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Comment by seanmccann | Hacker News Reader

SVB's biggest value is in more complicated financial products for startups when traditional banks may not want to work with startups. I've worked with SVB in the past for an AR line that almost no bank would have given us.

If you just need a checking account, then there are lots of cheaper banks with better UIs.

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For AR, cash management facilities and even backing a bond for a long-term commercial lease, they are pretty startup friendly -- at the beginning. I had a company in the 90s that got caught in a couple of unexpected ripples (unrelated to our core business), and a couple of unexpected contracts that failed to close at the same time (completely related to our business), a cancelled IPO (because, Y2000's NASDAQ plunge) and then the private equity guys hiding under their desks, and ... yet more nonsense that ended up hitting a wall that had materialized out of nothing faster than we had planned for. Whatever - it happens. We found two buyers that, between them, would pick up >95% of our employees and get the investors 85% back on their ~$100m invested. Not great - but it sure beats a sharp stick in the eye. Silicon Valley would not budge on their first leinholder position on some cash we wanted to move to get liquidated to get everyone (including them!) paid. I think they held up an $85M million transaction over a $2M deposit we had in their bank (but they froze) for almost 3 weeks. Almost queered the deal twice over. At this point I don't remember the details, but I remember being frustrated (and very very surprised!) that they had changed from friendly/flexible to "nope! not gonna do it!" in a heart beat, and they almost lost out on getting paid their piece (which was bigger than the $2M note they were holding us up over). Weird.

You have to acknowledge a bank named Silicon Valley and having absolutely terrible technology and only recently a mobile app that is not even native is somewhat of an oxymoron. They also nickel and dime fees.

While I am sure SVB does assist with loans, investors, legal, most small businesses and startups just need a checking account and going with SVB is a mistake.

VC's and tech financing really have awful technology in and of themselves. You can think of it as the cobbler's kids having no shoes or you can think of it as really technically competent folks only really being attracted to VC to get conventional VC money and not ever as customers, but they often just run on excel and such.

I wouldn't be surprised if being burned by one of their investments going under has made them wary of jumping headfirst into trends. Maybe avoiding bias plays into it too.

Agreed. When I needed a letter of credit BofA refused to issue one to a new company, despite us having ample cash to cover our commercial lease. We switched to SVB, they issued one quickly, and we've been happy ever since. Their technology stack may be a little antiquated, but they are very startup-friendly in their policies. They offer lots, especially to well-funded startups, that you just won't find elsewhere.

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