We’ve been busy.

Half a dozen new customers signed, new integrations, new partnerships, and a new crop of hires that are set to accelerate our growth even further. We continue to attract exceptional talent as our momentum builds, and our vision of a new normal for lending takes shape. This month in particular, Vishal Srivastav, Head of Growth Product, and Miguel Perez, Software Engineer have joined us. These two hires, we feel, deserve a moment of reflection, as an indication of where we’re headed.

Of our 50+ team members, two thirds are engineers. Without our long-time engineering team we wouldn’t be nearly where we are today. Still, we get a spark of pride that longer-term software operators like Vishal and Miguel have seen something in Tidalwave that’s worth pursuing.

Vishal has spent most of his career in product roles, spanning Microsoft, Amazon, Better, and most recently GoodLeap, a B2B2C financing group focused on home services. Miguel has been in the thick of development everywhere from Twitter, to Squarespace, to Better, to a handful of stealth-mode startups.

It helped that for each of them, their time at Better gave them exposure to the core Tidalwave team, Diane, Jack, and some of our day-one members. But still, both of these men made the conscious decision to leave more established, secure businesses to come chase this dream with us at Tidalwave. They see something worth chasing here.

The shape of the opportunity for us has begun to shift, as we find more validation in-market and uncover more opportunities to streamline, improve, and simplify lender and borrower experience. More and more, we see the lane widening for our POS+. Especially the ‘plus.’

Our Co-Founder & CEO, Diane Yu, had thoughts of her own on what these signals mean, and what they point to. We snagged her for a quick walk-and-talk interview on the Manhattan streets, to get her take:

You just brought on several talents from some of the biggest names in mortgage tech. What's the pattern you're seeing?

Throughout my career of building teams, there is one principle that works all the time: Good people know good people. High achievers attract high achievers. It’s surreal to think that we’ve crossed the 50 person mark without the need for recruiters, because every person we’ve brought on has led us to the next perfect hire. That’s been true in implementation, as in sales, as in product & engineering. They see something unique here, at Tidalwave.

Tell us about Vishal and Miguel specifically.

Vishal and Miguel, we are so happy to see them again. When I say “we,” we mean it. Both of them worked with my co-founders and myself directly at Better.com and I am so happy they have found their ways to us! Like I said, good people know good people. The best way to get to the best people is via our past connections.

Vishal will be instrumental in shaping the next phase of our product portfolio. He worked directly with us at Better, and made core contributions to the DEEP engine Jack and Cheng built. He’s one of those rare individuals that can humanize the product side, to a point that the boundary of user and platform almost disappears. I’m so, so glad that he’s back with us.

Miguel, too, I’m glad to see him back in the fold. He showed immense talent at Better, in the 2021 era. Since then he’s grown into a very capable advisor for startups. He’ll be an amazing asset for ensuring the reliability and performance of our production systems. Someone with that much on-the-ground experience is exactly what we need.

Rebecca Frisbie is the ninth person from ICE to join Tidalwave. There's a trend, they say. So nine is a pretty strong trend.

Everyone in mortgage tech has either worked for, or with ICE. And as the saying goes, “run with fast people, get faster.” ICE, with its centrality in the market, has produced much of the past generation’s outstanding talent. What that says, to me, is that we’ve caught the eye of the industry’s insiders. There are a dozen new tech vendors every month, but most of those come and go without a word. We’ve been building, quietly and surely, something that this industry hasn’t seen before.

With them joining, one after another, you have to ask yourself, who will see that earlier than the most connected, most entrenched tech personnel?

What do you look for when evaluating talent for Tidalwave, and does that vary by department?

First, people need to be able to learn quickly and work across multiple surface areas. Tidalwave moves too fast for anyone to stay in a single lane. We value people who see ambiguity as an opportunity to grow, and can operate with limited direction and incomplete information. That expectation does not change whether someone is in product, engineering, sales, or operations.

Second, we look for open-minded people, those willing to unlearn old assumptions, adopt new ways of working, and apply sound judgment to what they see. Building with AI requires a mindset of continuous learning and improvement, rather than a commitment to “the way things have always been done.”

Just as important is how someone shows up for our lenders. We want teammates who genuinely care about our customers and are willing to do what is right for them, even when it requires extra effort. Tidalwave’s work is ultimately about removing friction from a high-stakes mortgage process, where trust, accuracy, and relationships matter deeply.

Finally, we hire good people. People who work hard, enjoy building alongside one another, act with integrity, and do the right thing, even when no one is watching.

What does this say about where Tidalwave is headed?

It’s an immense validation. In the past 60 days we’ve welcomed a handful of exceptional operators from the tech and mortgage spaces, respectively. People see what we’re moving towards. We knew that going from zero to one would be hard. Now we are taking it from one to ten to one hundred. I am very much looking forward to the next era of growth.

22 live customers, including some of the biggest names in the industry. No failed implementations, zero churn on renewal. We’re bucking trends, in a way that is surprising everyone but us. We knew this would be our trajectory, based on our talent. It’s only a surprise if you aren’t reading the writing on the wall.

The premise behind Tidalwave was never “save time,” but “redefine fast” for the loan lifecycle. Ideas this big don’t arrive overnight. Most people have to be shown, not told, a better way.

Beyond our engineering and product hires, the past 30 days have given us several other incredible team members that push that theme forward. In mid-August we welcomed two long-time mortgage tech powerhouses that, in ways similar to Vishal and Miguel’s signal, sent ripples out into the mortgage industry, Zac Basile and Rebecca Frisbie. Mortgage insiders, like tech minds, are seeing the real opportunity.

The word is on the street. And beyond the street—in conventions, conferences, and board rooms. Tidalwave is different. That call has continued to rally these fantastically talented operators to our team. And, the same has been true for our customers. Three of the top 20 lenders in the country have taken a bet on us, a bet that’s already paying off as soon as six months in.

With the dawn of AI it would be too easy to chalk our momentum up to “right place, right time.” That sort of flippant response would discredit the thousands of hours’ development and months of late nights spent by our team in building Tidalwave. Tidalwave is much, much more than a matter of timing. It isn’t an accident. It’s an anomaly, as is every true disruptor.

Our vision is clear.

Our path is widening, day over day.

And, as AI continues to flatten curves for teams large and small, we know that we’ll stay ahead of the pack. Because, force multiplier that AI can be in the right hands, there’s no replacement for the experience and judgment that come from a great team. “Good” will become more readily achievable, for everyday operators. But the gap between good and great will grow so large that one won’t be able to see the other over the horizon.

Past that horizon, past great and into unforgettable, is where we’re headed. Stay tuned. The wave has only begun to rise.