Not a lawyer, but I would be pretty comfortable with SVB -> personal account if you documented why and communicated about it in advance with board/counsel. (Obviously the next step would be opening a Chase/etc. account and sending the funds on to that, not using your personal account for company business on an ongoing basis, but a limited number of emergency transactions should be fine.)
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Given the disaster and nearly unprecedented nature of these events I doubt anyone would bat an eye at a CEO taking the decisive action to do what needs to be done to survive (and fix it later). For many the past few days have been the startup equivalent of "fog of war".
As others have noted it's not embezzlement/commingling and given the scenario "Wire out from SVB corp account to personal, document exact amount, and wire back to corp $NEWBANK a week/days later, document again" would hardly cause any heartburn now or down the road. Many would see it as responsible, proactive, and heroic.
Depending on the amount the only issue would likely come from your personal bank - I know of people with ~$10m at SVB and I have to imagine all of sudden wiring those kinds of funds to a personal account with an average daily balance that's a fraction of that would raise some alarms on the personal account - or maybe not as I can imagine the big big banks (BoA, etc) probably saw a lot of this on Thursday...
FWIW, on Thursday it wasn’t clear to me I had so little time to get money out and part of me felt like contributing to a bank run, before it was clear there was a bank run, was not being a good citizen. Still not sure how I feel about it all. SVB staff were great over the 10+ years we banked there. Tech was always crap but I liked the people. Very sad all around.
That's where I was.
My startup has about $25k in SVB - but we don't have payroll and I have personal access to that without impacting me if push came to shove (paying contractors, etc). I was aware of the situation and probably could have gotten the funds out but I knew we were well below the FDIC threshold and just didn't want to bother with it (frankly). I would have had more anxiety executing the wire and waiting for it to show up on the other side...
Speaking personally I'm actually kind of curious to see what the FDIC process looks like - in the grand scheme of things it makes you part of a relatively small club! While I know people are suffering and the situation is a lot worse for many I'm actually looking forward to telling the story when appropriate.
The general population is already fascinated by startups and I've had more than a few "civilian" friends reach out to me asking about the SVB situation. When I tell them we're kind of impacted but not really they just kind of chalk it up to another "Wow, startup life is so wild even THE BANK failed".
Additionally I'd say the same - through various startups I've worked with SVB for over 15 years and the people have always been great (systems not so much).
I totally agree re "contributing to a bank run" feeling shitty, but you have more obligation to your employees (especially), investors, and customers IMO than to your vendor (the bank). Congrats for being able to cover the payroll regardless, though.
(I am pretty confident there will be at least 250k + 50% advance-dividend early this week, and still optimistic but far from certain that a buyer will take the whole thing and it will be 100%. Last time people actually took losses of 50% above the FDIC amount (100k at the time) was 2008 (IndyMac).)
Isn’t it generally a cardinal sin of business finance though?
Comingling is. In this case there is a clearly articulable reason why ("our bank is going out of business"), and it's temporary, documented, etc. The twin risks to avoid are appearance of embezzlement, and appearance that you're treating the business account and personal account as one (which potentially allows piercing corporate veil/attaching personal assets), but if your building is on fire, you're allowed to break the window to rescue the kitten.
It's an "antipattern" (and usually a strong sign that something is badly wrong) but it's not illegal... "sinful" is a useful hint that something is "norm" related.
Yeah, I didn’t say illegal. Often “cardinal sin” is just a playful way of saying “something thou shalt never do.”
Also nal and naa but no: it's "comingling" that's bad. If you explicitly document the transactions, don't do it all the time, and ideally use matching amounts in and out, it's not comingling.
Interesting that its viewed so critically in the US.
If documented its no problem and not uncommon at all in Germany.
In fact many business owners pay something like credit card bills personally and reimburse through the company later.
That is far more common in the US (basically paying expenses on your personal cards, expensing to the company after the fact). You can also advance on some expenses sometimes (this can be abused so there are some accounting restrictions on how you'd do it, etc.).
What is weird/scary (especially when not documented clearly and in advance) is moving your entire bank balance into a personal account. Aside from government/tax/legal, you'd have your investors (in a venture/angel backed company) to justify it to. It's justifiable in this truly exceptional case of SVB imploding and no other bank account being available. (It gets harder to justify in a larger company with lots of investors and more money involved; moving a $100mm balance in a company where you were down to 10% ownership to a personal account even in this situation would be weird AF and depending on the banks involved might cause you problems. I probably still would have emailed counsel and investors/etc. on thursday morning to ask what to do; likely would have sent it to lawyers to handle actually in the huge-account situation.)
Also, imagine the case where you do this and you're wrong. You panic but you're in the minority and there's no bank run and a week or two goes by and the bank is still fine.
Now you've got a weird thing to explain and no vindication.
Philosophical problem of "justified true belief"/Gettier problem. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem -- I learned about this from one of the Rap Genius founders when I was back in YC, lol.)
Generally the law handles this through the "reasonable man" standard; i.e. "would a reasonable man, knowing what you did at the time, have done what you did?" This would allow you to shoot someone in self-defense who was holding a realistic looking toy gun at a child (which you believed to be a real gun, unlawful intent, etc. at the time).
I see. That makes sense. Thank you for clarifying.
Wouldn't this be other way around. First pay yourself and then spend that money on company bills? Which sounds very iffy to me as European.
Not if it’s documented, short-term and for a very extraordinary reason.
If you're not a lawyer, in this case, it's not really relevant what your comfort level is with business dealings. If you're a professional with appropriately relevant skills and expertise, I'd rescind my comment.
I’m a business owner with payroll married to a attorney.
I’m comfortable doing exactly as GP described to make payroll.
Thank you; contextually I must rescind my previous comment.