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Lindsey Hoell set out on her fifth attempt to open a new bank account in the Bay Area on Monday.
She’d been trying for days as chaos reigned across the banking system. Hoell is one of hundreds of startup founders mired in the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank—left unable to make payroll, pay customers and collect money from clients.
“It was really, really chaotic,” said Hoell, who’s the CEO and co-founder of Dispatch Goods, a climate focused startup that helps businesses reuse packaging to reduce waste. “If it hadn’t been me, it would have been comical because it was so absurd. We were just like, ‘How is this our lives?'”
Silicon Valley Bank is a 40-year-old institution based in Santa Clara, Calif., that catered to nearly half of all U.S. tech startups backed by venture capital. Rumblings of a bank run on it began on Thursday and by Friday it had collapsed, becoming the largest American bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis.
On Sunday, federal officials announced a rescue plan in which all depositors of Silicon Valley Bank would have access to their accounts by Monday.
Silicon Valley Bank’s website was still down early Monday, but by mid-morning appeared to be functioning. Customers said they were able to begin wire transfers to accounts at other banks.
NPR spoke with four startup founders who said they’ve been able to initiate the transfers and now are holding their breath to see if they go through.
“I think the settlement will go through tomorrow,” said Jack Singh, referring to the wire transfers for his startup, Avahi, which helps businesses with Amazon’s cloud technology. “Until then, we’ll definitely be on pins and needles and watching and refreshing our browsers.”Trying to make payroll
Last Thursday it was a totally different story.
Singh was just sitting down to lunch when his chief financial officer called to tell him that they should move some of their funds out of Silicon Valley Bank.
