Icons and Innovators Podcast: Evolutionizing Mortgage with AI: How Tidalwave Transforms Mortgage Lending

In this episode of The Innovators and Investors Podcast, host Kristian Marquez interviews Diane Yu, co-founder and CEO of tidalwave, a fintech startup revolutionizing the mortgage origination process through AI-powered technology. Diane explains that tidalwave addresses a significant gap in the mortgage industry: the slow, cumbersome, and document-heavy mortgage application process that lacks real-time feedback for consumers. Traditional mortgage origination involves multiple intermediaries and extensive paperwork, which delays responses and frustrates borrowers. tidalwave’s AI-driven platform transforms this experience by interacting directly with borrowers, evaluating documents like credit reports and bank statements instantly with permission, and providing immediate, tailored feedback.

Diane’s background as an engineer and founder of FreeWheel, a successful advertising technology platform acquired by Comcast, uniquely positions her to build scalable, configurable enterprise platforms. She emphasizes tidalwave’s flexibility to accommodate diverse lender risk profiles by enabling customization and special overlays during onboarding. The company launched its initial product, a point-of-sale (POS) system enhanced by an AI agent, in late 2023 after 18 months of development, capitalizing on the rise of large language models (LLMs).

Diane shares valuable entrepreneurial insights from her journey, highlighting the importance of learning, adaptability, and not needing to get everything perfect from the start. She stresses the significance of culture fit in acquisitions and growth, drawing from her experience leading multiple acquisitions at Comcast. tidalwave’s growth has been largely organic, fueled by word-of-mouth and industry connections, with minimal marketing spend, though Diane anticipates expanding customer acquisition efforts as the company scales.

Regarding AI’s future, Diane is optimistic about the transformative power of LLMs, encouraging a mindset of abundance—viewing AI as a tool to augment human productivity rather than replace jobs. She provides personal examples of how AI has enhanced her own communication and productivity. Diane closes with advice for professionals to prioritize continuous learning and remain open to new possibilities, inspired by her own career transitions from engineering to entrepreneurship and fintech.

Key Insights

• AI-Driven Real-Time Mortgage Processing: tidalwave’s platform uniquely empowers borrowers to interact with AI at their convenience, submit documents digitally, and receive instant feedback. This is a major innovation in an industry traditionally bogged down by delays, manual reviews, and fragmented communications, significantly enhancing user experience and efficiency. By automating diligence processes like credit and bank statement evaluation, tidalwave reduces lender workload and accelerates decision-making.
• Configurable Platform for Diverse Lender Needs: Diane highlights the challenge of building a platform that suits lenders of varying sizes and risk appetites. tidalwave’s configurable architecture allows customized workflows and overlays tailored to each lender’s preferences. This flexibility is crucial because mortgage lenders differ widely—from large enterprises to small independent mortgage bankers—and a one-size-fits-all solution would fail to gain broad adoption. The ability to “bespoke” the platform during onboarding is a competitive advantage.
• Strategic Market Entry with MVP: Contrary to rushing to build a minimally viable product that tries to do everything, Diane’s approach focused on delivering a digestible, high-impact solution—a point-of-sale system enhanced with an AI agent. This allowed tidalwave to enter the market quickly yet meaningfully, gaining early adopters and validating the product’s value proposition. This pragmatic approach balances speed with quality and positions the company to iterate and expand capabilities based on real user feedback.
• Organic Growth and Industry Relationships: With minimal marketing spend, tidalwave’s growth has been propelled by leveraging deep industry connections and delivering a product that excels in solving existing pain points. Early customers became evangelists, helping to triple the sales pipeline within a quarter. This underscores the importance of product-market fit and strong network effects in the early phases of startup growth, especially in regulated and relationship-driven sectors like mortgage lending.
• Importance of Culture in Acquisitions and Growth: Drawing on her experience at Comcast, Diane stresses that acquisitions often fail due to cultural mismatches rather than strategic flaws. For founders and executives contemplating growth through acquisition or partnership, assessing culture fit is as essential as evaluating technology or market share. Integrating teams with aligned values and working styles facilitates smoother post-acquisition execution and long-term success.
• AI as a Tool for Empowerment, Not Replacement: Diane advocates for a mindset shift across industries to embrace AI as augmenting human capabilities rather than threatening jobs. She illustrates this with her personal experience of AI enhancing her communication skills and productivity, enabling her to perform tasks more effectively. In mortgage lending, AI can serve as a 24/7 assistant, multilingual communicator, and expert underwriter, dramatically improving service quality and operational efficiency.
• Prioritizing Lifelong Learning: Diane’s career trajectory—from engineer to serial entrepreneur to fintech innovator—exemplifies the power of continuous learning and openness to change. She encourages professionals, especially young engineers and founders, to prioritize learning over comfort or security. This growth mindset enables adaptation to new industries, technologies, and opportunities, which is critical in today’s fast-evolving tech landscape.

Additional Observations

• Diane’s outsider perspective in mortgage lending combined with insider expertise on her team has been key to identifying industry pain points and crafting effective solutions.
• The timing of tidalwave’s founding aligned perfectly with the emergence of large language models, demonstrating the value of technological timing in startup success.
• Hybrid work culture balances talent acquisition flexibility with the need for in-person collaboration to maintain communication bandwidth in a fast-moving startup environment.
• The company’s intent to scale marketing and sales efforts thoughtfully, after establishing product-market fit, reflects disciplined growth strategy.
• Diane’s reflections on humility and willingness to pivot offer valuable lessons for founders navigating uncertainty and evolving market demands.

Overall, this episode provides a rich case study in fintech innovation, AI application in mortgage technology, startup growth strategies, and leadership lessons from an accomplished founder and CEO.