Amusing to read this and think back on GitHub's seed round ($100M). At the time we just had a small business account from Bank of America... going from relatively thin cushion in the account over the previous few years to suddenly dropping in $100M was pretty amusing. I believe we moved to a more sophisticated setup quickly thereafter.
My startup banking story (2023)
21–30 of 170 posts
Re: My startup banking story (2023)
#22During COVID, I took a major haircut in my day job, and ended up doing a lot of side work to stay solvent. All my banking was with Chase; I setup a new checking account for my side work. One day they just took about $900. No matter who I spoke to, they bounced me around and never gave me an answer why. I can only guess there was a fraud trigger or something, but to this day, I've never gotten the money back or even g…
Take them to small claims court.
(Also close the account. No bank should lose money like that.)
Re: My startup banking story (2023)
#23One of the more frustrating things in life are cleaning up novice mistakes from people who should know better.
I wonder why the investors didn't at least do some due diligence into where the money was being stored?
Re: My startup banking story (2023)
#24So let's say a startup was funded through a Chase bank account and now everyone on this thread is saying "yeah don't do that"... Let's say that a friend of mine has a startup funded account at Chase, and where should they go?
>Let's say that a friend of mine has a startup funded account at Chase, and where should they go?
Silicon Valley Bank... oh wait. In all seriousness, the approachability and flexibility of SVB bankers was really unparalleled at the time. Not like Alex in this story, that made really half-baked attempts to engage with a client model he was entirely unfamiliar with (but got all the credit for). This being said, Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank continues to exist.
I see a lot of Fintech players on the scene now. Brex, Mercury and Rho are common ones, through Brex has taken steps to distance itself from true, seed-stage startups as of late. Given what happened with Synapse's failure [1], I have doubts that they have the same protections and regulations of a brick and mortar FDIC bank.
Diversification is key too - so having multiple accounts. Some non-fintech banks I've seen floating around, ironically, JP Morgan Startup Banking, Wells Fargo Technology Banking Group, Citigroup Commercial Bank, PNC Technology Finance. All big banks, just not their retail banking divisions (as the author was experienced using).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapse_Financial_Technologies
Re: My startup banking story (2023)
#25Would never thought there is so much money to be made in cloud services.
Re: My startup banking story (2023)
#26Favourite part of this story is how the casually realise there's $1M in funds sent from customers that they didnt notice.
Re: My startup banking story (2023)
#27This was a super-interesting read, but I'm disappointed there isn't a description of what, exactly, was wrong about what he did, and what one should do instead. The only thing that comes to mind is the obvious one: you don't want more than the FDIC limit in a single bank account.
Re: My startup banking story (2023)
#28What banks are recommended for startups if not chase?
Re: My startup banking story (2023)
#29Funny to see this pop up again (I'm the author). The year is now 2025 and I still use Chase as a personal bank and I'm now discovering new funny banking behaviors. I'll use this as a chance to share. :) My company had an exit, I did well financially. This is not a secret. I'm extremely privileged and thankful for it. But as a result of this, I've used a private bank (or mix) for a number of years to store the vast ma…
What I took from this is that you have a really engaging writing style. Was interesting to read from start to finish.
Re: My startup banking story (2023)
#30Funny to see this pop up again (I'm the author). The year is now 2025 and I still use Chase as a personal bank and I'm now discovering new funny banking behaviors. I'll use this as a chance to share. :) My company had an exit, I did well financially. This is not a secret. I'm extremely privileged and thankful for it. But as a result of this, I've used a private bank (or mix) for a number of years to store the vast ma…
You should start a business for your construction projects, then use a business bank like Mercury instead of Chase and get all the nice business features.