[offtotheraces]

It’s funny that Molly (a VC) ascribes so much power to VCs that they can literally create bank runs on their own.

No.

VCs don’t make decisions on where a company keeps its cash; the founder/CEO does. And founders freaked the f-ck out. Let’s make sure to remember that founders had 100% agency in the decisions they made about their cash.

Here’s a selection of comments in the Whatsapp founders group Im in - all founders, no VCs:

Thursday 3/8 (36 hours before FDIC takeover):

“I'd consider moving to one of the too big to fail banks..”

“I agree the risk is higher then we thought before, I'm in SVB, with 4% - and looking to understand where to go now.”

“It's a numbers game - if a lot of people do what I do at the moment - it will fall.....”

“Does someone have a contact at Chase for B2B SaaS customers? I'm thinking it's wise to already have an account open there in case it will seem like we need to move off SVB.”

“Let's say we want to open a Chase account and move company funds?”

“for those that have their money in SVB and do not have another company bank account - what are the immediate options?”

“If there is a risk of a bank run, why not take the money out”

“Basically our whatsapp group creates bank runs now... power to the founders?”

“we just moved 85% of our money out”

“I just pulled ours”

It’s not surprising a VC would think she has more power than she actually has, but she also clearly has no idea about the wildfire that was spreading among founders themselves. Founders don’t give a sh-t about what their investors think (generally) - founders make the decisions they think are best because they have the most to lose (or win) from being wrong (or right). And they are much, much, much more likely to trust their fellow founders than their VCs.

[JumpCrisscross]

When a bank runs, you run. Trying to pin the blame on depositors is misguided. There are real villains to the SVB story. Regulators. Senior management. Goldman Sachs.

[kasey_junk]

I don’t think the depositors should be blamed for attempting to get their money out of the bank once it became insolvent, but they certainly weren’t blameless in their own risk management prior to that.

Roku keeping half a billion dollars at svb without doing capitalization audits, or venture firms steering portfolio companies there without recommending backup banks is a business failure plain and simple. Those actions deserve scrutiny and the decision makers deserve blame.

[AnimalMuppet]

Can you explain why Goldman Sachs?