Wouldn't have mattered if they had normal businesses as clients. They deposit and withdraw cash regularly but their balances remain about the same on average. They banked for startups. Startups raise a ton of money at once and then start drawing it down. When VC funding shuts down, like it has recently, balances just drop and drop more. If the average startup raises 2 years of capital, and markets freeze, that means SVB loses 4% of its deposits every month. So just over normal operations they will lose a quarter of their deposits in 6 months. That's why they had to sell their HTM securities. Normal banks that bank normal industries don't face this, and won't need to sell their HTM securities at a loss.