In early March last year, Joey Womack thought he’d secured a sponsorship for his nonprofit Goodie Nation. Silicon Valley Bank, the go-to financial institution for many tech investors and startups, agreed verbally to support his programming for local diverse startup founders.
But hours later, Womack started to hear SVB was in serious trouble. On March 9, 2023, customers withdrew $42 billion after getting spooked by the bank selling bonds at a loss, making it the largest bank run in U.S. history. The next day, U.S. regulators took control of SVB and shut it down. North Carolina-based First Citizens Bank acquired most of SVB a few weeks later.
The bank’s collapse raised questions about what would fill SVB’s role of supporting the Atlanta tech startup community. Though other institutions have tried to make inroads, one year later, it turns out SVB has remained in that role, albeit to a lesser degree.
“[SVB] came back at the end of last year and recommitted,” Womack said in a recent interview. “It wasn’t to the same level, which I expect, but quite honestly I was shocked they even came back in the first place.”
Pause, play
Jaisa Gooden doesn’t think SVB should be called a comeback story. Gooden, the bank’s vice president of startup banking for greater Atlanta, said the bank’s continued presence in the city’s startup community is because she spent a lot of time establishing intentional relationships before and immediately after the failure.
Gooden grew up in Atlanta before going away for college. She came back to the city in 2021 when she took the role with SVB because she wanted “to have influence in shaping what Atlanta’s ecosystem looks like.”
The acquisition by First Citizens Bank didn’t make Gooden stop that work.
“It was more like pause, play,” she said. “It was like everything stopped and then they let us know like, ‘Okay, it’s safe to go again.’”
Credit: Olivia Bowdoin
Credit: Olivia Bowdoin
By June, she was reestablishing those relationships. In the second half of last year, SVB was supporting major startup events like Venture Atlanta and coming back to the sponsorship deal with Goodie Nation.
But SVB’s role in the local startup community is more than just a place to keep money or an institution to cut checks for events. Gooden facilitates intangible but important things for founders, like warm introductions to potential investors, invitations to conferences and to other forums where their ideas can be heard.
Last winter, Gooden was able to bring Atlanta founders and investors with her to national conferences like AFROTECH in Texas and Art Basel in Florida, putting them in front of other founders and investors.
“I got the opportunity to take Atlanta on the roadshow,” Gooden said. “It just gave that ... Atlanta influences everything-type of experience, especially in the space of like Black entrepreneurship.”
Besides SVB, JPMorgan Chase has pushed into the local startup community by sponsoring public events like Venture Atlanta as well as private dinners for founders, according to Womack.
He said they are also trying to build intentional relationships with local startup ecosystem builders and are leveraging their banking infrastructure of help startups.
Looking ahead
Gooden wants to focus more SVB’s attention this year on intimate gatherings for founders to connect. In February, she hosted a tea for 11 local female founders and investors at local Black-owned restaurant The Dirty Tea.
Over champagne, pots of tea and hors d’oeuvres, attendees talked about a range of personal and professional topics. How powerful it was to see a female founder be visibly pregnant on the cover of a business magazine. Different pitch competitions they’d recently attended. How it’s better to never meet your idols.
For Veronica Woodruff, founder and CEO of the venture-backed air travel startup Travelsist, the tea was a great way to connect.
“Sometimes it’s hard for women to open up and be vulnerable, but that setting allowed many of us to be pretty vulnerable,” Woodruff said.
Credit: Jason Getz
Credit: Jason Getz
Woodruff had a relationship with SVB long before becoming a client. Since 2022, Gooden has extended invitations to conferences around the country, given Woodruff the rundown on who she needed to be talking to at events and even helped facilitate a relationship with Chamillionaire, the rapper-turned-investor.
Last summer, after the collapse and First Citizens takeover, Woodruff moved her company’s money to SVB because of her personal experiences.
In February, SVB also sponsored a Black History Month event for the nonprofit BLCK VC, a national network of Black investors.
Baheejah Crumbley, an investment associate at local Black-owned venture firm Collab Capital and co-lead for the Atlanta chapter of BLCK VC, said SVB has “been a very consistent and thoughtful sponsor.”
But she said that “they are being more thoughtful about who they partner with and making sure that value-add is apparent.”
Credit: Jason Getz
Credit: Jason Getz
The BLCK VC event highlights another shift that Gooden wants to make this year — spending more time with organizations and people who support founders like accountants and lawyers to build up a Rolodex that she can recommend to entrepreneurs.
SVB’s work is happening in a very difficult funding environment for founders, particularly Black and minority founders. Venture capital funding for Black founders in Atlanta dropped 79% in 2023 compared to the year before, according to Crunchbase, more than twice the rate of the drop in VC funding for startups overall.
This year, Gooden is looking to help founders build customer relationships and grow the more traditional way since the VC spigots have tightened. She also wants to focus on bringing more relationships and resources to Atlanta that can help local companies scale.
After SVB’s failure, staff shake-ups meant that Gooden also became VP of startup banking for the Mid-Atlantic region, which includes Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. With her dual role, she’s hoping to connect Atlanta with other tech ecosystems.
“Everyone has their individual role to play but I think on the other side of it we have been able to lean on the relationships that we have to be able to continue to be successful,” she said.
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