In December 2021, Better.com founder and CEO Vishal Garg summoned 900 employees to a three-minute Zoom call and fired all of them on the spot, days before Christmas, opening with the line, “If you’re on this call, you are part of the unlucky group.” It became one of the most infamous layoffs in tech history. Nearly five years later, Garg is out as CEO himself, and he’s telling anyone who will listen that it wasn’t fair.
Better’s board voted unanimously to remove Garg on August 3, 2026, installing newly seated board member Daniel Lewis as interim CEO. At the time, the split was framed as amicable, with Garg telling reporters it was simply “the right time for new leadership.” That framing didn’t survive the week.
Garg Goes to War With His Own Board
On August 13, Garg hired attorney Alex Spiro and announced he’d lined up support from shareholders representing a majority of the company’s voting power. His plan: remove five board members (Lewis along with directors Arnaud Massenet, Bhaskar Menon, Prabhu Narasimhan, and Harit Talwar), reconstitute the board, and return himself to an executive role, while offering to work for a $1 salary until the company turns a profit. He’s also floated investing $5 million of his own money and backing a $30 million stock buyback as part of a broader turnaround pitch.
Garg has been especially pointed about Lewis, who joined Better’s board on July 27, just a week before he was named interim CEO. “He hoodwinked me,” Garg told CNN, saying Lewis had praised the company’s strategy and talked up Better on X to win the board’s trust, only to end up in Garg’s chair days later.
The Board Isn’t Backing Down
Better’s board says the “mutual agreement” language was a courtesy, not the real story. In a filing, the company said it removed Garg over concerns about his “judgment, temperament, and credibility,” and separately accused him of delaying the company’s quarterly 10-Q filing and raising potential securities-law concerns through his outreach to shareholders.
On Monday, Better escalated again, publicly calling on Garg to drop what it called a “revenge campaign” and accusing him of “improper and unlawful solicitation.” The company argues that even counting Garg’s own super-voting shares, he doesn’t have the votes to pull off what it’s calling a boardroom coup, and it’s preparing to file its own opposing consent statement with the SEC.
None of Better’s securities-law allegations against Garg have been tested in court, and Garg disputes the board’s account of why he was pushed out. What’s not in dispute is the irony: the executive who became a symbol of treating layoffs as a spreadsheet exercise is now the one arguing that he deserves better treatment than the process gave him.
What do you think? Does Garg have a legitimate grievance here, or is this just a founder who built a ruthless playbook getting run over by his own rules? Let us know your thoughts in the comments on BeezLoop.com!
