Utah businesses breathe sigh of relief after averting disaster over bank collapse

SALT LAKE CITY — The collapse of Silicon Valley Financial institution is one thing that despatched 1000’s of householders of small companies and startups scrambling, with many attempting to determine how one can meet their subsequent payroll.

For Kickstart, a enterprise capital agency based mostly in Cottonwood Heights, says a whole lot of their corporations have been confronted with main challenges, however are grateful for options introduced over the past 24 hours on the state and federal stage that ensures depositors.

“It’s a giant day for startups throughout the U.S., particularly right here in Utah,” mentioned Kickstart founder Gavin Christensen. “The identify is Silicon Valley Financial institution, however actually it’s the startups financial institution. This impacts these small corporations probably the most.”

Small companies have been pressured to scramble to keep away from catastrophe when accounts have been locked up final week.

“We have been going to have numerous challenges: layoffs, furloughs, corporations shutting down. It was getting unhealthy, so we’re actually grateful one thing occurred,” Christiansen mentioned.

Many like Christensen are grateful to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Sen. Mitt Romney who understood the affect of permitting a financial institution like this to fail.

“This issues to our financial system due to payroll and jobs and these are depositors,” he mentioned. “Hey, traders and debt holders misplaced all their cash in Silicon Valley Financial institution and that’s completely honest, that’s capitalism. However for depositors to place cash in a financial institution and never know that’s secure … that’s to make sure confidence that’s so necessary in our system.”

Kickstart normal associate Kat Kennedy says it is onerous sufficient to get a small enterprise up and operating with out the concern of getting a checking account frozen.

“It’s actually actually onerous to start out an organization,” she defined. “It’s actually, actually onerous to develop that to the purpose the place you may have affect and affect, and so what occurred final week was only one thing more on prime of it that you’d simply by no means, ever assume that you’d simply have your checking account locked up.”

Kennedy added that whereas many might hear about Silicon Valley Financial institution and suppose it is simply huge tech corporations which are affected, it is truly the little companies which are hit the toughest,

“Those that are most affected are people, you understand, the founders of corporations of all sizes. We expect Fb, we predict Uber, we predict WeWork, however the actuality right here in Utah is tech is all over the place. It’s people risking all of it to start out corporations that in the end goal to enhance lives for all of us.”