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Urgent: Sign the petition now

ycombinator.com

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Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#431

Post by axlee »

jlmorton wrote: post #160
axlee wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was nothing arbitrary about that choice. This bank promised better deals BECAUSE they were not careful enough about the risk it entailed. That was their competitive advantage, and they made bank for it. Well, tough luck, now it's not anymore: it has nothing to do with being a large bank or a small bank, it has to do with healthy business practices.

Sorry, I'm not sure if you're confused, but these are simple bank accounts. There was no high interest yield. The average interest yield was a fraction of a percent. No one was chasing any yield. No one was taking any risks. It's a bank account. Are you suggesting tens of thousands of small business customers need to do due dilligence on the investment practices of their banks? And what about all the other regional b…

You are misled regarding the kind of offers SVB was running. They were offering above market returns specifically aimed at startups. I believe the documentation has been offered in another comment, and anybody who has been in touch with SVB knows what their sell pitch is, so I will not copy/paste it there. Most of it is undocumented publicly anyway, but even the public part should inform you enough.

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#433

Post by jmull »

Most startups fail.

Propping these companies up now with government money (that is, our money) will just make the failures cost more, ultimately.

What we're really talking about here is bailing out investors who, of course, knowingly took these high risk flyers.

(BTW, the rising interest rates affects everything about this kind of investment. All kinds of things that made sense in the era of free money are going to stop working now. SVB is just one sad step in the process of this stuff grinding to a halt. It's not the the start of it, and it's certainly not going to be the end.)

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#434

Post by [deleted] »

stanleydrew wrote: post #210
lapcat wrote: post #21

I wonder how many of the petition signers are vehemently against the government's student loan forgiveness plan.

I get the thrust of the comment, but it's not a particularly good analogy. The petition signers are asking for the FDIC to prioritize their debt (deposits at SVB) repayment. They aren't asking for debt forgiveness.

[deleted]

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#435

Post by Nifty3929 »

seizethecheese wrote: post #412
nightmarish wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

VC backed founder here whose company is impacted by this. “Nepotistic trust fund baby” I am not. My family has no money, no connections. I went to Portland State University. I had no VC connections whatsoever. Our company was originally bootstrapped off of personal savings accumulated by working and living way below our means. No friends or family invested or gave us loans. I’ve had no inheritance and expect none. We…

He was targeting VCs, not founders. I’m sorry you’re going through this though.

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#436

Post by antibasilisk »

KerrAvon wrote: post #158
sourcecodeplz wrote: post #31

Might seem like an ahole but can't you guys making 100k+ per year ride it out? We are talking about startup a here, have we forgotten the risks and implications that come with this model?

100k isn’t much money in Silicon Valley at this point, FWIW. You probably need multiple roommates if you’re going to save any of that salary level.

I think it's moreso the case that people are unwilling to live within their means and would much prefer to massively overleverage their entire life. It is not other people's responsibility to bail you out when the inevitable consequences come around.

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#439

Post by _dain_ »

doodlesdev wrote: post #134
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that? This is small and medium sized venture-backed startups, a sector that’s taken a tiny fraction of US investment but represented a major portion of its GDP growth. They did nothing wrong and were failed by their bank. Why are small tech startups building something new less deserving than say, giant banks that knowingly took extreme risks in 2008, or giant auto businesses that refused to modernize and truly…

They did something, they put their money in a bank which was lobbying for less regulations so they could make riskier plays, which put way too much depositor money into MBS (what the actual fuck). They didn't do their due diligence and now they are paying the price. They will receive dividends in advance and any employees which for some reason had money in the bank will still keep their 250k FDIC insured cash. If the…

>they put their money in a bank which was lobbying for less regulations so they could make riskier plays

my bank does that. your bank does that. every bank on the planet does that. depositors don't have any say in what the bank does.

Re: Urgent: Sign the petition now

#440

Post by subsistence234 »

Mystery-Machine wrote: post #384
lolinder wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone has to sit down and evaluate their banks balance sheet before trying to do business with them? No, if you're not keeping more than $250k in the account, you don't have to do the homework. If you're keeping more than $250k in the account, you can afford to pay someone $1k to do a bit of due diligence.

$250k is nothing for a company. It's 1 engineer salary. And, no, it's not $1k. It's more like $10k-$20k per month, plus all the overhead of having your money in multiple bank accounts and shuffling it all around just to never hit the $250k limit. Just my 2 cents on this strawman part of discussion.

if $250k is nothing then $1k is less than nothing.
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