9:58 p.m. ET, March 15, 2023
Small business owner felt she faced “existential threat” with SVB’s collapse
From CNN's Jeanne Sahadi
Vanessa Pham, co-founder and CEO of Asian food company Omsom talks with CNN's Poppy Harlow.
(CNN)
Vanessa Pham, co-founder and CEO of Asian food company Omsom, felt like her business was facing an existential threat last Friday when she learned her bank, SVB, had gone under.
“We had to run payroll, manufacture product, operate the business, and fundamentally those funds were the lifeline of the business. So it was very challenging,” Pham told CNN’s Poppy Harlow.
What she didn’t do was tell her nine employees that the company might not make payroll.
“I was very committed to ensuring that we were going to take care of our team. Of course with the $250,000 that was insured by the FDIC, that was going to be the first order of business. I communicated that to my team on Friday,” Pham said.
Beyond that, though, she had to battle her fears and plan for worst-case scenarios. But they never came to pass because thanks to the US government’s efforts to step in and backstop all deposits at SVB she had access to all her funds by Monday.