Vishal Garg's Better.com No. 1 in LinkedIn's top 50 startups in US in 2020, 2021

Better.com CEO Vishal Garg (Image credit: LinkedIn)

Days after Better.com CEO Vishal Garg fired 900 employees over a Zoom call and hours after there were reports of him "taking time off with immediate effect," LinkedIn's list of top 50 startups in the US in 2021 resurfaced on social media. Better.com had ranked number 1 on it.

"Better, which plans to go public later this year, is a fintech company aiming to improve the home buying and financing process. While its primary service is mortgage lending, the company also has its own in-house real estate group as well as services for title and homeowners insurance," the LinkedIn post stated.

Read more: Anand Mahindra weighs in on Better.com CEO Vishal Garg's mass layoffs via Zoom

This the second year in a row that the company received the distinction. In 2020, LinkedIn listed Better.com as the hottest startup to work for in the US, with 171 positions open on social media listings. Interestingly, it was the same year that Vishal Garg made headlines and even the cover of Forbes magazine for calling his employees "dumb dolphins".

“HELLO — WAKE UP BETTER TEAM,” writes Vishal Garg, the CEO of Better.com, in an email to employees obtained by Forbes. “You are TOO DAMN SLOW. You are a bunch of DUMB DOLPHINS and…DUMB DOLPHINS get caught in nets and eaten by sharks. SO STOP IT. STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. YOU ARE EMBARRASSING ME," Garg had written in an email to his employees.

Forbes called him "the archetypal tech CEO: brilliant, brash and mercurial. Though his outbursts have caused headaches for some staffers, and forced others to quit — according to interviews with 19 current and former employees".

In 2021, however, as the news spread of how Vishal Garg chose to let go of his employees, three of Better.com’s top executives reportedly resigned. The company’s head of marketing, Melanie Hahn, head of public relations Tanya Hayre Gillogley and vice-president of communications Patrick Lenihan have all resigned, Insider reported.

Read more: Better.com CEO taking time off with immediate effect: Report

Garg then issued an apology on the company’s blog. “I want to apologize for the way I handled the layoffs last week.” He continued, “I failed to show the appropriate amount of respect and appreciation for the individuals who were affected and for their contributions to Better. I own the decision to do the layoffs, but in communicating it, I blundered the execution. In doing so, I embarrassed you,” he wrote.

He added that he is “deeply sorry” and “committed to learning from this situation and doing more to be the leader” they expect him to be.