What's next in the Silicon Valley Bank saga
GeekWire
GeekWire
4.4 • 116 Ratings
🗓️ 14 March 2023
⏱️ 51 minutes
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Summary
Startups and investors cheered the U.S. government's promise this weekend to fully protect deposits after the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. But the move left many unresolved questions and challenges for the U.S. financial system and the tech industry.
Our guests on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast discuss their recent experiences and offer their informed opinions on what could come next. Speaking with GeekWire co-founder John Cook are: Kirby Winfield, founding general partner of Seattle venture capital firm Ascend; and Aviel Ginzburg, general partner at Seattle VC firm Founders’ Co-op.
They both reflect on what happened last week, explaining how they and their portfolio companies navigated the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.
But most of the discussion focuses on how things could play out from here — including Ginzburg's concerns about the likely impact on venture debt due to the loss of Silicon Valley Bank, and Winfield's more optimistic hypothesis about the potential for recent events to set the stage for a venture capital rebound later this year.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There could be a silver lining here. |
| 0:03.6 | Look, the Fed's been raising rates consistently. |
| 0:05.9 | So there's a school of thought that says, well, the Fed was going to keep bumping rates |
| 0:09.4 | until something broke. |
| 0:10.4 | Well, something broke. |
| 0:11.6 | It was Silicon Valley Bank. I mean, they can't keep on pumping rates up after this. And so if that's the case, you know, do you see a environment in Q3 where investors are really excited to deploy, maybe with more confidence in a stable environment |
| 0:26.1 | than they have had in the last two years. |
| 0:29.2 | That is the real grenade in this, which is magically waving a wand and saying all depositors will get their money back does not change the fact that so many businesses have built their business model on venture debt existing, |
| 0:43.6 | especially because of what has happened in the venture market |
| 0:46.6 | and how much more difficult it's been to raise funding. |
| 0:48.8 | So this is like a double whammy that is going |
| 0:51.7 | to have reverberations throughout the ecosystem. |
| 0:53.8 | If there's anything. I'm GeekWire |
| 1:06.0 | co-founder John Cook and we're recording a special episode of the |
| 1:10.0 | podcast today exploring the ramifications of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. |
| 1:16.7 | Obviously this is wild times in the startup and venture capital market and we are here with |
| 1:21.8 | two guests who are going to put this all in perspective to |
| 1:25.2 | long-time Seattle venture capitalists who I often turn to when I need need to know |
| 1:31.0 | what's going on in the market. We're joined today by Kirby |
| 1:34.6 | Winfield founding general partner at Ascend and Aviel Ginsburg general partner at |
| 1:39.6 | Founders Co-op. Kirby and Aviel, welcome to the GeekWire Podcast. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. This has been a wild what 72 hours or so this really started to unfold last Thursday. Here we are on Monday afternoon. You're still |
| 1:55.4 | standing but how are you guys doing? I mean I'll jump in I think this whole |
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