Varun Krishna

Krishna earned a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from the University of Waterloo in Canada. Early in his career he oversaw various product lines and features at MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft is a technology company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with businesses spanning Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, enterprise software, artificial intelligence, gaming and devices.Open the full entry, and he later held executive positions at Groupon, PayPalPayPalPayPal Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: PYPL) is an American digital payments company that operates payment brands including PayPal, Venmo, Braintree, and Xoom, providing online and in-store payments, money transfers, and consumer credit to consumers and merchants worldwide.Open the full entry and BetterWorks; at PayPal he was senior director of products, managing the global consumer product team.⁠[1][2]

In September 2015 Krishna joined Intuit as vice president of product for TurboTax; he became senior vice president of product for TurboTax and Mint in August 2019, led Mint from January 2020 and Growth Products from February 2022, and later served as executive vice president and general manager of the Consumer Group, overseeing consumer products including TurboTax and TurboTax Live.⁠[1][2]

On July 31, 2023, Rocket Companies announced that Krishna would become CEO effective September 5, 2023. He succeeded Bill Emerson, who had been interim CEO since Jay Farner retired that June and who then became president and COO. Rocket founder and chairman Dan GilbertDan GilbertDan Gilbert is an American entrepreneur from Detroit who founded the mortgage lender Rock Financial (the predecessor of Quicken Loans) in 1985, is the founder and chairman of Rocket Companies, and has been the majority owner of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers since 2005; he also founded the real estate development firm Bedrock Detroit and has invested in downtown Detroit over the long term.Open the full entry called Krishna a “visionary leader with a proven track record of helping consumers achieve financial freedom.”⁠[2][1]

On July 1, 2025, Rocket Companies completed its acquisition of the real estate brokerage website RedfinRedfinRedfin is a Seattle-based real estate brokerage and home-search platform that launched in 2004 as a map-based listings site and grew into an online brokerage that employs its own agents and attracts customers with low commissions; it listed on Nasdaq in 2017. On July 1, 2025, Rocket Companies completed its acquisition of Redfin, which became a wholly owned subsidiary and was delisted.Open the full entry, launching Rocket Preferred Pricing as Redfin adopted the “Redfin Powered by Rocket” brand. Krishna said, “I've used Redfin every day for the last 20 years. It helped me find and fall in love with my first home.”⁠[3]

On October 1, 2025, Rocket announced that it had completed its $14.2 billion acquisition of Mr. Cooper, the largest mortgage servicer in the United States, with Mr. Cooper CEO Jay Bray becoming president and CEO of Rocket Mortgage. Krishna said the goal of the combination was to “lower costs and make the process easier.”⁠[4]

On November 12, 2025, a16zAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry released the episode “Rocket Companies CEO: Here’s How to Fix the Housing Crisis,” in which Andreessen Horowitz general partners Alex RampellAlex RampellAlex Rampell (Alastair Rampell) is an entrepreneur and investor, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and leader of its Apps practice. He co-founded TrialPay and Affirm and serves on the boards of Wise and Rocket Companies.Open the full entry and Erik TorenbergErik TorenbergErik Torenberg is a tech entrepreneur, investor, and podcast host who is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he invests and is responsible for marketing and the ecosystem network. He was the first employee of Product Hunt and founded or co-founded On Deck, Village Global, and Turpentine, long combining founder communities, expert content, and early-stage investing.Open the full entry spoke with Krishna. The episode discussed how asset inflation has turned housing from a path to ownership into a mechanism for wealth transfer, noted that the median age of U.S. first-time homebuyers rose from 30 to 38 over about fourteen years, contrasted the historical speed of building large structures with the slow pace of minor renovations today, and covered Rocket’s strategy of spanning the homebuying journey from online home search to mortgages to turn a one-time transaction into an ongoing customer relationship.⁠[5][6]