Yep. I find it funny - though I feel bad for the small businesses that may have been oblivious - that a VC CEO is complaining when he effortlessly could have hired a financial consultant for a day to look into the first bank he encouraged his customers to use. A regional bank that had an obvious and alarming reputation of being the only place in town that would make high-risk loans to high-risk ventures. If anyone outside SVB was in the responsible position to avoid this situation, it was this CEO, and I’d suggest - if he truly believes in maintaining innovation and having those responsible suffering the consequences - that he personally go first in making his companies whole, rather than the taxpayer.
This is an example: https://www.difxs.com/DIF/Home.aspx
But I think it's not common because there are other treasury management strategies besides "keep all your eggs in one pure-cash basket".
So if banks offer more insurance for a fee, I can't easily tell how to do this. My business banking account has nothing about such a feature, either online search or looking at the fees schedule.
I'd consider this obscure, even esoteric information. But I'd expect a CFO should know this. And I'd expect a venture capital fund would have an info sheet on avoiding consolidating deposits in a bank, given the 2008 experience. And yet... nothing.