Banking on startups. Casey leads Square 1 in a niche populated by few – Startups

New federal numbers put the assets of Square 1 Bank http://www.square1bank.com/ at $142.5 million, about 35 percent ahead of where the venture was when it opened its doors in a renovated American Tobacco warehouse just six months ago.

That’s a respectable showing for any new bank just getting off the ground. But, then again, neither Square 1 nor its co-founder and CEO, Richard Casey, are the fodder of a conventional banking story.

With no ATM machines and no classical teller stations, this is one institution that won’t be competing against community banks or even the big regional players to make Mom ‘n’ Pop business loans in the tri-county region.

Square 1’s scope of operations is national. And its competition is in a field of niche banking that Casey helped invent in the 1990s at California’s Imperial Bank. The list of similar banks is a short one: Detroit’s Comerica, Santa Clara’s Silicon Valley Bank and Royal Bank of Canada’s venture division.

And the clients?

Startup tech companies, often pre-product, often pre-revenue.

"It’s counterintitutive if you are looking at it like a conventional banker," Casey, 59, explains.

Triangle Business Journal – March 10, 2006
by Lee Weisbecker

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