What did VCs do wrong here? They warned of impending solvency problems at SVB and told founders to withdraw their money ASAP. And indeed, the bank failed the next day. The companies in trouble are those who didn't listen to the VCs.
VCs Group-B to Z were too late so they asked Govt to help them.
It's not just founders who put their money there, VC funds are there as well and they are probably close to 100% uninsured (cause it's the Fund Series I - XXX).
If you get your hands on the list of depositors, you'll see the list of Funds Series from VCs.
Everyone withdrawing their money ASAP is what caused the solvency problem. There's a big difference between warning people of a problem and encouraging them to behave in a way that creates it.
They went around begging for bailouts when they could have just had the companies sell the uninsured deposit claims at a discount, paid their workers, and, as equity, eaten the loss.
Part of the issue is a common one: assigning blame for actions taken by individuals to the collective. It’s a nasty internet trope. But these things are true:
- the crisis was at the most caused and at the least exacerbated to the point of no return by the advice that some firms gave
- the general zeitgeist amongst certain firms and from particular individuals in firms leaned towards libertarian ideology, which seemed to go out the window when ish hit the fan. I can really only find one prominent example of this, so I don’t know if it’s fair to paint all of VC-land with the same brush
- it is probably the case that there are members of firms in both group one and group two, which looks bad, because panicking at the last second looks bad, especially when your panic screws (for your own benefit) a business partner of decades who was essentially only in a risk zone because they chose to do business with you. That’s an oversimplification of course, but it all is
