Silicon Valley Bank collapse affects several Colombian entrepreneurs

( Spanish) — On the afternoon of last Saturday, Rosario Ballesteros was concerned that her bank’s platform to schedule a payment to a supplier was not working. It was not common for that to happen. Since 2016 she was a client of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and she always had access to all financial services online. But the alarms went off when she began to see on the news and in WhatsApp chats with her colleagues that something serious was happening. The SVB, the entity in which she had the financial resources of her company, VR Americas, dedicated to developing immersive reality software, was in crisis.

“And from there we started to hear and see what was going on. Really the total concern was Friday morning and Saturday trying to move the money and follow up on what was going on. We talked to other people to see what they knew “, tells in Spanish.

They were days of anguish due to the uncertainty of what was going to happen to his money. Ballesteros says that many Colombian entrepreneurs like her stayed connected all the time to follow up on the situation and see how they could solve it.

“And also the concern was to understand the impact, not only on customers but also on the ecosystem. In the freelancers, in the programmers. I think we all had a quick lesson in the financial system. This marks a before and after. There are still many logistical things to solve with payments. But within everything that could have happened, I think it was very fast and the best possible given the collapse of the bank,” says Ballesteros, who added that he is still in the midst of a nervous breakdown and stress caused by this situation.

A similar case is that of Alexander Torrenegra, one of the most successful Colombian-Americans in Silicon Valley. He is a founder and investor in companies such as Tribe, RisePal, Bunny Studio, Voice123 and Torre.co, of which he is also CEO.

“Everything has already been resolved in terms of the availability of resources, but I’m still busy opening new bank accounts, solving other things,” Torrenegra told .

On his Twitter account, on Saturday he claimed that Silicon Valley Bank was the primary bank for two of his businesses, his personal savings and his mortgage.

Torrenegra reported that between 2013 and 2023 everything worked fine. Until last Thursday morning, the first signs that something was wrong began to emerge. And in a chat he has with nearly 200 tech company founders, he found out what was going on.

As happened to Ballesteros, they were hours of total uncertainty, in the midst of the SVB crisis. Torrenegra gathered his team this Friday to explain what was happening and answer questions. As he waited and coped with anxiety, he tried to help other entrepreneurs like him by sharing what he knew or had been able to find out.

Silicon Valley Bank logo (Photo by REBECCA NOBLE/AFP via Getty Images)

This Colombian-American entrepreneur continues trying to normalize the financial situation of his companies and his personal assets. And he trusts that the worst is over.

“It is time to return to what we can control: the execution of our companies,” he wrote in the same thread on his Twitter account, as a reflection.

What Rosario Ballesteros and Alexander Torrenegra experienced is very similar to what other founders, partners and directors of start-ups Colombians living in Silicon Valley, including Fredy Vega, from Platzi, and Juan Manuel Lopera, from TOMi.digital.

“Some people hate banks. Or business people. Or anything ‘capital.’ and reality. To learn, you have to want to learn,” Vega posted on his Twitter account, after the collapse of SVB.

“As a Colombian entrepreneur, you join the US to reduce country and currency risk and this happens,” lamented Lopera, upon learning of the serious situation of the financial institution.

Many of these entrepreneurs are still trying to recover all their investments. Others have already done it. But most agree that they are not going to give up in the face of adversity and that they are going to continue trying to start a business and create more jobs.