A bitter Better.com control battle has erupted between founder Vishal Garg and Daniel Lewis, the investor who replaced him as interim chief executive after helping to remove him from the mortgage technology company.
The dispute will be decided by shareholders, with the contest deadline set for October 20. Garg, who remains on Better’s board, is seeking to oust five of its eight directors, including Lewis and chairman Harit Talwar.
The fight has unfolded through competing regulatory filings, press releases and posts on X, after a close relationship between the two men broke down within weeks of Garg’s departure.
Messages exchanged between Garg and Lewis over 13 months show the pair moving from mutual admiration to open hostility. In April, Garg described the two as “BFFs” as they worked together on strategy, while Lewis wrote: “True friendships take years. We are early in ours. I would like you in my life—ups and downs.”
Hours after Garg was removed as chief executive this summer, Lewis texted him: “You are the last person I am texting tonight—you are on my mind. You are in my heart, whether you believe it or not.”
But the relationship deteriorated rapidly. Lewis later wrote on X: “The love died when the diligence began.”
The Better.com control battle
Garg founded Better in 2014 with the aim of making mortgages faster and cheaper online. The company has also developed Tinman, an artificial intelligence product designed to help approve and close home loans.
Lewis, who founded the investment firm Orange Capital, invested in Better in 2025 and became one of its largest outside shareholders, with a stake of between 2% and 3%. He became increasingly involved in the company’s strategy, advising Garg on investor relations, regulatory filings and communications with shareholders.
The two men exchanged at least 2,000 messages between July 2025 and August 2026. Their discussions extended beyond the company, with Lewis inviting Garg to Nashville and introducing him to his wife at a restaurant in Manhattan.
They also bonded over corporate finance and artificial intelligence. Garg once wrote “Birds of a feather” after discovering that they had made similar trades during the global financial crisis.
Lewis, 51, previously worked for Citibank and on the Salomon Brothers trading floor, later running a hedge fund, a family office and a Toronto software company. Garg, 48, grew up in Queens and left traditional finance to establish an online student loan business before founding Better.
By spring, Lewis had signed a non-disclosure agreement and was working more deeply with Better. A draft memorandum drawn up in May proposed a board overhaul, changes to executive pay and the cancellation of millions of dollars in performance share grants awarded to directors.
The plan also called for the removal of consulting agreements and a reduction in directors’ cash retainers to “zero or nominal amount”. The proposed changes would have affected Talwar, who received a stock award valued at $4.1 million, and fellow director Prabhu Narasimhan, whose award was valued at $3.8 million.
Garg alleges that Lewis falsely told the board he supported the plan to cancel the grants and remove half the directors. He said this helped Lewis turn the board against him before joining it and engineering his removal as chief executive.
Lewis denies misleading the board. He said Garg had told him that Better was struggling partly because directors would not allow him to make changes, prompting him to work on a plan to replace board members.
Founder ousted as chief executive
Lewis said his view changed as he worked more closely with Better’s executives and saw how employees were treated. He accused Garg of creating a damaging workplace culture and of making threats against staff.
“Late-night texts, swearing campaigns, saying that he was going to disembowel people publicly because that was the way to show people that that’s how you need to work, threatening if they’re not on the phone for more than four hours a day that he’s going to fire them,” Lewis said.
Garg denies making threats in the manner described. He acknowledged, however, that he believed loan officers spending fewer than four hours a day speaking to consumers needed to be “coached up or coached out” in the age of artificial intelligence.
Lewis joined the Better board on July 27. On August 3, Garg stepped down as chief executive with immediate effect and Lewis was appointed interim chief executive.
Lewis said the change was unanimously approved by the board because it believed Better could not achieve its potential without a significant leadership change. Garg, meanwhile, said he had been advised to remain calm and collected after being removed.
The announcement was made after the stock market closed, and Better’s share price fell by 37% in the hours that followed. Garg said he had initially left quietly because he did not want to damage his ability to raise capital in future, but became involved again as investors contacted him.
An unapproved transition proposal sent to Garg on August 6 offered $450,000 in pay, $300,000 in equity in place of salary and the vesting of 575,000 outstanding performance share units. It also proposed a grant of 200,000 performance share units for his service as vice-chairman, with the board considering a further 100,000 units.
Garg said he rejected the proposal. In messages after his removal, he asked Lewis about his health insurance and wrote: “It’s embarrassing.”
Lewis asked him to stop contacting employees, customers and investors, and advised him to seek guidance from his executive coach on the difference between serving on the board and holding an executive role.
“Vishal. Remember, every move you make—I have planned for it in advance,” Lewis wrote in one message.
When Better later issued a statement describing Garg’s leadership as destructive and saying the company had suffered GAAP net losses of more than $1.5 billion since 2022, Garg responded on X: “#Bubkis. Yeah that’s Boy Scout for FAKE NEWS. Sacre bleu Daniel, I think the French air is getting to you.”
Shareholders to decide the future
Garg is proposing a new board that would include Kleiner Perkins partner Bing Gordon, L Catterton senior adviser David Heidecorn and Activant Capital’s Steve Sarracino.
If his campaign succeeds in removing five directors, only Garg and two other board members would remain from the existing board. Hugh Frater, a former chief executive of Fannie Mae and founding partner at BlackRock, has said he would resign if Garg returned to an executive role. The other remaining director, Michael Farello, is considering stepping down in 2027.
Garg has said a reconstituted board could appoint a chief executive with stronger qualifications than Lewis, while he would take on a product and innovation role.
If the existing board prevails, Lewis will remain interim chief executive while a search committee looks for a permanent successor. He has said Better will focus on wholesale lending, home equity lines of credit and partnerships with consumer platforms.
Lewis also wants to move the company away from what he described as a founder-led business built on bold promises and towards sustainable profitability and execution.
Better’s financial performance has shown both heavy losses and rising revenue. The company reported net losses of $301 million in 2021, $877.1 million in 2022, $536.4 million in 2023, $206.3 million in 2024 and $165.9 million in 2025. Revenue rose from $72.3 million in 2023 to $164.9 million in 2025.
The company previously disclosed weaknesses in its internal controls after an external review of its culture found that actions by Garg had failed to establish a strong tone at the top. Better said Garg completed executive coaching and that the weakness, along with others, had been addressed by the end of 2025.
Proxy advisory firms ISS and Glass Lewis have recommended that shareholders support the current board, while Egan-Jones has backed Garg’s group. The vote will determine who controls the publicly traded company, but both sides agree on one outcome: the friendship between Garg and Lewis is over.
“I thought Daniel was my friend,” Garg said. “And then he proceeded to earn my trust and backstabbed me in the worst possible way.”
