Better.com’s newest exec on layoffs, CEO Garg and more
July 8, 2022 4:44 PM
Sharma, who said he’s been advising CEO Vishal Garg for the past few months out of the firm’s Bay Area office, will lead user acquisition efforts in a role he described as a combination of chief marketing and chief experience officer posts. He is a former chief product officer at LendingTree and at online dating service Match where he helped the company go public, according to Better, which has its own
Thursday’s hiring announcement arrived in the midst of a tumultuous period for the company, with
Better’s new leadership hires in marketing, human resources and real estate divisions, among others, is a comforting sign of maturation, Sharma said. The chief growth officer declined to speak about Better’s pending merger with a special purpose acquisition company but in an interview with National Mortgage News, discussed why he chose Better and whether more layoffs are expected, while also defending Garg’s leadership.
Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.
What made you want to join Better.com?
The ability to disrupt the market and how we can make homeownership more affordable, that's the most exciting thing for me. I have seen Better from a marketplace perspective. The product is amazing. I love spaces where the product can make a really big impact on people. I spent seven years at Match where the fact that two people starting a family changes not just their lives, but a whole generation. It's a super high-impact product. The same as with Better. Being a new immigrant to America, I've seen in my life how credit gets built, how homeownership played a big role in it.
With the current atmosphere of rising interest rates and reduced mortgage volume, when do you think homebuyer demand will rebound?
I'm not sure I have a crystal ball to predict things. Having been in the industry, I've seen that everything is a cycle. So two years from now, will we be closing more home loans? Absolutely. But I'm not sure if it'll be two years, one-and-a-half years or a year. The way we think about our business is, currently our market share is a very, very thin slice of the overall market. The overall market is huge, right? So we are still pushing that we can gain our market share, even when the market goes down by say 10%, 15%.
Will Better undertake more layoffs?
If you zoom out on the layoffs, what I think not many people have understood is how fast Better grew. It used to be around 2,000 people, then it was around 10,000, all in a matter of two years, so just very, very exponential growth. Then the market basically shifted in refis. That happened really, really fast, so you have to adjust. So a lot of those corrections in headcount have happened.
In leadership meetings, we all are aligned. You can't grow by incurring costs, you have to drive revenue, right? So I think the state where we are, we feel we're fairly comfortable with the headcount as per what our perception of the market is. Based on our outlook of the market, I think most of those large scale headcount adjustments are behind us.
In leadership meetings, we all are aligned. You can't grow by incurring costs, you have to drive revenue, right? So I think the state where we are, we feel we're fairly comfortable with the headcount as per what our perception of the market is. Based on our outlook of the market, I think most of those large scale headcount adjustments are behind us.
CEO Vishal Garg has been scrutinized over his behavior, and a recent lawsuit alleges he misled investors. What are your thoughts on Vishal and his leadership?
I have worked with many founder-CEOs. He is one of the smartest ones that I’ve worked with. He’s super mission driven. He knows about the space, the customer problem and is very, very driven. So as part of that drive, he has very high standards on how others also perform. I think the latest round of beefing up the leadership, it's almost like the company maturing. Because now we have close to $100 billion that we have lent over the years. Going forward, our strategy will be more focused on purchase which requires us to mature our system. So if you look at the leadership that we've hired, it is on sales, it is on HR, it's on marketing functions, like any other startup that matures.
I think in our case, we just get a disproportionately higher amount of press. Like I've seen in startups, once you scale up then you have to start bringing seasoned leaders in the mix. With Vishal, I think he's also learning as part of managing at a larger scale. He's a hands-on entrepreneur, always with energy and passion. He speaks whatever is on his mind, but I think if there is anything, I'm sure he's learning as part of what broader leadership is. Now I think the team is fairly seasoned where Vishal doesn't have to do every small thing in the company.
I think in our case, we just get a disproportionately higher amount of press. Like I've seen in startups, once you scale up then you have to start bringing seasoned leaders in the mix. With Vishal, I think he's also learning as part of managing at a larger scale. He's a hands-on entrepreneur, always with energy and passion. He speaks whatever is on his mind, but I think if there is anything, I'm sure he's learning as part of what broader leadership is. Now I think the team is fairly seasoned where Vishal doesn't have to do every small thing in the company.
The recent leadership hires include a lot of veterans of major companies. How will that help the company?
This is super exciting. Our learning curve is very fast. If you get a non-seasoned person, there is a cost to learning right? It may take us a year or two to crack that. I feel way more comfortable with this leadership team going forward. Even on a personal level, everyone is aligned to the mission. So everyone's focused on how we do it right for the customer, how we increase homeownership.
Is Better’s internal culture on the right track?
If you look at how the culture gets built, your leaders also play a huge role. For example, the culture on the marketing side Nitin [Bhutani, vice president of marketing] would be a key part of it. How to build a culture around Realtors, Nick [Taylor, head of Better Real Estate] will be part of it. Steve [Riddell, head of sales] will be part of the big culture shifting on sales, how they get organized. The culture will be reset. What everyone here to some extent is looking for is, “Okay, the market is bad. But then what is our growth story and who's the commander who will take me across?” So I think we're seeing basically renewed energy from everyone on the team.
People think about us just as a fintech. We think about what we're trying to solve, homeownership. The more successful we are, the more people get homes. It's not just a financial transaction. We look at that outcome being more like 5-to-10 years from now, if we are able to achieve our goal, or the industry overall is able to achieve, then homeownership and affordability in the U.S. will increase substantially.
People think about us just as a fintech. We think about what we're trying to solve, homeownership. The more successful we are, the more people get homes. It's not just a financial transaction. We look at that outcome being more like 5-to-10 years from now, if we are able to achieve our goal, or the industry overall is able to achieve, then homeownership and affordability in the U.S. will increase substantially.
