How tech CEOs and other Silicon Valley Bank funders scrambled to stay afloat
Startup founders and other SVB account holders raced to find ways to maintain cash flow even as some of their federally backstopped funds remained inaccessible.
The tech community is still reeling from the abrupt collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the industry’s onetime financial engine, which flamed out Friday in the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.
Small businesses and startups with deposits at SVB will soon have access to all their money, regulators have said, following emergency measures to cover any funds beyond the federally promised $250,000 per depositor limit.
But business owner Vanessa Pham said that as of Monday afternoon, she was still waiting to get access to cash locked up at the bank.
“It’s very demoralizing to think about, because when these kinds of shifts and collapses happen at massive institutions, it’s often the small guys like us that feel it the hardest,” said Pham, a co-founder of Omsom, an Asian food products company based in New York.
For business owners who made up the foundation of SVB’s business, recent days have forced a series of on-the-fly moves to keep the lights on — and raised new questions about companies’ banking decisions that few entrepreneurs ever thought they’d have to consider.
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