Alan
Ken WhiteI know I am extremely culturally biased but “Silicon Valley Bank” kind of screams “Juicero Pets.com Savings and CryptoLoan” to me.
Jeffrey Vagle@Popehat Imagine if Mike Judge was still running his series on HBO.
Quest
Harry Tuttle, heating engineer@Popehat I want to put my money where everyone thinks everyone else is a mark
Andrew 🌻 Brandt 🐇@Popehat The biggest joke is that it probably grew that big primarily because it was conveniently located in Palo Alto.
Jason Petersen (he)@Popehat why is this so odd to people? This bank is 40 years old. Not ancient, but that’s no predictor of stability, but it’s not like they’re swindling people.
The problem is likely a bunch of VCs and later stage investors pouring poison in the ears of startup leaders (or outright commanding them) and rallying everyone into a run on the bank. When your customers are all startups beholden to investors, you’re fucked if the investors say get out.
David Andersen
just adrienne@dave_andersen @jason @Popehat This is only one of the many, many problems with selling your soul to vulture capitalists!
@dave_andersen @Popehat I’ve worked at three startups and on several occasions seen financial docs or loans or paychecks or acquisition payouts tied up with SVB. It’s just the default.
And yeah all the investment idiots on Twitter (Sacks) handwringing about this were probably dictating to founders to get balances under $250k on Wednesday.
@jason @Popehat It's the default and they're .. surprisingly not bad in some ways. They're annoying as hell in others but they get startups. We tried to move to BOA a few months ago. BOA offered us a $10k credit card limit when we were discussing keeping a minimum of $1m on hand at all times, and couldn't implement the two party control our VCs required. It was very WTF.
Dami
John Minnihan@jason @Popehat svb actively pitched itself to startups for at least the past 15 yrs. their relationship w/ stripe is not a simple banking one. it's them embedded in the financial health of nearly every startup that signed up for atlas.
questions of stability predictors *must* include the fact that svb was largely used by startups, startups that serviced other startups, VCs that dealt w/ startups, and family offices of wealthy VCs who funded startups.
i know this whole ecosystem pretty well
@jbminn @Popehat oh yeah it’s a huge fucking circle jerk, an Ouroboros of “we’ll juice your editba if you juice ours”, and having a system like that be the monoculture of an entire bank is Bad. I was just pushing back on “hey this bank seems sketch”. It’s sketch because of the system its a part of, rather than something banking-specific it did.
Anyways I guess maybe we all get fucked over again for a while because everyone with money put it in one spot again. Cool.
@jbminn here’s hoping. I know all the blowhards crying wolf about “contagion” just want Powell or Yellen or whoever will listen to drop money from helicopters on them, but it’s hard not to be a bit skittish.
But I finished undergrad and entered employment in Spring ‘08 so this might be a once burned etc thing.
@jason of course. see my last tweet for my experience in this context
there are def some VCs crying today because they have *personal* exposure. they couldn't give two shits abt anyone else.
cassius1213spring 2009 here, so I very much agree...
my take is that there's a process to deal with bank failures: depositors get $250k each and an IOU to maybe get a few cents on the dollar for their uninsured deposits in a few years
no helicopter money, no making uninsured depositors whole & everyone in the valley learns that bank failure risk is something that's real and that occasionally *they* lose big
Justin Maxwell
Fuck Elon 
Amy Hoy
Jake Legg
Thomas Dickerson@elfprince13 @Popehat to be clear…
Fed raises rates because “inflation”, except no one gives a shit and everyone yells this will make unemployment go up
Free money dries up, startups start to lean on cash
Seeing this, SVB sells bonds to shore up reserves
Bonds underperform because see rate hike above
They need $2B and start to talk about ways to get it
Fuckwits on Sand Hill psst psst to their vassals to pull out cash. I’m sure they could’ve scrounged $2B
$42B run on Thursday
Fin
Grrjessi@Popehat it's almost like there is a pattern. That can be studied and known
KMD001@Popehat I wonder what the bank regulators will do with what I assume is a basement full of cryogenically frozen tech billionaires
Cayla@Popehat
I honestly wonder if you may be too generous at least other businesses didn't depend on Pets.com
I honestly wonder if you may be too generous at least other businesses didn't depend on Pets.com
Archnemysis@Kaminara pardon me, but I was the founder of DogPoop.com and our whole business was thrown in the trash after that mess hit the fan.
Drew Mochak@Popehat There isn't a chance in hell I'd invest my anything in a "silicon Valley bank," and I live here.
Wes Kyle@Popehat
Juicero was an innovation, ahead of its time. We weren't yet worthy of it.
Juicero was an innovation, ahead of its time. We weren't yet worthy of it.
@Popehat I see the liberal media have gotten to you too. I'll withhold judgment until I see tonight's 2 am George Santos infomercial.
TDAS@Popehat 1-800-Pet-Meds.com Arena
@Popehat You know, Wells Fargo still does very well in the city of it's HQ, even though the State of California quit using them due to ethical concerns.
Where did the "real estate bubble" 🙄 start, prior to 2007? #California
Where did the "real estate bubble" 🙄 start, prior to 2007? #California
Ray Jepson@Popehat the last 5 years, I've heard so many companies say, "we're not a _____ company, we're a tech company." I wonder if that's going to start changing.
@Popehat because pets can drive self-autonomous cars
Andrew Leahey@Popehat “Definitely Not Horse” brand beef patties.
Jeff Messer@Popehat I honestly assumed it was some sort of early BitCoin exchange. It's funny watching people freak out over a bank.
Laure@Popehat "It appears to me that there was no liquidity issue until a couple of VCs called it," Greene said. "They were irresponsible, and then it became self-fulfilling." #siliconvalley
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/03/10/silicon-valley-bank-collapse-how-it-happened.html
What A Guy@Popehat Nah, it was a legitimate bank that made a couple of bad calls and then fell victim to a run. This is what happens when both you and your clients have the same wildly optimistic investment profiles, which means you have the same vulnerabilities. If both you and your clients shit the bed when interests rate rise, well, you're the most vulnerable to a run when they're most likely to run on you.
@Popehat If they had put more of their money into traditional lending products, insurance securities, or shit even like index funds and a warehouse full of window AC units, they would have been better off. Instead, they drank the same kool-aid as their clients and this is what they get.
clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛
William B. Turner@Popehat. Reminded me of this debacle. I grew up less than a mile north of Penn Square: https://www.oeta.tv/blogs/programming/back-in-time-to-explore-penn-square-bank-failure/
cowonskates@Popehat it's so weird to be the kind of person who can put "Silicon Valley Bank" on the paperwork, with billions in assets under you to back it up, while also thinking there's no way in hell this doesn't implode. I worry that I too have become so blinded by something in my life.
nineball@Popehat I think you forgot Theranos.
GraveScarecrow@Popehat I had a fun chat today with one of my employer's finance dept people today, who agrees: "Never put money in anything with 'Silicon Valley' in the name."
@gravewriter71 @Popehat Indeed. Like, really, you didn't expect them to move fast and break things?
Peat Bog@Popehat
Hey man, don't Juicero your pets that is not cool.
Hey man, don't Juicero your pets that is not cool.
Ryan
Nick 'The Viking'I saw SVB earlier and thought
"Oh, typo on SBF."
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴"#Capitalism is an economic system in which *private* individuals or businesses own capital goods. At the same time, #capitalists employ workers...who only receive wages..."
"#CapitalRisk is the potential of loss of part or all of an investment. It applies to...assets that are *not* subject to a guarantee of full return of original capital."
For some reason, this epic song keeps coming up:
🎙Burn, Baby burn...🎵🎶
#TheTrammps
Burn Baby Burn, Disco Inferno
Patty Kimura@Popehat Winner winner. You win the internet, today.