Silicon Valley Bank’s shares are tanking as a mess unfolds

Re:Silicon Valley Bank’s shares are tanking as a mess unfolds by necubi on Thursday March 09, 2023 @05:41PM (#35087859)

Well, just as an example SVB gave my company a bank account and a no personal recourse credit card days after we'd formed the coporation. They understand the startup ecosystem in a way that big banks don't. Now there's some competition from startup-focused banks like Brex and Mercury, but a five years ago SVB was the only game in town.

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Re:Silicon Valley Bank’s shares are tanking as a mess unfolds by ericpauley on Thursday March 09, 2023 @07:46PM (#35089032)

I totally get why you’d borrow from them, and the card sounds nice, but do you want to be depositing your money with businesses that offer no personal recourse credit cards to brand new businesses?

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Re:Silicon Valley Bank’s shares are tanking as a mess unfolds by helsontaveras18 on Thursday March 09, 2023 @08:01PM (#35089149)

What’s wrong with that? Credit cards for businesses can be very low risk with the right KYC and underwriting controls.

Consider that startups are most often sitting on mountains of cash.

Also, having founders personally guarantee a credit card by putting up a house as collateral is not ideal for anyone.

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Re:Silicon Valley Bank’s shares are tanking as a mess unfolds by object-a on Thursday March 09, 2023 @08:34PM (#35089360)

FWIW, Mercury and Brex are not banks.

Mercury provides services and a frontend, but their banking services are provided by Choice Financial and Evolve.

Brex is also not bank. The Brex business account is an FDIC Sweep account, which constantly moves your balances across multiple banks to keep you within the FDIC limits.

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Re:Silicon Valley Bank’s shares are tanking as a mess unfolds by twelve40 on Thursday March 09, 2023 @08:46PM (#35089449)

I got a BofA checking account, credits cards and a business car loan in the first month after setting up a brand new corp with 0 assets. It's almost kind of funny how it worked exactly as you described, at BofA.

P.S. which makes me wonder how much of SVB friendliness was just smart marketing. If you look up and down this thread, most of the SVB "explanations" here are strictly circular: "they are good for startups because they are good for startups", with little to none useful info.

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Re:Silicon Valley Bank’s shares are tanking as a mess unfolds by zht on Thursday March 09, 2023 @11:53PM (#35090532)

Sure and there’s also anecdotes of larger banks doing the exact opposite

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Re:Silicon Valley Bank’s shares are tanking as a mess unfolds by twelve40 on Friday March 10, 2023 @04:41AM (#35092424)

Ok, let's chalk it up to my irresistible charm when I showed up at the branch that day, I can live with that.

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Re:Silicon Valley Bank’s shares are tanking as a mess unfolds by zamnos on Friday March 10, 2023 @01:45PM (#35099016)

I'm guessing your corp didn't have a 1 million dollar check to deposit, with expectations that most of that would get sent out to employees and AWS/GCP over the next few years, and that you would be receiving another 10 million dollars shortly thereafter.

Bragging about getting a car loan when (I assume) you have good history and credit? Unless it was a $1.5m Mclaren P1 supercar or something, that's not remotely in the same category.

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Re:Silicon Valley Bank’s shares are tanking as a mess unfolds by twelve40 on Friday March 10, 2023 @02:29PM (#35099575)

the person i was replying to said no way a brand new corp can get an account or credit cards, they didn't say anything about millions. That directly contradicted my experience, and despite being "anecdotal", I'm sure i was subject to the same rules and equations as everyone else.

If you want another anecdote - this one has millions in it - my last startup banked with Wells Fargo from pre-seed right up to series A with >10mil in three funding rounds and never had a single problem. Must be my crazy luck here as well!

At any rate, SVB is dead now, so it's pointless to argue whether they were really a startup's best friend or just hyped that up. They are not anyone's friend anymore, they are dead and the only real question here is how to get the damn money back from them.

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Re:Silicon Valley Bank’s shares are tanking as a mess unfolds by zamnos on Friday March 10, 2023 @08:33PM (#35104108)

This is the Wells Fargo that got in trouble for creating 2.1 million fake accounts for customers who never asked for them, got caught by the CFPB, paid $185 million in fines, and has been desperate for customers ever since? Yeah, actually, you did get lucky with them, they really do want your business.

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