There are few things more awkward in the corporate world than getting a taste of your own medicine. Just ask Vishal Garg, the founder and former CEO of financial technology company Better which is an AI mortgage platform, who is not particularly thrilled about being shown the exit door at the company he founded.
Garg was fired by Better on August 3, according to CNN, and was replaced by hedge fund manager Daniel Lewis, who had joined the company's board just one week earlier. Garg has since claimed he was effectively outmaneuvered by Lewis, who he believes had his eye on the CEO's chair all along.
Vishal Garg founded Better in 2016 and built the fintech company into a major digital mortgage business
In 2021, Garg fired 900 employees on a Zoom call just before Christmas, sparking widespread backlash and forcing him to briefly step away from the company
"He said he liked the company’s strategy. He praised us on X and used that to get on our board and win our confidences," Garg first noted to CNN, hinting at his belief that Lewis eventually helped convince the board to remove him from the company. "I suspect he always wanted to become CEO. The board made a mistake," he added.
The former CEO has since sent a letter to Better's board demanding reinstatement and has retained a lawyer. He has even offered to return to the CEO role for just $1 a year until the company becomes profitable, at which point he says he would leave. "Execution hasn’t been perfect," He said. "I hope it gets resolved. I think the future still remains very bright for Better."
Better later suffered major financial setbacks, with sales plunging and its stock losing more than 90% of its value as the company accumulated billions in losses
The board, however, appears to have had a rather different assessment of how bright that future looked with Garg in charge. According to Forbes, Better's board voted unanimously to remove him, citing net losses of more than $1.5 billion since 2022 and a plunge of more than 90% in the company's stock price.
Better also alleges in a complaint filed in the US Southern District of New York that Garg violated federal securities laws by attempting to rally shareholders behind his return and making misleading statements. Garg, for his part, insists the company was turning things around. He said sales had fallen dramatically from $1.5 billion in 2021 to $70 million in 2023, but claimed Better was on track for $200 million in sales this year.
Garg was fired as CEO on August 3 and replaced by hedge fund manager Daniel Lewis, who had joined Better’s board just a week earlier
It is not Garg's first headline-making encounter with an unhappy workforce, though. In December 2021, the CEO became the subject of widespread criticism after firing around 900 employees during a Zoom call just before Christmas. The workers were told they were being let go "effective immediately".
He argued that the layoffs were necessary to prevent the company from suffering a financial disaster. Garg also later claimed in a blog post that at least 250 of the terminated employees had been working an average of just two hours a day while recording eight or more hours in the payroll system.
Garg now claims he was tricked into losing his own job and is demanding to be reinstated, even offering to work for $1 a year until Better becomes profitable.
"They were stealing from you and stealing from our customers who pay the bills that pay our bills," he wrote, though he later acknowledged that the post "could have been phrased differently". Garg was subsequently asked to take a leave of absence before eventually returning to his position.
Now, nearly five years after that infamous Zoom call, Garg is the one without a job. And while he may have once been the person telling hundreds of employees that their time at the company was over, he's currently trying to convince the board that his own story shouldn't have the same ending. Would you trust a CEO who fired 900 people before Christmas to turn a struggling company around? Let us know in the comments!
For many netizens, Garg’s downfall felt like a particularly satisfying case of corporate karma
