operating businesses in the U.S. are key drivers of innovation, with immigrants most famously starting Silicon Valley heavyweights such as Google, Tesla and Yahoo. That’s even as foreign-born founders have had to work harder to overcome obstacles that include theThe failure of Silicon Valley Bank, now operating under FDIC receivership, will be one more obstacle many of them will have to overcome.
One early-stage founder from India, who came here on an O-1 visa for those with extraordinary ability, recalls struggling to get a business account with a major bank because it required Social Security numbers for all the company’s directors. Silicon Valley Bank didn’t have that requirement, didn’t require a minimum balance and was able to set up an account quickly. “Being an immigrant, it was much easier to open a Silicon Valley Bank account than a non-Silicon Valley Bank account,” he says.
Sunil Singh, who came to Silicon Valley from India two decades ago and is now on his eighth startup with fintech infrastructure company Tallied, says that Silicon Valley Bank played an especially important role among immigrant founders who lacked savings or home equity, and who were in the U.S. on one of the alphabet soup of visas. “Immigrants are still in the building stage so the options for them are more limited,” Singh says.
May I please have a bank loan?