Matan Bar on team dynamics
From How to Pick Your Team Right · · Aleph
“The worst thing that can happen to your team is have a bad player that thinks he's good; that ruins the game.”
On , Matan Bar, CEO & Co-Founder at Melio, spoke about team dynamics during How to Pick Your Team Right on Aleph.
About Matan Bar
Matan Bar, co-founder and CEO of Melio, has discussed the company's approach to B2B payments and its growth in several recent podcast appearances. In a January 2025 episode of the Invested podcast, Bar recounted an interaction with former President George W. Bush, during which he described Melio's mission as "we keep small business in business." He also discussed the company's early days, noting that before building a product, Melio hired a person in Manhattan to manually perform bookkeeping and vendor payments for ten small businesses via WhatsApp, an approach he said helped the team understand customer workflows. Bar has emphasized the importance of focus, stating that the company uses the phrase "the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing" in product roadmap meetings. He has also advised that "always do something" is the best career advice for young people, and has said that the worst thing for a team is "a bad player that thinks he's good." Bar has described Melio's growth, stating that the company processed about $20 million a month in early 2020 and around $1.7 billion a month by the end of 2021. He has characterized Melio as a B2B payments platform that acts "like Stripe but focused on B2B," and has noted that the company's objective includes creating "a workplace we all feel proud of." Bar has also discussed the role of banks in the payments ecosystem, stating that "banks are here to stay" and that they will continue to act as the routers for moving money, with fintechs providing infrastructure and applications on top.