Aug. 21--It's back to the future for Doug Lebda.

Twelve years after founding LendingTree, the online mortgage marketplace, Lebda has returned as the chief executive of the Charlotte-based company -- renamed Tree.com Inc. to signify its diversification into other services. His challenge is to navigate a national housing crisis that has depleted the company's profits and led to major job cuts over the past year.

Lebda, 38, survived the dot-com bust in 2000 and 2001, sold LendingTree to Internet conglomerate IAC/InteractiveCorp in 2003 and eventually became president of New York-based IAC. Last year, however, IAC said it was spinning off LendingTree and three other units so it could focus on its Web businesses. Today the separation is official, and Lebda is back at the helm of a stand-alone public company.

LendingTree, which matches borrowers with lenders, remains Tree.com's signature product. But the company also has a network of real estate agents (www.realestate.com), makes its own loans and is branching into credit cards and insurance. Recent initiatives include refreshing the LendingTree site (www.lendingtree.com/beta) and preparing a new student-lending site (www.tuitiontree.com).

Although Lebda counsels his employees not to get caught up in daily stock-price gyrations, he admits he likes having the company's shares trading again under its former "TREE" symbol. In provisional trading Wednesday, the shares closed at $7.42, down 3 percent..

"It's great to be on our own and to have a public currency that will reflect the value we uniquely create," Lebda said recently. "As much as we loved being part of IAC, we really love what we're doing now."

In a wide-ranging interview at his company's Ballantyne headquarters, Lebda discussed his return to the company, the mortgage market, a recent data breach and his compensation. Questions and answers are edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: Any dejà vu returning to the company?

I'd say no. When I was at IAC, I was always still very connected to LendingTree and to what was going on here. When I had the opportunity to come back -- but not to just come back to LendingTree as it was in the past, but to hopefully build on all the assets we have here to create a new and even better company -- I jumped at the opportunity. Basically, I saw that we had a great online marketing capability, we had a fantastic brand in LendingTree, and our real estate business was continuing to advance. The idea was to take those assets and combine them into a company that can launch new businesses that are closely related to LendingTree, leverage our online marketing capabilities and end up with a much larger, more diversified company.

Q: Where are we in the mortgage cycle?

There are two major drivers of the mortgage and real estate cycle: home prices around the country and the unavailability of credit right now. Those two certainly relate, but you can also have one being an issue without the other.