Since its inception, in 1998, LendingTree has played matchmaker on more than 30 million loan requests and facilitated some $214 billion in closed loan transactions.... By the fall of 1996, though, LendingTree.com founder and CEO Doug Lebda was in the MBA program at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, coincidentally something he wouldn't complete until this May. While there, everything he learned was seen through the prism of his mortgage marketplace idea. It consumed him. In a leap of faith, he put business school on hold.