By Catherine Muccigrosso
The Charlotte Observer
(TNS)
Doug Lebda, founder of LendingTree in Charlotte, was a pioneer in the fintech industry during the advent of the internet. His idea was for a company that let customers comparison shop for bank loans online.
Lebda died unexpectedly Sunday in an all-terrain vehicle collision, the company announced Monday. He was 55. Details about the crash, reportedly at a family farm in North Carolina, have not been released.
Lebda is survived by his wife, Megan, and three daughters Rachel, Abby and Sophia. Funeral services have not been announced yet.
Ric Elias started his company Red Ventures in Fort Mill, S.C., around the same time that Lebda started LendingTree. Both were among built digital companies in Charlotte.
“He was a formiddable competitor,” Elias said Monday on X. “His leadership and contributions will live on through those who worked alongside him.”
Here are five things to know about Lebda:
Doug Lebda’s personal story
Lebda grew up in rural central Pennsylvania, near his grandmother had a farm, he said in 2023 on the YouTube episode of Bridge Builder Conversations. His parents were teachers. He has a younger sister.
He grew up mowing lawns, babysitting and cold-calling to generate leads for his father’s second career selling cookware.
Lebda’s entrepreneurial spirit started in childhood.
As a kid, he’d sneak out at night with friends to gather golf balls out of the Bucknell University golf course pond near his home in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. The next day, they’d sell the golf balls to the golfers.
He also dabbled in fireworks sales at age 15 until his parents confiscated the products.
He later applied to colleges like Duke and UNC Chapel Hill, but didn’t get in.
The education of Doug Lebda
Lebda graduated from Bucknell with a bachelor’s degree in accounting/business administration in 1992.
Lebda told Bridge Builder Conversations that he became a CPA because he was weak in math skills. He worked as an auditor and consultant for accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from 1992 to 1996.
“I really suck at math,” Lebda said. “That was really educational for me. I knew that was not what I wanted to do for a living.”
While trying to secure a mortgage, he became so frustrated, he decided to start his own company. He dropped out of the master’s business administration program at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business to start LendingTree.
Doug Lebda and the LendingTree online marketplace
After experiencing the frustrations of getting his first mortgage, Lebda created a way to simplify the loan shopping process online through comparing offers.
At age 24, he wanted to buy a $55,000 condo, he said on Bridge Builder Conversations. At the time, bank rates were listed in the newspaper and he had to apply in person at the bank. Even with his financial understanding, he hated the process.
In 1996, while at the Darden business school, Lebda said he spent $500 on Yahoo ads to create the company Credit Source USA to have banks compete for business. He had hundreds of responses for the open market space.
“We became the search engine for customer acquisition in our space,” Lebda said on The Deal Ranch podcast last month.
That business model he created became LendingTree in 1998. LendingTree has facilitated more than 65 million loan requests and works with a network of over 500 lenders, according to the company website.
LendingTree lets consumers comparison shop for loans online. The company has expanded into credit cards. insurance, auto loans and small-business financing. In 2000, LendingTree went public on the NASDAQ under the symbol TREE.
And Lebda returned to Darden at UVA in 2012 and graduated with his MBA in 2014.
How Doug Lebda was drawn to Charlotte
Looking at the East Coast and West Coast to launch his company, he thought LendingTree could recruit people in the Charlotte area, known for banking and financial services.
Lebda moved to Charlotte in 1997 to set up LendingTree in his spare bedroom in Ballantyne, he previously told The Charlotte Observer.
Lebda took civic service seriously
LendingTree has set aside $10 million for its foundation to support the Charlotte community in areas such as affordable housing and education.
At its inception in 2012, Lebda gave every LendingTree employee $200 to donate at their discretion, according to the foundation’s website.
The foundation has helped Charlotte organizations that support underserved students and homelessness to mentorships and entrepreneur development.
Lebda was personally involved in supporting the Charlotte community in many ways, including in 2019, when Lebda matched all donations to a GoFundMe for Steak n Shake shooting victim Darnell Harris, WSOC reported. Harris sacrificed his life to protect others during a robbery attempt.
LendingTree and Lebda also kick-started a COVID crisis fundraising effort to help residents with $1 million, and the company was among private donors that helped The Foundation for the Carolinas exceed its fundraising goal to support the city’s arts budget plan.
”He was one of just a few that put Charlotte on the map as a business powerhouse. It was just a matter of time before he took the baton of civic leadership from the previous guard and led us into a bright future,” Carolina Fintech Hub founder and former Charlotte city councilman Tariq Bokhari said Monday on Facebook.
“Now we won’t get to see that, and all the other things his bright lights had in store for us all.”
Photo credit: LendingTree via Instagram
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©2025 The Charlotte Observer. Visit charlotteobserver.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC.
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