The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has many companies bracing for the impact of its failure. SVB served nearly half of all U.S. tech startups backed by venture capital.
Greg Brown with the Charlotte Angel fund — a group that invests in early-stage companies, says so far the immediate local impact has been minimal. But the collapse of SVB has shaken the trust many have in their banks.
"Is my bank safe? Is my bank secure? Which I promise you — this time last week, nobody was worrying about that," Brown said. "There was no conversation about, ‘Gosh, can I trust that my funds at whatever bank I'm at are going to be available to me when I want them?’ The banking system relies upon depositors to have a level of trust. And we've seen what happens when that erodes."
Charlotte City council member Tariq Bokhari, the founder of Fintech Hub, agrees the local impact has been minimal.
"In the short term, it really doesn't seem to be much local impact from Silicon Valley Bank," Bokhari said. "And what we've been seeing over the last week or so, the startups around town that we talked to, really this isn't a part of the world where most people that have a startup are naturally gravitating towards SVB like somebody in the Valley might be."
According to regulatory filings, Silicon Valley Bank CEO Greg Becker sold $3.6 million of company stock two weeks before the bank reported massive losses in the run-up to the bank's failure.
