Same thing happened to me. I got denied because as a founder/owner holding more than 25% of a company they consider the P&L of the company as your personal income(loss).

Credit score impacts interest rate but debt to income ratio that is above 50% can completely disqualify you from a mortgage. Thats where the founder ownership can skew your personal DTI.

You can go to asset based lenders who evaluate and secure the loan against your existing assets (cash, etc) rather than based on your W2 income and DTI.

Same, kinda. Wasn't denied, but would have to pay a huge risk premium over conventional, regardless of how much I put up as a down payment, like the home's collateral value didn't matter. Earlier post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31000286

Did you provide the assets as collateral for the loan? I imagine a traditional mortgage may not have this as an option, but a different kind of loan may have been possible. However, you can probably only borrow up to a portion of the collateral value.