Before his sudden collapse, Silicon Valley Bank has played a pivotal role in the high-tech industry by supplying a number of innovative start-ups, Internet companies, software manufacturers, biotech firms and even wine producers.
The California bank provided banking services to nearly half of US venture-backed technology and life science firms in 2022, according to a 2022 investor relations presentation. Here’s a representative sample of the bank’s clients, from online gaming platforms to wineries.
Andy’s swimming
New York-based swim firm Andie Swim was one of the consumer products businesses working with SVB Bank.
Founder Melanie Travis told CBS News that she worries the bank’s collapse will also cause her small 32-person company to fail. “Oh, this is probably the final nail in the coffin,” I thought. We’ve lived through COVID, we’ve been through it. “I’m just shocked that this is the end of it,” he said.
On Friday, Travis ran to open a new business account at JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank.
“We sell products on a website where consumers buy them. We needed a bank that would spend money on products,” he said.
In particular, Travis used his account at SVB to meet the company’s payroll, pay suppliers, etc.
“The first thing I thought was, how are we going to pay our employees?” he said.
He says his funds are safe, but he can’t move them now.
Circle
Jeremy Allair is the founder and CEO of the fintech firm tweeted On Sunday, all of its assets – USD Coin, a digital currency pegged to the US dollar – were “safe and secure” and the company transferred its balance sheet from SVB to BNY Mellon.
Allaire said the company is “pleased to see that the US government and financial regulators have taken significant steps to reduce the risks posed by the banking system.”
Cirq Estate
Founded in 2009, the Cirq Estate family winery employs less than 25 people. 2019 highlighted SVB founder Michael Brown’s successful venture into the wine industry. SVB also emphasized its deep knowledge and understanding of the industry, including the capital investment required to start a wine business.
Etsy
Online marketplace Etsy said SVB is one of the banks it does business with. As a result, a minority of its sellers experienced delays in receiving payments.
“We recently experienced delays in payments to a small group of sellers due to the unexpected collapse of a Silicon Valley bank — approximately 0.5% of our active seller base had late payments on Friday,” Etsy said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch. “We are working to pay these sellers today and have begun processing payments through another payment partner this morning.”
FarmboxRx
Launched in 2014, FarmboxRx partners with health insurance plans like Medicare and Medicaid to deliver healthy food as medicine to underserved communities.
The company transferred its business to SVB in 2021 and within two years was profitable with tens of millions of dollars in the bank, CEO Ashley Turner told CBS News. But when California regulators seized SVB on Friday, FarmboxRx was unable to access the “eight figures” in its SVB account.
“Fortunately, FarmboxRx made a decision to diversify its banking activities in the middle of the first quarter, but the sequence of events over the past 24 hours has been surprising,” Tyner said.
Turner said the company will transfer the remaining capital held by SVB to another account once it has access to its own funds.
Folks Health
A digital health startup focused on the medical needs of the LBGTQ community, such as providing hormone therapy to people in transition, also suffered a setback at SVB.
“As a Silicon Valley bank-backed company, this situation reaffirms how important the team and community you build around your business is,” CEO Liana Douillet Guzman said in a statement to CBS News. “My executive team and I, along with the board of directors, spent the entire weekend preparing for the SVB disaster. I’m always grateful to my team, but to see a manager with such kindness and determination during this crisis has been a CEO’s dream and helped ensure we can protect our company and our community.”
Excitement
Online payroll provider SVB, one of Y Combinator’s top companies of 2022 and one of SF Business Times’ fastest growing startups, struggled to service its clients after the collapse of Rippling SVB.
Corporations that used Rippling to pay their employees, such as Flow Health, a healthcare startup with 1,000 employees, were also affected, even if they weren’t bank customers.
“Our business didn’t work with a Silicon Valley bank, only our payroll provider did. So it’s unfortunate that we’re in this situation,” Flow Health CEO Alex Meshkin told CBS News. “On Friday, we could not get the salaries of our employees on time. We have resolved the situation and everyone will be paid this morning.”
According to Meshkin, his firm provides critical services to media companies, including television and film production outfits that rely on the firm on a daily basis, particularly It was COVID-19
According to Meshkin, Rippling came up with a solution that allowed Flow Health to pay its workers on weekends. Rippling also delivered payroll services to Flow Health this morning through its new banking partner, JPMorgan, Meshkin said.
Roblox
Online gaming platform Roblox has about 5% of the company’s $3 billion in cash and securities held by a Silicon Valley bank, the SEC said recently. The company said “the situation will not affect the company’s day-to-day operations,” it said.
Year
Streaming platform Roku reported holding about $487 million in SVB, or 26% of the company’s cash or cash equivalents as of March 10.
The company said it has $1.4 billion in cash in “several large financial institutions.”
“At this time, the company does not know how much of the company’s cash on deposit with SVB it will be able to recover,” Roku said in the filing.
Chief Financial Officer Steve Lowden said in the filing that Roku has cash “to meet working capital, capital expenditures and material cash requirements from certain contractual obligations for the next 12 months and beyond.”
Summer health
Summer Health is a text-based pediatric care provider that provides parents with prescriptions and doctor referrals in 15 minutes.
CEO and founder Ellen DaSilva said she opened six new bank accounts to protect her firm after SVB collapsed.
“As the first founder of an early-stage company that’s been around for less than a year, I’ve made the decision to exclusively use a Silicon Valley bank,” he told CBS News in a statement. “I learned the hard way about the importance of a diversified banking strategy and opened six new bank accounts for my business over the weekend. We also learned the importance of thinking outside of just keeping cash in the bank and investing our funds so that it doesn’t sit in a checking account.”
Viome
Early stages of cancer, etc. Digital health company Viome, which investigates the causes of chronic diseases to identify, has been a client of SVB since the company was founded seven years ago.
“All of our venture capitalist investors said SVB was the best place for us,” CEO and founder Naveen Jain told CBS MoneyWatch.
According to Jain, Viome had $25 million in assets in the bank at the time of the collapse. This morning he had access to all the funds of the firm. But the collapse caused him to question the safety of the US banking system.
“We took zero risk by checking our money at zero interest,” Jain told CBS News. “And we suddenly woke up Friday morning and we had no money.”
He is in the process of opening accounts at other, larger banks where he believes his firm’s cash will be safe.
