NYC-based digital lender Better.com closed down 94% in its Nasdaq debut on August 24, after a SPAC merger with Aurora Acquisition Corp
Once valued at $7.7 billion, Vishal Garg'sSoftBank-backed company faced a cratering stock price and no plans for profitability as it went public Thursday via a SPAC merger.
ForbesDavid Jeans
Context & Ripple Effects
Better.com’s market debut closes a multi-year financing arc: it raised private capital at a reported $4 billion valuation in 2020 and $6 billion in 2021 before announcing a $7.7 billion SPAC deal with Aurora.
Better.com becomes publicly traded with a sharply lower market valuation, immediately concentrating the impact on its new shareholders and existing backers.
The 94% debut decline puts the company’s stated lack of near-term profitability into public-market focus just as it completes the Aurora merger.
Second-order effects
The result makes Better.com’s post-merger share price a more immediate constraint on investor confidence than the private valuations that preceded the listing.
Other companies considering SPAC listings face a clearer warning that completing a merger does not ensure public-market support, particularly where profitability remains unresolved.
Third-order effects
If similar repricings persist, the gap between late-stage private valuations and public-market pricing could make public listings a tougher validation point for digital financial-services companies.
The episode points toward more market scrutiny of SPAC-sponsored companies’ operating paths after listing, rather than treating the merger valuation as a durable benchmark.
The trend: This is one data point in a broader repricing of venture-backed companies when private-market valuations meet public-market demands for credible profitability paths.
Remember Vishal Garg, the CEO who fired 900 employees on Zoom with zero empathy His company - Better. com got listed after an IPO yesterday. The mortgage company funded by Softbank saw it's stock go down 95% on the listing day Karma 🥲 [image]
$BETR From 2019-2022, Better completed approximately $98 billion in mortgage volume, more than $4 billion in real estate transaction volume, as well as $39 billion in coverage written through its insurance arm. https://investors.better.com/ ... [image]
The SPAC era may finally be over. https://better.com/ $BETR , a mortgage lender, went public via a SPAC yesterday and ended down -93% on the day ... [image]
This has to be a record! $BETR - https://better.com/ went public today via SPAC. - Ended down 93% 😅😅😅 - WOW - It's some online mortgage company . - But down 93% on its first day of trading. Went from $4B to under $400M. Amazing lol [image]
Like the crime spree across the nation that sees looters stroll in and out of stores with as much stuff as they can carry, the looters of Wall Street are doing it out in the open. A new SPAC crashed on the first day of trading. The poorly named https://better.com/ was... [image]
https://better.com/ is down 93% today, but I'm still bullish on pre-seed / seed stage for mortgage tech. The market is huge, there's more talent in the industry than ever, the tooling (yes AI/LLMs, but also other infra) is better than ever...and no one has yet cracked the... [ima…
I once interviewed for better. com for an analytics role Halfway through the process, he clears up that the role involved an analysis of employees required So they made these sheets and would just fire people of it And then they did proceed to fire 1000s 😭
The business world loves and rewards Sociopaths. The executive ranks are full of them. If you know anything about Sociopathy, you'll know that they are incapable of real empathy but can learn to mimic it https://www.businessinsider.com/ ...