Aaron Parecki

“hey, there seems to be a lot of confusion on here about what’s going on, so I’d like to add a thread full of wild speculation into the mix. hope this helps clear things up!”

There's like a non-trivial chance that your newsletter talking about the possibility of a SVB bank run is what will have caused a SVB bank run.

A lot of you suck at this. The key is you wait until all the hot takes are done, biding time but staying in the game by making generic humor of indeterminate disposition, then as things cool down and facts solidify, you assume the confidence of having been right the entire time.

SVB depositors withdrew $42bn on Thursday. Blockchain solves bank runs because it would take years to handle $42bn of transfers.

Silicon Valley Bank was the main bank for two of our companies, my personal savings, and my mortgage. This is how things unfolded for us:

Between 2013 and 2023, all good.

Thursday, 9 AM: in one chat with 200+ tech founders (most in the Bay Area), questions about SVB start to… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1634573234187407369

Our SVB line of credit was working yday, but was turned off today. That was where we paid our bills (software to manage our backend codebase, lease, slack, etc)

This wked I have to move all of this to my personal credit cards. A *lot* is falling on founders personally.

A bailout for shareholders here is unjustified, but having the government backstop deposits until a safe home for SVB assets is found just makes sense. Otherwise businesses are going to pull their money out of every regional bank ASAP.

there is a ~3 week window for angel rescue packages for great companies (say top 200) caught directly in the SVB crash for which if they don’t come up with options they will miss payroll
insane opportunity to own warrants for great companies for dynamic investors with a war-chest

Database is closed, try again in the morning.

Maybe that's why Apple hasn't shipped a car or a printer yet. Maybe it's impossible

3) FDIC doesn't usually end up putting in a lot of $ at all; whatever the gap is between deposits and liabilities tends to get made up by stockholders and lenders. And anything they do put in is made up for by charging banks higher insurance premiums. FDIC is not taxpayer funded

Oh my. Some Silicon Valley startup was set to announce layoffs today. But it had to cancel the announcement, because the SVB collapse means it currently doesn't have the money to offer severance https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-10/startups-are-worried-about-paying-their-people-after-svb-fails?sref=vuYGislZ

Running a company:

2020: can you survive a pandemic?

2021: still here? we’re going to give all of your competitors $100m series A rounds.

2022: wow, you made it? okay, all engineers cost $600,000/year now.

2023: nice job! okay, we’re going to take away your bank account.

Theory: The SVB bank run is (partly) happening because their depository base is all of a few thousand startup CEOs who spend too much time on Twitter and meme'ed all this into existence.

(In addition to bad risk management around their bond portfolio.)