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 did not see a deposit account as a risky investment in any way.

Did you have more than $250k sitting in SVB? We're you unaware of the $250k FDIC insured limit? Or were you, and didn't act on mitigating this potential problem? Any particular reason?

Yes, I was aware. I don’t think there’s a moral imperative to help us, necessarily. I would only ask that tech depositors not be treated differently due to the schadenfreude I see in this thread.

Consider companies small enough to have no one whose job it is to do finance. As a founder you’re already working long hours and bank failure is not a risk that is top of mind compared to lack of product market fit.

As far as I can tell, everybody is asking that tech depositors get treated like any other uninsured depositor. That being fairly, under the long-established rules.

As a founder, I am sorry that VCs apparently don't help with treasury management. That strikes me as something that should be a clear part of their value prop.

How would you act to mitigate it?

Most banks don’t really like working with startups and sometimes freeze their money over AML controls that don’t play nicely with investor checks. If there’s a way to purchase insurance against this risk, I’ve never heard of it, and it’s probably too expensive for early stage startups.

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

He was implying that depositors should be treated in a specific way because of the assumptions he makes about who they are.

You chose profits over morals, and now there are no moral people to save your profit.

Ha ha.

Hope should be reserved for good things. I hope the ones who truly had no idea what they were risking come out better and wiser.

I grew up food insecure.

TBH I don't support the idea of any bailouts, but the idea that someone of your temperament is "making sure people like you don’t get to crash the economy again" doesn't make me feel any less worried.

Public face private face. And good. I’m not here to make anyone on YC comfortable.

Please don’t trample productive discussion on HN. The OP clearly was posting about financial investment issues and not poverty.

But it’s not unprecedented for the VC community to confuse capital issues and human rights issues: https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/01/26/26...

The rich want to have their cake and eat it too. If they keep pushing their luck the guillotines will be brought out eventually. It's probably about time they realize they don't get to always win.