Better.com makes first hire for revamped C-suite

When Vishal Garg returned to Better.com following a brief leave of absence related to the controversial lay-off of 900 employees, the company's board promised further changes to its C-suite.

The first of those changes has happened. The company hired Sushil Sharma as chief growth officer, according to a memo reviewed by National Mortgage News that Garg sent to Better.com employees.

"Sushil's extensive background in world-class performance marketing, user experience and engineering will be a great benefit to Better as we continue on our path to going public" Garg wrote in the memo. "As our new CGO, Sushil will be responsible for strategic leadership of Better's marketing analytics, CRM, growth and acquisitions teams."

The position is a new one for the company.

Hiring a chief growth officer was not mentioned in the board's email announcing Garg's return in January. At that time, plans were announced for Better to search for a new chairman, president and chief human resources officer.

In the meantime, Chief Financial Officer Kevin Ryan, who ran Better on a day-to-day basis in Garg's absence, has been designated as interim president and Richard Benson-Armer, a partner at Activant Capital and a former senior partner at McKinsey, is the interim CHRO.

At the same time, the exodus of Better.com executives continues, with the latest being Sarah Pierce, Better's head of sales and operations.

However, its merger with special purpose acquisition company Aurora Acquisitions remains on track, with an updated prospectus filed on Feb. 11 that included some fourth quarter financial data for Better.

Sharma's first day at Better is Feb. 22. Most recently he was the chief product and revenue officer at Pray.com, a Christian website. Between August 2018 and August 2021, Sharma was chief revenue officer at mortgage lead generation website LendingTree. He led its transformation away from relying on mortgage activity to LendingTree now deriving over 60% of its revenue from insurance and non-mortgage financial products through a combination of product expansion and cross-selling, Garg's memo said.

Prior to that, Sharma was at Match.com for over six years, the last year-and-one-half as the chief product officer.