Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SVB Hall of Shame

svbhallofshame.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 307 posts

Re: SVB Hall of Shame

#31

Post by manquer »

simonh wrote: post #9
cowpig wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people in the VC community who triggered the bank run did the right thing by their startups. How do you arrive at this conclusion? Without a run on the bank none of this would have happened.

You are in charge of a startup and are responsible for its finances and the jobs of the people who work there. You can see that a bank run is starting. If you don’t pull out your money, what are the chances this will prevent the bank run happening?

Nobody is blaming any startup who took that decision, the rational decision is to take out the money.

However it was not the rational decision for a fund to do so. You have a) substantially larger voice and also ability to coordinate for better outcomes, for a fund it is no longer a gamer theory 101 standard prisoner's dilemma.

The larger funds could have

- Banded together and made a joint statement ( like they were able to organize and do after the run) reassuring every startup of their confidence in the bank

- Participated in the equity infusion into the bank

- Organized and bought debt in the bank to give it liquidity

- Simply moved their own money as new deposits into the bank.

Just doing a joint statement - which wouldn't have costed them a single penny would have gone long way to reassure the markets and also gained the key guys a lot of clout and established their influence J P Morgan style.

Re: SVB Hall of Shame

#32

Post by lotsofpulp »

idopmstuff wrote: post #2

> The board was asleep at the switch. They are now unemployable. That's not really how this works. The CAO of the bank was CFO of Lehman. People in these positions just get credit for the fact that they had a front row seat for this sort of financial implosion, so they can (theoretically) help whoever else's board they join avoid that sort of thing. > But those players within the venture capital community who were si…

https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/business-veri...

>Joseph Gentile, the subject of the viral tweets, is currently the Chief Administrative Officer at SVB Securities, which is an investment firm. SVB Securities is a subsidiary of Silicon Valley Bank’s former parent company that is financially independent from the collapsed bank. He had previously been the CFO of a division within the greater Lehman Brothers’ bank and left about a year and a half before the bank filed for bankruptcy.

Re: SVB Hall of Shame

#33

Post by petesergeant »

> But those players within the venture capital community who were singularly responsible for triggering and then exacerbating this run will not escape accountability. Future founders will know your worth.

Future founders will know that the VCs helped them protect their cash?

Re: SVB Hall of Shame

#34

Post by BoiledCabbage »

The single largest learning point from this experience was how entirely hollow the whole Silicon Valley libertarian ethos really was.

And yet again, another group that claims to say "leave us be, take away restrictions and oversight we'll take care of ourselves, be more efficient an ask nothing of you", turnouts to be just another form of "leave us along so we can benefit, and then come save us when we need help".

And to be very clear, the lesson to take away from this isn't: don't save a group when it needs help - because in the end the Yellen and FDIC did the right thing. To do any differently would have been to cut off our nose to spite our face. The lesson is stop letting groups be allowed to be build these fake worlds. Every single time it works out to be "libertarian when convenient and socialist when suffering".

As we saw with the "code is law", and other cases - as much as people like the concepts it never holds up when people's assets/health are actually at stake. It is human nature they will always turn back to society for help after having refused to pay into it to get there (or directly taking advantage of it to profit).

If you want to profit off of the hard work of an existing society, you must also pay the costs of maintaining society. Anything otherwise is just a "free rider" problem waiting to explode. We're simply lucky we could contain it this time (so far).

There is a reason why every long-run solution to the prisoners dilemma is to cooperate. There is a reason why every society since antiquity has been based on society cooperation. The only long term stable solution is cooperation and eliminating free-riders who claim to be exempt from rules.

SV's VC ethos was completely hollow.

Re: SVB Hall of Shame

#35

Post by drc500free »

The amount of victim-blaming astroturfing I've seen on hn this week has been quite surprising. Depositors are never, ever to blame for bank runs.

Edit: From the about page:

> Who I am is not important. Holding accountable the hypocrites responsible for Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse is. I can be reached at svbhallofshame@protonmail.com. All correspondence will be kept anonymous.

It's just missing a PAC called something like "Citizens for Depositor Accountability."

Re: SVB Hall of Shame

#36

Post by notch898a »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #34

The single largest learning point from this experience was how entirely hollow the whole Silicon Valley libertarian ethos really was. And yet again, another group that claims to say "leave us be, take away restrictions and oversight we'll take care of ourselves, be more efficient an ask nothing of you", turnouts to be just another form of "leave us along so we can benefit, and then come save us when we need help". An…

[flagged]

Re: SVB Hall of Shame

#37

Post by quesera »

rexreed wrote: post #18
nl wrote: post #11

Hmm It was 100% possible to genuinely hold the belief that "Silicon Valley Bank is safe" and to advise portfolio companies to remove money to reduce risk. In-fact, that looks like it was the prudent way to behave: depositors probably haven't lost their money but it sure is a lot less liquid. And this is exactly why bank runs are dangerous - once there is risk of one the safe thing to do is to remove your money as wel…

The best way to prevent a bank run is not to run. A stampede isn't caused by the movement of a lone animal, but by the herd. It's a classic feedback loop.

> The best way to prevent a bank run is not to run

No, the only way to prevent a bank run is to get everyone else not to run.

And since that's impossible, there's only one rational choice to make, which is to be first out the door.

This is bad! But it's true.

Re: SVB Hall of Shame

#39

Post by viraptor »

rexreed wrote: post #18
nl wrote: post #11

Hmm It was 100% possible to genuinely hold the belief that "Silicon Valley Bank is safe" and to advise portfolio companies to remove money to reduce risk. In-fact, that looks like it was the prudent way to behave: depositors probably haven't lost their money but it sure is a lot less liquid. And this is exactly why bank runs are dangerous - once there is risk of one the safe thing to do is to remove your money as wel…

The best way to prevent a bank run is not to run. A stampede isn't caused by the movement of a lone animal, but by the herd. It's a classic feedback loop.

That's not a way to prevent the bank run. That's just choosing to not be a part of it. Unless you can both coordinate with and convince others to do the same, you're not preventing anything.
Post reply on HN