Tech CEO with at least $10M in Silicon Valley Bank: ‘Worst 18 hours of my life’
The CEO of a Boston-based health and wellness company said she has been unable to log into her Silicon Valley Bank account, where she has at least $10 million in deposits.
Ashley Tyrner, the founder of FarmboxRx, told The Post on Friday that she has been frantically trying to reach her banker at SVB, the California-based lender that is teetering on the brink of collapse.
She told The Post that she’s been experiencing “the worst 18 hours of my life.”
On Friday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said regulators have shut the bank down to protect insured deposits after the bank’s parent, SVB Financial, had reportedly tapped outside advisers to facilitate a potential sale.
“It was pure and utter panic,” Tyrner said when asked about her state of mind after she read news reports that the bank’s stock price had plummeted, losing tens of billions of dollars of its market capitalization.
Tyrner, who heads a company of 63 employees, told The Post that her firm’s banking relationship with SVB stretches back two years.
“We were going to raise a round a venture financing,” she said, noting that SVB “is one of the go-to banks” for that purpose.
“We were looking to diversify and everybody told us that SVB is a great bank,” Tyrner said.
When asked how much she deposited with SVB, Tyrner told The Post: “We have eight figures.” She declined to specify the exact sum.
The Post has viewed a screenshot of FarmboxRx’s bank statement with SVB. The bank was not immediately available for comment.
Tyrner said that “all panic broke loose” on Thursday afternoon when senior members of her management team called her with an urgent request.
“My COO actually initiated a wire,” she said. “She immediately started texting me, telling me, ‘You gotta go approve this wire.'”
“When I went to log in to approve the wire, the system was completely crashed,” Tyrner said. “It would not let anybody in.”
Tyrner said she has repeatedly tried calling customer service as well as her personal banker at SVB.
“He wouldn’t answer the phone,” Tyrner said.
“He sent us a text that he’s very sorry. They’re trying to fix the issue to get us logged into the account.”
When the technical snafu still wasn’t resolved, Tyrner tried to reach the banker again.
“He won’t get back to anyone in my company,” she said. “Not even a text. We have no idea what’s going on.”
Tyrner, whose company generated $56 million in revenue last year, told The Post she was “thankful” that “we have cash diversified so it’s not all in one place.”
“We’re in a good place because we’re so diversified,” she said.
“We would not go out of business. That’s not true for a lot of other companies that bank with them.”
She said she’s waiting to see what fate awaits the bank, which is reportedly looking for buyers.
Tyrner added: “[Losing all of the company’s money] would be terrible but it wouldn’t be so detrimental that we couldn’t recover, so we’re thankful for that.
“Nobody wants to lose any amount of capital.”
