Better.com CEO Vishal Garg apparently realizes he was doing wrong.
(As if the flood of negative publicity wasn’t enough evidence for that.)
Today was a letter to current employees leaked on blind from a verified Better employee. In the letter, Garg apologized for the way he (mis)handled the discharge news last week, writing: “I failed to show the appropriate amount of respect and appreciation for the people concerned and their contributions to Better. I have a decision to make the layoffs, but I failed to get it done in communicating. With that I embarrassed you. “
Some may argue that he embarrassed himself too. According to several sources, among the employees affected was the company’s Diversity & Inclusion team.
Earlier today, sTechCrunch shared our information, familiar with internal processes within the company, with the company’s VP of Communications, Patrick Lenihan; Public Relations Director, Tanya Gillogley; and Marketing Director Melanie Hahn have all have submitted their resignations. Insider reported that too news earlier today.
The aftermath of the way CEO and Co-Founder Vishal Garg dealt with the Layoffs of around 900 people, as first reported by TechCrunch, was widespread, including criticism that it was handled via Zoom to allegations of Garg’s insincerity. Memes about the video even landed on TikTok when people around the world destroyed Garg’s actions.
The move came last week after the digital mortgage lender announced it had received about $ 750 million in cash an amendment to his SPAC agreement with blank check company Aurora Acquisition Corp. and SoftBank and then immediately laid off about 9% of its 10,000 employees. The company is expected to go public with a valuation of $ 6.9 billion.
Today Bloomberg reported that the Company is now (not surprising) push back its SPAC, which was originally supposed to close in the fourth quarter of this year.
Garg has also confirmed it wealth This week the company accused “at least 250” laid-off workers of stealing from companies and customers by working just two hours a day. Not long after Garg announced the layoffs, he approached the company in a livestream town hall. He outlined a vision of what he called “Better 2.0”. with a “leaner, meaner, hungrier workforce,” according to a leaked recording of the meeting told Insiders.
TechCrunch has approached Better.com for a comment but has not heard anything at the time of writing. Even the employees who are said to have quit did not respond to requests for comments.
Better.com isn’t the only SoftBank-backed proptech to leave top executives ahead of its public debut. In 2019, Insider also reported on more than a dozen of WeWork’s top officials had left the company amid reports of internal complaints and uncertainties related to its IPO plans.
The question that is on our minds right now is whether investors and board members will tolerate such behavior by Garg or will he be pushed out of office? Adam Neumann style?
Garg’s reputation as a not very nice person dates back to last year when Forbes revealed the content of an email to the Garg staff: “HELLO – WAKE UP BETTER TEAM. You’re TOO FUCKING SLOW. You’re a bunch of DUMB DOLPHINS and … DUMB DOLPHINS get caught in nets and are eaten by sharks. So stop doing that. STOP IT. STOP THAT IMMEDIATELY. YOU ARE EMBARRASSING ME.”
The same Forbes article revealed that Garg had been the subject of a number of lawsuits from people including PIMCO and Goldman Sachs, including “improper and even fraudulent activity in two previous business ventures and” ten million dollars “embezzlement.
The recent decline in refinancing is believed to have been a factor in Better.com’s decision to lay off some of its employees.
In April 2020, Better.com said it was “aggressively phasing out” as more people tried to refinance their homes in the face of historically low mortgage rates. Back then, I reported for Crunchbase News that an internal memo to Garg employees revealed that the company was a mortgage loan startup would like to hire around 1,000 employees in 2020 overall, “as more and more homeowners go online for their needs”.
