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When we little guys put our eggs in one basket, or put excessive reliance in business we have no control of we get accused, sometimes implicitly, sometimes expl

When we little guys put our eggs in one basket, or put excessive reliance in business we have no control of we get accused, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, of being incompetent. That we should've known better. Hmmm.... The cynic in me says this letter is less about bailing out the small companies trying to make payroll and more about the VC's not wanting to lose massive investments.

geodel 4y ago
Even if there are small companies I don't think they are in some honest business of producing useful physical goods and charging fair money for that. Most likely they are half-assed scammy SAAS crap. Absolutely not sure why these world beaters hacking everything under Sun need to be bailed out by some stodgy old institution anyway.
- Laaas 4y ago
  Why are SaaSs scammy?
  - meltyness 4y ago
    SaaSs are scammy especially when they involve: - Repackaging an existing codebase or business model - ... as a black box - ... attempting to rent it out - ... with worse data privacy - ... exploiting systemic economic excesses - ... ... inflicting societal harm - ... ... often with minimal upside to the consumer short-term - ... ... or long-term - ... colluding with large existing players - ... ... to create a treadmill of declining product quality - ... ... to facilitate government surveillance and information operations - ... ... to "play defense" against competitors It's kind of like how OOP was intended to stratify and contain developers, except instead of abstracting commodity PCs there's a whole different calculus which basically implies that the ultimate consumer of computing equipment is like, 2 or 3 big companies, because financing. You know how the old democratic saying goes, "none of us is as strong as the 2-3 permanent CEOs of reality."
andrepd 4y ago
Couldn't agree more. Average Joe is swindled by con-men into bad deals and/or is subject to events outside his control: should have known better/worked more Huge company in the business of risk management fucks up: bad luck, the taxpayer will cover you, no civil or criminal responsibility will come to anyone regardless of the magnitude of the fallout
- rockemsockem 4y ago
  I don't think startups can be honestly called huge businesses. If you're referring to SVB, then yeah no bailout for them, but the petition isn't calling for that. Isn't it possible to think that both small businesses/startups and average joes deserve to be bailed out when shit goes sideways?
  - somsak2 4y ago
    it depends on your definition of bailout. in my mind, if the government has to step in to do anything to make sure that people aren't fucked, that's a bailout. i also don't think either average joe or bigco necessarily deserve to be bailed out. if i see a tv on fb marketplace and send the asking price to the seller only later to find out that they're scamming me, should i be bailed out for that? if so nobody has any incentive to take basic risk-aversion precautions in economic dealings.
  - andrepd 4y ago
    > Isn't it possible to think that both small businesses/startups and average joes deserve to be bailed out when shit goes sideways? Sure! Either both of them or none of them, that's the point! But we see bailouts for "systemically critical" banks, but not for the average joe.
garry 4y ago
We're trying to help our founders, and this is a moment where awareness of this problem in DC and in the halls of power matter.
- onecommentman 4y ago
  Do you and/or your friends personally have the assets to make SVB whole? If you were proposing to put substantial “skin in the game” (very dated 1980s business-speak) you might receive a more positive reception. Right now, it is mostly a regional problem, since the “startup industry” did not diversify much outside the Bay Area, or the Pacific Coast. Industries with a broader national reach maintain a broader and deeper lobbying presence in Washington and thus get more Federal attention. Might be a lesson-learned here. Along with the most elemental due diligence in financial risk management.
- UmYeahNo 4y ago
  As someone who is facing the prospect of re-skilling my career again after being "disrupted" out of my first career, happening a second time 15 years later due to AI, my sympathy for your founders is in short supply. Your founders may get screwed like the many, many workers out there that get screwed all the time by factors beyond their control. I mean, if you can save the jobs of the people you funded, great. But, founding a startup is risky, blah blah blah... and losing a few or a few thousand hardly seems like a reason to call congress. At least no more than any other industry getting disrupted. We've seen, and perhaps you've been part of, putting huge swaths of people put out of work. Huge swaths of business out of business. Industries that came crashing down at no fault of the business owner, other than not being prepared for some an unseen stealth startup who leveraged prior institutional knowledge to come and take it all in a flash.
dehrmann 4y ago
> The cynic in me says this letter is less about bailing out the small companies trying to make payroll and more about the VC's not wanting to lose massive investments. It's both. VCs don't want to lose their cash accounts and see their investments become insolvent. At the same time, it doesn't help society if all these workers suddenly find themselves jobless. There's also a risk of contagion. If companies suddenly discover their deposits aren't de-facto safe, they'll flee other banks with similar risk profiles, causing more bank runs. Banks going under and taking lots of funds with them is bad because it undermines confidence in the system. It's financial infrastructure that's supposed to always work. Sure, if it doesn't, you can work around it, but it becomes a drag on the economy, and things start looking like a developing country.
- UmYeahNo 4y ago
  Well, if I'm going to remain cyncical I'd hazard a guess that many of these startups are to "disrupt" some industry anyway -- automating the previously unautomate-able, putting huge swaths of people out of a job (often with no clear path to a new career) So, if those jobs are preserved a few days / weeks / months longer, I guess it all works out. There are potentially millions of workers under a great deal of pressure to not lose their jobs to some disruptor or another. Are we somehow less sympathetic to them than these tech workers?

geodel 4y ago

Even if there are small companies I don't think they are in some honest business of producing useful physical goods and charging fair money for that. Most likely they are half-assed scammy SAAS crap. Absolutely not sure why these world beaters hacking everything under Sun need to be bailed out by some stodgy old institution anyway.

Laaas 4y ago
Why are SaaSs scammy?
- meltyness 4y ago
  SaaSs are scammy especially when they involve: - Repackaging an existing codebase or business model - ... as a black box - ... attempting to rent it out - ... with worse data privacy - ... exploiting systemic economic excesses - ... ... inflicting societal harm - ... ... often with minimal upside to the consumer short-term - ... ... or long-term - ... colluding with large existing players - ... ... to create a treadmill of declining product quality - ... ... to facilitate government surveillance and information operations - ... ... to "play defense" against competitors It's kind of like how OOP was intended to stratify and contain developers, except instead of abstracting commodity PCs there's a whole different calculus which basically implies that the ultimate consumer of computing equipment is like, 2 or 3 big companies, because financing. You know how the old democratic saying goes, "none of us is as strong as the 2-3 permanent CEOs of reality."

andrepd 4y ago

Couldn't agree more. Average Joe is swindled by con-men into bad deals and/or is subject to events outside his control: should have known better/worked more Huge company in the business of risk management fucks up: bad luck, the taxpayer will cover you, no civil or criminal responsibility will come to anyone regardless of the magnitude of the fallout

rockemsockem 4y ago
I don't think startups can be honestly called huge businesses. If you're referring to SVB, then yeah no bailout for them, but the petition isn't calling for that. Isn't it possible to think that both small businesses/startups and average joes deserve to be bailed out when shit goes sideways?
- somsak2 4y ago
  it depends on your definition of bailout. in my mind, if the government has to step in to do anything to make sure that people aren't fucked, that's a bailout. i also don't think either average joe or bigco necessarily deserve to be bailed out. if i see a tv on fb marketplace and send the asking price to the seller only later to find out that they're scamming me, should i be bailed out for that? if so nobody has any incentive to take basic risk-aversion precautions in economic dealings.
- andrepd 4y ago
  > Isn't it possible to think that both small businesses/startups and average joes deserve to be bailed out when shit goes sideways? Sure! Either both of them or none of them, that's the point! But we see bailouts for "systemically critical" banks, but not for the average joe.

garry 4y ago

We're trying to help our founders, and this is a moment where awareness of this problem in DC and in the halls of power matter.

onecommentman 4y ago
Do you and/or your friends personally have the assets to make SVB whole? If you were proposing to put substantial “skin in the game” (very dated 1980s business-speak) you might receive a more positive reception. Right now, it is mostly a regional problem, since the “startup industry” did not diversify much outside the Bay Area, or the Pacific Coast. Industries with a broader national reach maintain a broader and deeper lobbying presence in Washington and thus get more Federal attention. Might be a lesson-learned here. Along with the most elemental due diligence in financial risk management.
UmYeahNo 4y ago
As someone who is facing the prospect of re-skilling my career again after being "disrupted" out of my first career, happening a second time 15 years later due to AI, my sympathy for your founders is in short supply. Your founders may get screwed like the many, many workers out there that get screwed all the time by factors beyond their control. I mean, if you can save the jobs of the people you funded, great. But, founding a startup is risky, blah blah blah... and losing a few or a few thousand hardly seems like a reason to call congress. At least no more than any other industry getting disrupted. We've seen, and perhaps you've been part of, putting huge swaths of people put out of work. Huge swaths of business out of business. Industries that came crashing down at no fault of the business owner, other than not being prepared for some an unseen stealth startup who leveraged prior institutional knowledge to come and take it all in a flash.

dehrmann 4y ago

> The cynic in me says this letter is less about bailing out the small companies trying to make payroll and more about the VC's not wanting to lose massive investments. It's both. VCs don't want to lose their cash accounts and see their investments become insolvent. At the same time, it doesn't help society if all these workers suddenly find themselves jobless. There's also a risk of contagion. If companies suddenly discover their deposits aren't de-facto safe, they'll flee other banks with similar risk profiles, causing more bank runs. Banks going under and taking lots of funds with them is bad because it undermines confidence in the system. It's financial infrastructure that's supposed to always work. Sure, if it doesn't, you can work around it, but it becomes a drag on the economy, and things start looking like a developing country.

UmYeahNo 4y ago
Well, if I'm going to remain cyncical I'd hazard a guess that many of these startups are to "disrupt" some industry anyway -- automating the previously unautomate-able, putting huge swaths of people out of a job (often with no clear path to a new career) So, if those jobs are preserved a few days / weeks / months longer, I guess it all works out. There are potentially millions of workers under a great deal of pressure to not lose their jobs to some disruptor or another. Are we somehow less sympathetic to them than these tech workers?