There were also short positions on SVB taken out after some of those financials. Startup founders/teams should not be spending their time reading their 40 year

There were also short positions on SVB taken out after some of those financials. Startup founders/teams should not be spending their time reading their 40 year old bank's quarterly financials, analyzing various short positions, or hiring resources to do so. Then there's (as always) the absurdity of making significant financial decisions for your startup based on a more-or-less random fund/personality twitter account that may have an undisclosed short position spreading FUD (or just be flat-out wrong). Hindsight is 20/20 and even the most sophisticated actors taking short positions have failed spectacularly. For cases as dramatic as this ($200b bank failure) it's the stuff they make movies of ("The Big Short"). The fact remains that other than a few hawks this came out of nowhere last Thursday, and as the article and other sources describe not even Thiel and other sophisticated insiders were that far ahead but as we all know when it comes to a bank run those hours are precious.