Vishal Garg (born 1977 or 1978) is an

Indian-American Indian Americans or Indo-Americans are citizens of the United States with ancestry from India. The United States Census Bureau uses the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with Native Americans, who have also historically been referred to ...

entrepreneur. He is the

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especial ...

of mortgage lending company Better.com and previously co-founded the student loan company MyRichUncle.

Early life and education

Born in India, Garg moved to the

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

borough of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

when he was seven, and grew up in Forest Hills. While attending the academic magnet Stuyvesant High School in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, he resold books,

CliffsNotes CliffsNotes are a series of student study guides. The guides present and create literary and other works in pamphlet form or online. Detractors of the study guides claim they let students bypass reading the assigned literature. The company clai ...

study guides, and thrift store clothes at a profit. Beginning in 1995 he studied finance and international business in the Stern School of Business at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

while working as a runner and entry clerk for

Salomon Brothers Salomon Brothers, Inc., was an American multinational bulge bracket investment bank headquartered in New York. It was one of the five largest investment banking enterprises in the United States and the most profitable firm on Wall Street durin ...

and as a trader for VZB Partners, a

hedge fund A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as s ...

. After graduation, he worked for a short time for

Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment management and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in more than 41 countries and more than 75,000 employees, the fir ...

Career

MyRichUncle

With Raza Khan, a fellow Indian immigrant whom he met in high school and who studied computer science in the same class at New York University, Garg founded a mortgage investment company in 2000 that became the online student loan provider MyRichUncle. Khan's brother provided an initial capital investment. For their analysis-based approach to tailoring loan rates to different applicants, in 2006 Garg and Khan were listed in both ''

Fast Company ''Fast Company'' is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes six print issues per year. History ''Fast Company'' was launched in November 1995 by Alan Web ...

''s Fast 50 and '' Business Week''s Young Entrepreneurs of Tech.

Embark, Future Finance, Climb Credit, and EIFC

MyRichUncle was caught up in the repercussions of the subprime mortgage crisis and its parent company, MRU Holdings, declared

Chapter 7 bankruptcy Chapter 7 of Title 11 of the United States Code (Bankruptcy Code) governs the process of liquidation under the bankruptcy laws of the United States, in contrast to Chapters 11 and 13, which govern the process of ''reorganization'' of a debto ...

in 2009. Garg and Khan continued to operate Embark, a provider of admissions software to higher education that MRU Holdings had purchased in 2007. Beginning in August 2009, they also jointly led a new asset-backed securities team at Aram Global, an asset recovery firm. Garg later co-founded two further student loan companies: Future Finance, a provider of student loans to students in the UK, with Brian Norton in 2013, and Climb Credit, targeted at US programs with relatively lower costs and higher graduate employment rates, with Zander Rafael and Amit Sinha in 2014. Garg and Khan also used features of the software developed for MyRichUncle to start EIFC, a company that analyzed loan portfolios to identify potentially problematic loans. Khan came to believe that Embark was misusing funds and that Garg was siphoning money from EIFC, resigned from both, and in 2013 filed a lawsuit against Garg. Garg later filed a counterclaim against Khan for mismanagement and theft of funds.

Better.com

In 2014, after a frustrating experience obtaining a mortgage, Garg founded Better.com, an online

mortgage broker A mortgage broker acts as an intermediary who brokers mortgage loans on behalf of individuals or businesses. Traditionally, banks and other lending institutions have sold their own products. As markets for mortgages have become more competitive, ...

backed by

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

; at an early stage, he acquired Avex Funding of California to bolster the new company in the continuing aftermath of the financial crisis. In August 2021, ''

The Daily Beast ''The Daily Beast'' is an American news website focused on politics, media, and pop culture. It was founded in 2008. It has been characterized as a "high-end tabloid" by Noah Shachtman, the site's editor-in-chief from 2018 to 2021. In a 20 ...

'' estimated his equity in Better.com to be worth at least $1 billion. Khan alleged that Garg misappropriated both funds and

proprietary software Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and i ...

to launch Better.com, and a group of investors also filed suit alleging diversion of funds through a

firm founded by Garg called 1/0 Capital. Khan's claim of fraud was dismissed in May 2018. In a deposition in December 2019 in his counter-suit against Khan, court documents state that Garg threatened to "staple him against a fucking wall and burn him alive"; Garg apologized later in the same session. Garg's treatment of employees has attracted negative publicity. In November 2020, ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

'' quoted an e-mail in which he chided them as "a bunch of DUMB DOLPHINS". In December 2021, a video was widely disseminated of him abruptly firing 900 people in the United States and India through a

videoconferencing Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio and video signals by people in different locations for real time communication.McGraw-Hill Concise Ency ...

call shortly before Christmas. Following public outrage, Garg apologized and wrote in a letter to employees that he had "failed to show the appropriate amount of respect and appreciation for the individuals who were affected". He stepped back as CEO, returning in January 2022 after the company conducted a review of its internal culture. A video subsequently emerged of Garg blaming himself for "overhir ng, and a second round of layoffs took place in March 2022 after Garg's return, with the company later also offering 60-day severance packages to employees who voluntarily resigned. In June 2022, a former senior executive at Better.com filed a lawsuit alleging that Garg misled investors in its financial filings and other representations while it tried to go public.

Personal life

Garg is married to Sarita James, who became president of Embark in early 2015 and is its CEO. According to

OpenSecrets OpenSecrets is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that tracks data on campaign finance and lobbying. It was created from a merger of the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) and the National Institute on Money in Politics (NIMP) ...

, Garg has made numerous donations to the

Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...

and its candidates.

References

External links

Personal website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Garg, Vishal Living people Year of birth uncertain 1970s births 20th-century American businesspeople 21st-century American businesspeople American chief executives Chief executives in the finance industry Indian emigrants to the United States People from Queens, New York Stuyvesant High School alumni New York University Stern School of Business alumni