All right, Silicon Valley is catching its breath.

Now what?

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Megan McCarty-Carrino.

That giant, whooshing sound, that was the collective exhale of tens of thousands of startup

founders, workers, and investors.

After federal regulators assured customers of the failed Silicon Valley bank, they would

have access to all their deposits.

Most of the bank's 40,000 customers are tech startups, which spent much of the weekend

bracing for the worst that their money would be tied up or lost in what one commentator

forecast as an extinction-level event for startups.

That is off the table, but there's still an SVB-sized hole in the tech landscape.

Says Natasha Mascaranus.

She's a senior reporter at TechCrunch, and she broke down how this one bank got so embedded

in the startup scene.

When it comes to banks, they're not risky institutions, and SVB had a, you know, decades

and decades-long reputation of being more comfortable working with startup founders.

They were comfortable lending the money, lending these people who are considered risky

from more traditional lenders.

They were not comfortable with companies or institutions that didn't have assets or

cash flow, which are things that start up very much are synonymous with.

We often see companies only hit profitability late stage, or even once their public not

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