As a long-time tech person and someone who has started multiple companies, including one venture-backed one, I'm happy to explain why I think uninsured depositholders should not have their losses subsidized by taxpayers.
One, anybody with a bank account has heard about the FDIC and the FDIC insurance limits. Presumably anybody smart enough to raise millions of dollars know that if part of something is insured, the rest is uninsured. There are in fact good systemic reasons both for the FDIC to exist and for the limit to be high for individuals but low for companies.
Two, the tech industry, especially the VC-funded end, is forever crowing about the power of the marketplace. How regulation stifles valuable innovation. How government intervention is a problem, not a solution.
Three, among startups, market-driven disruption is practically a religion. Startups destroy existing companies all the time. Quite often it's an explicit goal, where startup X lists existing players A and B as companies whose lunches will get eaten because they are making bad choices.
Four, there has been endless puffery and chest-thumping among VCs and tech startups how their genius justifies pocketing billions and billions of dollars when times are good. Best and brightest, incredibly hard workers, blah blah blah. Including a special tax exemption for VCs, because they're just such amazing financial wizards.
Five, startup go under all the time. Which, having experienced it, definitely sucks. But when a startup goes under due to bad choices or bad luck, that's the game.
So when I put this together, I firmly believe that startups with bad treasury management should not be subsidized by taxpayers. If we're so smart and amazing that we get to reshape segments of the economy, we're smart enough to follow basic financial advice like "don't put all your eggs in one basket". If we choose to play the game that might make us rich, we should not suddenly complain about the rules when we lose.
In practice, the likely outcome here is that depositors either take no haircut or a modest one. Anybody going out of business because of that was already on the edge. And that will be partly because their investors will not see them as worthy of a bridge loan or an accelerated next round.
Which, again, sucks for the people involved. But it's not a problem for taxpayers to solve. If we're going to spend billions of dollars on improving the safety net, I think startups are way, way down the list of priorities.