Better founder Vishal Garg wins back board control with 52% of the vote
Fired as CEO in August 2026, Garg removed five directors in a two-month proxy fight, then unveiled Better 2.0: deeper cuts, Tinman AI and a buyback.
What was changed
In early August 2026, Better Home & Finance removed founder Vishal Garg as CEO, naming Daniel Lewis interim chairman-CEO. Garg responded by launching a campaign to replace the board, retaining attorney Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel, and on October 5-6, 2026 announced victory: an independent election inspector certified that holders of 52.02% of voting power backed removing Chairman Harit Talwar, interim CEO Daniel Lewis and directors Arnaud Massenet, Bhaskar Menon and Prabhu Narasimhan. Better said the same day it would not contest the removal.
'In the last decade, only 1.7% of corporate proxy disputes seeking to replace the Board of a public company succeeded,' Garg said. 'Overcoming 50-to-1 odds to replace a public company board is a tremendous vote of confidence.' The board shrank from nine seats to five, with Garg the sole incumbent, appointing Bing Gordon — Electronic Arts co-founder, former Amazon director, now chief product officer at Kleiner Perkins — and Steven Sarracino, founder of Activant Capital and a former Better director, plus two unnamed Better employees.
The reconstituted board moves immediately to undo the machinery of the dispute: removing the poison-pill stockholder rights plan and dismissing the company's litigation against Garg in the Southern District of New York. An interim CEO candidate has been identified; Garg proposes to serve as head of product, platform and innovation during the search.
Why it worked
The founder kept a shareholder coalition — The Garg Group — large enough to certify a majority, which is the only currency that matters in a consent solicitation
Removing the poison pill and dismissing the litigation restores the founder's freedom to operate, not just his title
The win is being converted into a concrete 90-day program rather than a victory lap: cost cuts, AI partnerships, HELOC growth, asset sales
Bringing in gaming and consumer-tech veterans (Gordon, Sarracino) signals the board wants product-led reinvention, not caretaking
What can be applied
Founder control lives in the shareholder register, not the org chart: a founder who keeps the votes can overturn a public-company board in two months.
Aftermath
Better 2.0, Garg's 90-day plan, raises annual cost-savings targets from $45 million to $60 million, hires an advisory firm to streamline operations, finalizes partnerships for the Tinman AI platform, expands the home-equity (HELOC) business, sells non-core assets and proposes a $30 million stock buyback. The interim CEO appointment is being finalized; Garg promised results 'for our next 90 days ahead and beyond.'