After the banking debacle, Silicon Valley counts with its image
After the banking debacle, Silicon Valley counts with its image
Some tried to combat the anti-tech perception that was bubbling up on social media. Over the weekend, Garry Tan, the president of start-up incubator Y Combinator, sent a message to hundreds of founders and entrepreneurs telling them to start posting “tweetstorms” to humanize the impact that the failure of Silicon Valley Bank had on them.
The idea was to show how innovation could be stifled if depositors weren’t cured, with the added bonus that more of these types of stories would keep some of the more outspoken “tech bro” venture capitalists and founders from become the faces of Silicon Valley. situation.
“By coming together as a community and showing our strength, we can impact the future of startups,” Tan wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times. He later posted an online petition to the government asking him to “save innovation in the American economy”, which was signed by more than 5,000 chief executives representing nearly half a million employees.
More than 600 venture capitalists also gathered on Saturday and Sunday to sign a statement, organized by the firm General Catalyst, expressing their support for Silicon Valley Bank and their disappointment at its failure. They pledged to encourage their portfolio companies to resume banking with Silicon Valley Bank if the bank was sold.
What we consider before using anonymous sources.Do the sources know the information? What is their motivation for telling us? Have they proven themselves in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with those questions answered, the Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The journalist and at least one editor know the identity of the source.
Many tech start-ups have done business with Silicon Valley Bank because it specializes in lending money to venture start-ups, something few banks offer. By its own admission, the bank provided banking services to nearly half of all venture capital-backed technology and life sciences companies in the United States and was also a bank for more than 2,500 tech companies. capital risk.
This gave him an outsized footprint in the start-up industry. In a letter to investors over the weekend, which was seen by The Times, Andreessen Horowitz, one of the most prominent venture capital firms, said that about half of start-ups in which she had invested had banking relationships with Silicon Valley Bank. A spokeswoman for the firm declined to comment.
Mr. Fonseka, the venture capitalist, predicted that the events of the weekend would create a permanent change in the way start-ups managed their money. Some tech companies were even planning to create a tech product that would help businesses manage their money across multiple bank accounts, he said.
Tech