing other skills. He coached executives, legal and nonlegal, with Pacifica Coaching and Consulting and served as an advisory board member for Powerhouse, a venture fund for clean energy entrepreneurs.

Prior to SolarCity, Weissman also served as the general counsel of software company Coremetrics, which has since been acquired by International Business Machines Corp., for more than four years. Weissman said one of his biggest takeaways from more than a decade of working in-house at startups is that investing in people is key.

He added it's also important for general counsel to boost efficiency without losing quality and understanding “where the client wants to go to and understanding why they want to go there.”

Gardner said in a press release that Weissman and Marqeta chief people officer Barbie Brewer, whose appointment was also announced Friday, ”have the right skills and experience for addressing our challenges and opportunities, and we're so excited to welcome them.”

Though Weissman has never worked in the financial technology industry, he said his experience working in-house in a variety of industries and at firms in different legal fields, including employment at Stoneman, Chandler, Miller and securities at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, have taught him how to adapt. He makes time to meet with Marqeta's chief revenue officer, other executives and legal team members, regularly asking questions.

“What allowed me to thrive [is a] willingness to learn,” he said. The “principles of lawyering and being a businessperson” are similar in all the industries he's worked in, he added, and “that's how I anchor myself when I don't know the subject.”