After the banking debacle, Silicon Valley counts with its image

Even as start-ups and investors began to get their money back from Silicon Valley Bank, the episode exposed the vulnerabilities of the technology industry.

On Sunday afternoon, Prashant Fonseka flew to San Francisco from Austin, Texas, with other techs returning from the South by Southwest conference. Amid the robbery, federal regulators announced that the government would ensure that all depositors at Silicon Valley Bank - which went bankrupt on Friday - are fully reimbursed.

The plane erupted in cheers.

"They were the most excited people I've ever seen on a plane," Mr. Fonseka said, a venture capitalist at Tuesday Capital.

Everyone's money was safe, but the Silicon Valley Bank debacle, which had been the peg worker in the tech start-up ecosystem, was an eye-opening moment for the tech industry. While the government's announcement gave start-ups and investors whose money had been trapped in the bank the assurance that they would be fixed, the episode exposed vulnerabilities in the tech industry and brought to light. bare the blame-game behavior of many who work there. /p>

In particular, the turmoil over the demise of Silicon Valley Bank - which was followed by calls for the government to intervene, and then ecstatic relief when regulators agreed – highlighted just how over an institution the start-up industry had been. On Twitter, several tech investors blamed nearly everyone but themselves for the situation, then were surprised that so few outside the industry were sensitive to their plight.

Founders Fund VP Mike Solana wrote on Twitter Sunday, "If there's one thing I've learned in the past few days, it's that tech isn't the darling "of any political party". Ashley Mayer, an investor at Coalition Operators, an investment fund and network, said on Twitter that venture capitalists had unwittingly created a narrative that the government guaranteeing customer deposits at Silicon Valley Bank was a "venture capitalist/billionaire bailout", which hasn't vindicated the industry.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Jason Goldman, a longtime technologist and start-up veteran who worked at Twitter and Google, said the Silicon Valley Bank implosion "exposed some issues in the way the industry presents itself to the rest of the world." world." Many techs still saw themselves as upstarts rather than incumbents, he said, and balked at scrutiny and responsibility.

But it was made worse when investors and start-ups publicly lost faith en masse in Silicon Valley Bank last week, leading to panic, he said. investment community" were "crying the end of time," positioning themselves as the victims of the bank's failure, rather than the small businesses that couldn't make payrolls, Goldman said.

"This raised the issue of hypocrisy as some of the loudest voices were also those that had been repeatedly recorded against any government funded safety net in many other contexts," he said, referring to some of the cries past ticks of the tech industry on government spending and some social programs. "And it made people ask, 'Who are the adults who can safely manage the financial backbone of this industry if these people publicly panic?'

Some have tried to combat the bubbling anti-tech perception...