When the Feedback Loop Closes
Three lasting lessons from one of my earliest high-conviction bets.
Venture is a game of long feedback loops.
You place a bet. You squint through the fog. And if you’re lucky, years later, the loop closes and the lesson comes into focus.
Melio was one of those bets for me. In the chaos of summer 2020, while at Coatue, we led our first round into what was then a scrappy upstart in the sleepy world of B2B payments.
Then we backed them again. Today, Melio is being acquired by Xero for $2.5B.
Cue the eyerolls because it’s time for a good old “3 things this taught me about B2B SaaS” post. Hopefully with fewer clichés and a bit more candor.
1. FOMO is a great GTM strategy.
When your product drives real business results- faster payments, lower costs, better cash flow - adoption doesn’t just spread, it snowballs. That’s what Melio pulled off.
Their vertical-focused GTM turned payments into a competitive advantage: if your peer was saving time and shaving cost, you had to respond. That sense of urgency did the selling. As adoption grew, CAC actually dropped in some verticals as the remaining dominos fell faster- a rare and powerful dynamic. That’s when we leaned in.
TLDR: You can't growth-hack your way out of a weak value prop. But if the product delivers, the right GTM can become a force multiplier.
2. Radical transparency beats radical optimism.
Melio had many moving parts - product lines, segments, regions - but they always had one source of truth. Investors had access. Founders led with bad news. There were no “friendly” numbers, no narrative gymnastics.
That mindset - transparency over theater - built trust. When things didn’t go to plan, the reaction wasn’t defensiveness, it was curiosity: What’s the root cause? What are we missing? The team treated metrics like clues, not verdicts.
3. Mercenary vs. Missionary is a false binary.
Melio’s leadership proved you can move fast and still make people want to follow you. They were sharp, disciplined, and execution-focused - but never at the expense of humility or humor. They ran a tight ship without losing their humanity. You wanted to work with them. You wanted to see them win.
Congratulations to Matan and the team. You built a product that mattered, a culture that endured, and a journey that taught many of us along the way.
And for me - one more data point that feedback loops in venture may be long…
but when they close, they stick.