Do you and/or your friends personally have the assets to make SVB whole? If you were proposing to put substantial “skin in the game” (very dated 1980s business-speak) you might receive a more positive reception.
Right now, it is mostly a regional problem, since the “startup industry” did not diversify much outside the Bay Area, or the Pacific Coast. Industries with a broader national reach maintain a broader and deeper lobbying presence in Washington and thus get more Federal attention. Might be a lesson-learned here. Along with the most elemental due diligence in financial risk management.
As someone who is facing the prospect of re-skilling my career again after being "disrupted" out of my first career, happening a second time 15 years later due to AI, my sympathy for your founders is in short supply. Your founders may get screwed like the many, many workers out there that get screwed all the time by factors beyond their control.
I mean, if you can save the jobs of the people you funded, great. But, founding a startup is risky, blah blah blah... and losing a few or a few thousand hardly seems like a reason to call congress. At least no more than any other industry getting disrupted. We've seen, and perhaps you've been part of, putting huge swaths of people put out of work. Huge swaths of business out of business. Industries that came crashing down at no fault of the business owner, other than not being prepared for some an unseen stealth startup who leveraged prior institutional knowledge to come and take it all in a flash.
onecommentman|3 years ago
Right now, it is mostly a regional problem, since the “startup industry” did not diversify much outside the Bay Area, or the Pacific Coast. Industries with a broader national reach maintain a broader and deeper lobbying presence in Washington and thus get more Federal attention. Might be a lesson-learned here. Along with the most elemental due diligence in financial risk management.
UmYeahNo|3 years ago
I mean, if you can save the jobs of the people you funded, great. But, founding a startup is risky, blah blah blah... and losing a few or a few thousand hardly seems like a reason to call congress. At least no more than any other industry getting disrupted. We've seen, and perhaps you've been part of, putting huge swaths of people put out of work. Huge swaths of business out of business. Industries that came crashing down at no fault of the business owner, other than not being prepared for some an unseen stealth startup who leveraged prior institutional knowledge to come and take it all in a flash.