E119: Silicon Valley Bank implodes: startup extinction event, contagion risk, culpability, and more

(0:00) Bestie intro! (1:57) Overview of the SVB collapse and bank run (17:53) Who or what is to blame? Debating venture debt (37:11) Contagion risk, second- and third-order effects, government backstops (1:00:36) What does this mean for the VC industry? Silicon Valley panic cycle, advice for founders Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg https://twitter.com/altcap Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://www.fdic.gov/news/press-releases/2023/pr23016.html https://s201.q4cdn.com/589201576/files/doc_downloads/2023/03/r/Q1-2023-Investor-Letter. FINAL-030823.pdf https://s201.q4cdn.com/589201576/files/doc_downloads/2023/03/Q1-2023-Mid-Quarter-Update-vFINAL3-030823.pdf https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1634260576431136768 https://seekingalpha.com/article/4565388-svb-financial-blow-up-risk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymo6Yzjv_KY https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-10/treasury-closely-watching-siliconvalley-bank-share-plunge https://www.cbsnews.com/news/janet-yellen-ukraine-treasury-secretary-kyiv-visit-volodymyr-zelenskyy https://twitter.com/Rippling/status/1634201986894577665 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program https://www.wsj.com/articles/bond-losses-push-silicon-valley-bank-parent-to-raise-capital-125e89d4 https://dfpi.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/337/2023/03/DFPI-Orders-Silicon-Valley-Bank-03102023.pdf?emrc=bedc09 https://www.google.com/finance/quote/IAT:NYSEARCA

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00David Sacks?

  Hey guys, I got a little friend here.

• 0:02Jason Calacanis?

  What?

• 0:03David Sacks?

  Yeah, I think I'm gonna start a new podcast.

• 0:06Jason Calacanis?

  Is that a bulldog?

• 0:07David Sacks?

  And I'm gonna have a bulldog as my mascot.

• 0:10Jason Calacanis?

  You bought a bulldog? Oh my god, you got my mascot.

• 0:14David Sacks?

  Yeah, I took over your mascot.

• 0:16Jason Calacanis?

  Well, look at that, now you're actually likable, Sax.

• 0:19David Friedberg?

  Sax, are you trying to improve your image?

• 0:21Jason Calacanis?

  Just saying, Sax is so unlikable that he has gotten a bulldog.

• 0:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh my god, Sax, show me his face again. Is it him or her?

• 0:29David Sacks?

  Him.

• 0:30Jason Calacanis?

  What's his name?

• 0:31David Sacks?

  His name is Moose.

• 0:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh my god.

• 0:34Jason Calacanis?

  Oh my god, you got a bulldog, he's so cute.

• 0:36David Sacks?

  It's me and my mascot, J Cal, I'm going solo with my podcast, I'm gonna call it This Week in Technology.

• 0:40Jason Calacanis?

  It already exists, it's a Leo Lefort podcast, please don't start any more trademark lawsuits. Alright, everybody, it's an emergency podcast. Silicon Valley Bank has been taken over by the FDIC.

• 0:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sorry, is this the Twist livestream? Am I on the Twist livestream?

• 0:55Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, guys, if you couldn't just interrupt me while, I'm never gonna get through this, there's a lot to get through, the world needs to hear our opinions.

• 1:01David Friedberg?

  If you care about us, click like and subscribe.

• 1:04Jason Calacanis?

  Hey guys, hit the like and subscribe button.

• 1:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Hit the like and subscribe.

• 1:06Jason Calacanis?

  Make sure you search for This Week in Startups and write a review.

• 1:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  In the comments.

• 1:11Jason Calacanis?

  If you don't get enough J Cal, you can get me four more times a week. The name of the other podcast is This Week in Startups, thanks for the free promo, guys. It is a huge day today in Silicon Valley, we haven't seen a black swan like event happen here in a long time, since 2008.

• 1:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I thought the last time was when you published the book Angel.

• 1:30Jason Calacanis?

  Oh god.

• 1:32Jason Calacanis?

  We have to get to work. Chamath, I saved the jokes.

• 1:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'm trying to give you a cold open.

• 1:38Jason Calacanis?

  We did that, okay, here we go, three, two.

• 1:51Speaker 04

  ...

• 1:56Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, everybody. It's been a while, 36 hours here. We're going to get into Silicon Valley Bank imploding. The FDIC has shut down Silicon Valley Bank. And there's many different things we have to discuss. With me today, as always, the dictator himself, Chamath Palihapitiya, the Rain Man, David Sacks, and the prince of panic attacks no more, his wires cleared, David Friedberg, the Sultan of Science. Welcome, boys. How is everybody, just to start this off, contextually, the last 24 hours, can you recall a time in our careers where it's felt this acute, or insane, or intense?

• 2:33David Friedberg?

  2008 and COVID. And I think that this is right up there, could be two, probably three, in terms of the level of panic and concern. The problem is, we're in the middle of it. We don't know what's going to happen this weekend. So there's a lot of anxiety right now, a lot of panic going on. And a lot of, unlike COVID and 08, really acute effects that many companies and investors are actively dealing with right now, like not just a few, thousands of companies that are really in a state of distress right now. So it is potentially, from a Silicon Valley perspective, worse than 08 or COVID.

• 3:12David Sacks?

  Oh, for sure, for sure. I mean, this is basically a Lehman-sized event for Silicon Valley. Remember when Lehman Brothers went out of, basically filed for bankruptcy in 2008, started the whole financial crisis? The federal authorities thought that the best plan for Lehman was to file for bankruptcy. They didn't try to save it. And that basically led to a cascade, where the whole financial system almost collapsed. I think that SVB, this is a Lehman-sized event for Silicon Valley. And there's two big things happening. One is the impact on the startup ecosystem. So you're seeing probably thousands of companies now cannot make payroll in the next few weeks, because their money is trapped and tied

• 3:52David Sacks?

  up at Silicon Valley Bank, which is now under receivership. So if you wired your money out yesterday, you're good. And a lot of people managed to do That but there are a lot of people who were had wires in the hopper didn't make it today logged into the website can't log in their money's just frozen. And we don't know when they're gonna be able to get their money out or how many cents of the dollar you're gonna get so. Basically, the whole startup ecosystem is in peril. I think Gary Tan called it.

• 4:23Jason Calacanis?

  Extinction level event.

• 4:24David Sacks?

  Yes, exactly. That was a good term. And just to be really clear, this is not big tech at risk. I know there's a lot of people out there who don't like the idea of bailing out big tech.

• 4:32Jason Calacanis?

  This is not Google. It's not.

• 4:34David Sacks?

  Exactly. Those companies have plenty of cash. They're fine. This is small companies, companies with ten to a hundred employees. And you're looking at maybe thousands of them just being wiped out for no reason. They didn't do anything wrong because of this. This could have a very damaging effect. On the startup economy and the whole United States economy. This is little tech. These are the future. Companies that will keep the United States competitive versus China and the rest of the world. And then the other big thing that's happening, and this all happening in real time, is a regional banking crisis because. When depositors see that their money was not safe at SVB, which was a top twenty bank.

• 5:15David Sacks?

  That as far as everyone knows was in regulatory compliance. Nobody has said that SVB wasn't compliant. As far as we know, they had a regulator's seal of approval. And now you find out your money was not safe and it's not FDIC insured above two hundred fifty thousand dollars. So. The conversations we're all seeing in our chat groups with leading investors is why the hell would you keep your money anywhere but? JP Morgan or a top four bank? And so I think that unless the Fed steps in here over the weekend, we're gonna see potentially a a run on. The regional banking system, a cascade like we saw in two thousand eight.

• 5:54David Friedberg?

  Well, Sacks, let's let's just take a step back before, because I think you're right, but we should talk about why that happens, the contagion drivers.

• 6:01Jason Calacanis?

  And just so people know, Silicon Valley Bank is used by fifty percent of venture backed startups. And I would say the majority of venture firms also have their money there. So this morning I got a note from Fundam and LPN. They have millions of dollars that they can access to invest in startups. So Chamath, there are many products and services that Silicon Valley provides. One is, you know, banking services to startups. Another is to venture capitalists. They do the mortgages for banker, for venture capitalists and for founders as well. They provide those kind of white glove services. But you also mentioned in our group chat, they also provide loans to GPs, general partners, the people who run venture firms.

• 6:45Jason Calacanis?

  So the impact could also hit there. Maybe you could explain what that is and then we'll get into what happened here.

• 6:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah. Well, I think it's important, maybe actually just for Friedberg to just explain what's happening. But okay, maybe, maybe let me just do the lead in and then Friedberg can do the details. But for, for those that are far away and aren't even sure what's going on. The basic problem that we have right now is in the last 36 hours, a key part of the financial plumbing of Silicon Valley has basically been turned off. And as a result, billions of dollars of deposits have basically been frozen. It means that people can't pay their bills. It means that people can't access their deposits. It means that credit lines could be in default. It means that payroll can't be met.

• 7:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And so as a result, we have this potential contagion on our hands. But in order to understand it and unpack it, I think it's important to explain exactly how this came to pass. So let me just hand the ball to Friedberg and then we can talk about some of the implications, of which there are many.

• 7:47Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, before Friedberg starts with the why, just the what that's happened as well. This all started on Wednesday evening when Silicon Valley Bank's CEO published a letter to shareholders announcing that the bank was rebalancing its balance sheet by selling tens of billions of dollars worth of mostly US securities, I'm sorry, treasuries. And then they announced they would raise some money and sell some shares in Silicon Valley Bank. The, then the shares in Silicon Valley Bank is a publicly traded entity, dropped 60% on Thursday, then another 60% on Friday. Of course, then the entire world got focused on this. And then every venture capitalist started telling, or I would say the overwhelming majority of venture capitalists told their founders to get their money out of SVB. Then you had a classic run on the bank. A small number of venture capitalists gave advice to say, hey, we should support Silicon

• 8:32Jason Calacanis?

  Valley Bank. I understand that, but it turned out to be really bad advice. And then. Trading was halted on Friday morning pending news and then finally the FDIC shut down Silicon Valley Bank at noon on Friday and there's a lot of speculation of what will happen on the over the weekend, but maybe you could walk us through technically what happened to Silicon Valley Bank and why they had this cash shortfall and this we explained the run of the bank basically, but what led up to this?

• 8:59David Friedberg?

  The irony is it really was and is prior to the quote run a financially solvent business. So I have a few slides if you're on YouTube, you can see it that we pulled one slide that was kind of made by us and the other set that come from Silicon Valley Bank's actual presentations. But if you look at their balance sheet, this is from the end of the year 2022, you can kind of look at the, you know, stuff that they owe their liabilities, which is what they owe their customers that sits in deposits. Because when customers give you cash in a deposit, you owe them that money back. So that sits as a liability. And then they had some other debt. So in total, Silicon Valley Bank at the end of the year had about $195 billion in liabilities, 173 billion of customer deposits

• 9:43David Friedberg?

  that they owe to customers and 22 billion of other debt. And then they take those customer deposits and they invest it in a number of securities. And the way that a balance sheet business like this bank would operate is, you know, the customers have access to their cash anytime they want. But in order for the bank to make money, they make longer duration investments. And those longer duration investments give them the ability to earn money on those longer duration investments more than they're paying the customers for the deposits. So if you look at their longer duration investments, they had about $208 billion of total assets sitting on the balance sheet. So compare that to the 195 billion that they owe customers

• 10:23David Friedberg?

  and other debt holders. So, you know, the difference here between 208 and 195 is about $13 billion. That's kind of the net, what people would call book value of Silicon Valley Bank at the end of the year. And of the 208 billion of assets that they had, 74 billion were loans and they've got a breakdown of the loan portfolio here in a minute. 91 billion were these hold to maturity securities, where they don't actually adjust the value of these on a quarterly basis. And 26 billion is what triggered this panic, which is available for sale securities, mostly treasuries. And what happened is Silicon Valley Bank's deposits came in so quickly over the last couple of years that they went out and they bought a bunch of treasuries, you know, with the cash that they got. And the problem is that very quickly

• 11:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Friedberg, it's actually MBS. They bought a bunch of MBS, 10-year duration MBS.

• 11:10Jason Calacanis?

  And important to note, of the 208 billion that they have the book value, Friedberg, there was a, whatever, 10% if it's in cash or something. So they do have some cash there.

• 11:20David Friedberg?

  That's right. Yeah, sorry. It's a good point. If you go back, so like, you know, let's say that of the 173 billion of customer deposits, you know, they've got 14 billion of cash, and then they've got all these treasury securities they can sell, call it 40 billion. So if 25% of customers said tomorrow, hey, we want our cash back, theoretically, they could just dump those treasury securities, distribute the cash, and give it all back to customers. The problem is if suddenly more than 25% want to get their cash back, well, now they have a problem. And that is effectively what triggers the run on the bank. As soon as some folks think that others might be pulling money out, then everyone rushes to be the first money out the door. And that's what triggers a classic run on the bank. There's

• 12:01David Friedberg?

  a statistic, I think, in the 1920s, there were several hundred banks that had runs every year for almost the entire decade. And this was like a regular kind of occurrence that happened in the 1920s that ushered in a lot of our modern securities laws that are meant to kind of create the necessary liquidity provisions in how these banks are able to operate to make cash available to customers. But what happened is

• 12:24Jason Calacanis?

  So much so, by the way, Friedberg, that they made a movie, It's a Wonderful Life, about a bank run.

• 12:28David Friedberg?

  So basically, one of the bigger problems that Silicon Valley Bank, they ran into two big problems. Number one is deposit decline, where VCs were not investing new money. And when they were not investing new money, and startups were burning more money than Silicon Valley had modeled they would be burning, because they thought everyone was going to reduce spend and reduce burn, and they didn't. So deposits were going down while all these startups were burning money. No VCs were investing. So total deposits were on the decline. Meanwhile, their bond portfolio, the assets that they hold on the balance sheet, also declined in value. And I kind of just put a really simple illustration here on why. If you have a hundred dollar kind of face value bond that earns 2%, which is basically where these treasuries were a year ago,

• 13:12David Friedberg?

  and you hold that for 10 years, that 10-year bond yields $122. If the interest rate goes up to 5%, then that bond should yield $163. So the value of the first bond actually goes down by 25% because of the market conditions. That's how significant the value changes with just a 3% change in the interest rates. And that's effectively what happened with that available for security segment of the Silicon Valley Bank portfolio, uh, balance sheet. They had this bond portfolio that suddenly got devalued, and they had declining deposits. So when deposits start to decline, you got to make sure you have enough assets sitting on the balance sheet. So they sold a bunch of them, said we're going to raise more money. And at that point, everyone kind of perked their head up and said, oh, my gosh.

• 13:56David Friedberg?

  What's crazy is in Q4, by the way, Seeking Alpha, this website you guys know, they had actually done an analysis and said, is SVB about to blow up? And they put together a bunch of slides that highlighted why this might be the case because they saw that deposits were declining, that their assets that they hold were basically declining in value because of the massive and very quick rise in interest rates, and that SVB had bought a bunch of bonds that were long, long duration bonds. So it led to, you know, obviously a real short-term problem. If you look at the rest of SVB's loan portfolio, there's also a question of how distressed that all is. So 10% of their $70 billion-plus dollars of loans is in venture debt. And venture debt is very questionable in this market, right? Because historically, the way venture debt makes money...

• 14:41David Friedberg?

  Is that they assume that VCs are going to keep funding the companies that they're providing debt to, and if the VC stops funding the companies, then the venture debt defaults. And so if you go to the last slide in this deck, you'll kind of see SVB's performance on their venture debt portfolio. Yeah, so look at this. This is the the performance results on just the warrants that they get on their venture debt. So when you when you issue venture debt, you take a write down or you get paid back. And then you also get some warrants. You get some a right to buy shares in the winners in the startups that work. And so the way that SVB's made money on their venture debt portfolio historically is hopefully they get paid back on all their loans. Some of them they don't. But then they'll make a bunch of money on selling their warrants or the companies going public or getting bought.

• 15:23David Friedberg?

  And in Q4 of 2022, it just fell off a cliff. And their venture debt portfolio really started to show distress. And that's 10%.

• 15:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Are these realized gains or these are mark to market gains?

• 15:32David Friedberg?

  This is the net gains on on their warrants. So they don't mark to market warrants. I think this is what they actually exercised and got out. So there was there was obviously a ton of exits in 2021. So they made $560 million in profit on their warrants that they had in their venture debt portfolio in 2021. That number collapsed to 148 in 2022. And you better believe most of that was in the early part of 2022. So, you know, they didn't do a quarterly breakdown on this. This was like their full year numbers. But their venture debt portfolio, which is another $7 billion of capital, also distressed. Certainly wasn't going to perform as everyone had modeled. So when you kind of start to add this all up, and remember, if you go back to the beginning, they only had $15 billion of true net book

• 16:13David Friedberg?

  value, which is the difference between their assets and their liabilities. And so if you really start to adjust, what are those assets really worth? Are they really worth what they're holding them at the book at? And if people start to pull money out and you got to sell them at a distressed price in order to give people their cash that they're owed on deposits, that's when you have a classic run on the bank problem. And then everyone tries to be the first out the door. And that's basically like what triggered this this week.

• 16:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Can I give you guys my little version of all of this? I think there are three buckets. But before I go into the three buckets, I just want to say. To all of the employees at these companies, I think we, the four of us, are so truly sorry for what's going on and what you guys are going through. And then to founders that are trying to navigate this, it must be unbelievably tough. There are a few founders in our portfolio. So, you know, from all of us, just know that we're thinking of you guys and hopefully everybody ends up on the other side of this by Monday or Tuesday with not a lot of damage. So let's just put that out there as sort of like goodwill and kind of good juju in the world for the next couple of days here.

• 17:19Jason Calacanis?

  This is gonna be a really difficult weekend for people who are trying to navigate this. I think it's well said, yeah. I mean, I've got founders who are in really, really tough shape right now, trying to figure out how do I make payroll? And it's a big question.

• 17:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay, so just putting a pin in that, because we'll come back to it. I think that this whole debacle, I guess is maybe the best word. There's a little bit of blame that you can put at the feet of three different groups of actors. And I just want to get your guys' reaction to this. So, group number one, and Friedberg just mentioned this, is we, the four of us, have been talking for the last 18 months about the impact of rising rates. And, you know, we talked a lot about, for example, like in our portfolio, my partners and I walked into every company and made them have at least enough money to get through

• 18:13Chamath Palihapitiya?

  mid 2025, right? I've said this a bunch of times. And so that was about having very difficult conversations about making sure that you were husbanding cash so that you had enough to weather any storm that came on the horizon. But it turns out that there was some group of VCs and companies that just didn't get that memo and just kept spending like nothing had changed. But when other VCs have stopped giving you money and you're continuing to spend like it was 2020, that's what caused this mismatch and it was really the spark that lit the fuse.

• 18:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So I think it's a really sad commentary at some level about the lack of governance that we have inside of some of these companies, where folks are just not doing the job that they're supposed to at these board levels. I think people, and we've talked about this, have made venture too much of a popularity contest where they are, you know, glad-handing and smiling and not doing the hard work of holding folks accountable. And so some handful of VCs and some handful of founders just didn't get this memo and it made what could have been a slower train wreck faster unnecessarily. So I think that that's worth talking about. Then I think if you look at what actually practically happened over the last year and

• 19:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  a half at SVB was that they were so desirous of profits that they basically had a duration mismatch. So what is that? Imagine you get a job and, you know, somebody's like, hey, Friedberg, I'll pay you $100,000 monthly over some number of months, right, in normal pay every two weeks, or I'll pay you $200,000, but you only get paid once a year. Well, the problem with that second thing is you still have monthly bills that you have to make up for before you get paid. And so most people wouldn't take that job even if they paid you a lot more because you have this durational mismatch. You have to pay rent every month, you have to pay bills on a monthly basis, you have credit card bills, all these

• 20:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  things. And so you need to match the timing of your cash flows. And so I think somewhere along the way, the risk folks at SVB just made a really large miscalculation. They basically went and bought 10-year risk.

• 20:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  In order to pay back money that could be called on a daily or weekly basis. That, obviously in hindsight, was not a good idea.

• 20:47David Friedberg?

  But more importantly, Chima, they didn't adjust fast enough.

• 20:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, they can't because they have these mark-to-market assets that were just getting clobbered in the head as rates got raised. And then the third, the third thing is around regulators, you know, after the great financial crisis, we went through a period where there was hundreds of bank failures. And then for the last decade, they've been virtually none, right? They've been like a few here or there, and the last one was just during COVID. And so the regulators, I think, have done a really good job with Dodd-Frank and all of these other things to clean up

• 21:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  the banking laws and the reporting requirements and the capital structures so that runs on banks are more and more infrequent. But they kept this crazy loophole around the accounting treatment of assets. And they allow these durational mismatches to appear in a bank's balance sheet. And so I think there's a piece here for the regulators, which is here's an opportunity that's glaring and obvious now and screaming about how we need to tighten some more of the transparency that's required. It shouldn't be a group of armchair sleuths on seeking alpha that sniffed this out three months before it happened.

• 22:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It should have actually been a regulator that said, hey, hold on a second, something is happening here that we don't like. And so we, I think, need to figure it out. But I think those are the three actors that are in play, and they each share a bit of the blame here.

• 22:15Jason Calacanis?

  Friedberg, Sax, what do you think? Who is to blame here most for this blow up? Or is this just the extrogenous event of the rate hikes happening in such a short compressed period of time?

• 22:27David Sacks?

  No, I mean, look, I think that SVB's risk management was terrible, obviously. They signed up for these long-dated securities when the market they serve is incredibly volatile, like Chima says, duration mismatch. Really good point. I would also say that there's a weird Regulatory treatment where apparently if you buy these 10-year bonds, these 10-year mortgage-backed securities or 10-year treasuries, you don't have to recognize the loss until you sell them, which is just bizarre. So in other words, they should have been marking the positions to market. And instead, they just were allowing these losses to accrue. I don't understand how the regulators can allow that kind of system.

• 23:12David Sacks?

  I also don't understand how the regulators can allow a bank to take customer deposits and loan them out to startups with this venture debt that we've been talking about on the show, where 10% of their portfolio is basically being loaned out to startups who have no credit? That's crazy. We talked on the show a few months ago.

• 23:32Jason Calacanis?

  We actually, it's a good time to play the clip here because what we saw and Sacks and I, you know, seeing at the Series A level, you have a lot of times founders would get this basically free money in their minds. I raised 10, I get 5 in venture debt, I can extend my runway. But that money comes due and here's the clip for when Sacks and I were talking about it just a couple of episodes ago.

• 23:54David Sacks?

  What I don't trust is whether the return models on venture debt that were created over the last 5 to 10 years will be a good predictor of what the returns will be in the next 5, 10 years, when a lot of the mortality that should have happened in the past now happens in the future.

• 24:12Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I mean, this is just four or five episodes ago, we kind of nailed it.

• 24:16David Sacks?

  Startups have no collateral, they have no, there's no security for that loan. How does that make sense?

• 24:20Jason Calacanis?

  No, not, not true.

• 24:22David Sacks?

  To make a loan to a creditless startup.

• 24:24Jason Calacanis?

  Not true.

• 24:24David Friedberg?

  Guys, look, I disagree with you on this point. Look, if you pull up the slide that breaks down, so let's talk about venture debt for a second because I've actually invested in a venture debt fund and I've seen the economics on it. The way that the venture debt model typically works is the lender loans money to the startup. And what they underwrite is what the current VCs in the startup say they're going to do to support the company in the future. So their ability to get paid back in the future is largely predicated not on underwriting the company and the performance of the business or the assets they have, but it's underwritten by the fact that the VCs are committed to continuing to put money in and hopefully see that this thing has a big outcome.

• 25:01David Sacks?

  There is no commitment. There is no commitment.

• 25:03David Friedberg?

  Yeah, I get it, but.

• 25:04David Sacks?

  No, let me tell you.

• 25:05David Friedberg?

  No, hold on, let me just finish. Hold on, let me just finish. I get it, but the, but the asset as a, as an asset class. We can make fun of it all we want. It's actually performed pretty well. These guys have generated typically 18% as an industry.

• 25:18David Sacks?

  In a bull market.

• 25:19David Friedberg?

  And yeah.

• 25:19David Sacks?

  In a bull market.

• 25:20David Friedberg?

  You're right. It's the same as venture.

• 25:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Lifts all boats.

• 25:23David Friedberg?

  And the way that they generate those returns is that they're loaning money to the startups. A bunch of those startups fail. They don't get paid back. And then the ones that succeed, they actually take warrants in the startups. So they have some equity upside in the startup and that's the way the model works. We can make fun of it all we want. It actually works as an industry.

• 25:39David Sacks?

  Okay, so let me tell you, let me tell you why that broke is it goes back to the point you made earlier in the show, which is the, the lender has this expectation that the VCs are going to keep investing. Well, what if they don't? Now, we've been in a generally up into the right bull market since the last

• 25:54David Friedberg?

  That's right.

• 25:55David Sacks?

  crash in 2009.

• 25:56David Friedberg?

  14, yeah, 14 years.

• 25:57David Sacks?

  So I believe that the data for all these models is, is skewed because it assumes again, an environment in which companies keep raising up rounds.

• 26:06David Friedberg?

  That's right.

• 26:06David Sacks?

  And as soon as you get into a crisis in which that breaks, then the whole asset class breaks.

• 26:11David Friedberg?

  That's right.

• 26:11David Sacks?

  And I think this was completely predictable. But even if you think that this asset class is legitimate, I don't understand why banking deposits could ever be used to fund it. If you want to be a venture debt fund, go out and raise money from LPs. Because what happens is when you raise it with customer deposits, you're creating systemic risk for the banking system.

• 26:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Hundred percent.

• 26:31David Sacks?

  And the regulator should never have allowed that.

• 26:33David Friedberg?

  Even worse, the two assets are correlated because you're, you're loaning it to people who are depositing it.

• 26:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And in every other part of the private credit market, that is exactly what you do, what SAKS said. You can't use customer deposits to do some CLO deal or to do like, you know, to back a PE play. These are all LP capital that goes towards that. This is the only sliver as far as I know, where you take customer deposits to create very risky loans. Wrapped with warrant coverage. And by the way, this stuff is never free, right? So they make you keep your money there. They make you have enough money to cover the size of the loan in the first place. So it's not even that valuable because if they gave you eight million dollar loan, you have to have eight million dollars always on deposit. Otherwise, you violate the, otherwise you're, you know, you breached the loan.

• 27:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So there is no free lunch in venture debt. There has never been. And I still think venture debt is very much like venture capital, which is most of these gains are on paper. Most of these gains haven't really been realized. And now we're going to go through this sorting process when all of this stuff gets whacked. I do want Saxi, your reaction to this, though, which is the thing that started this was the fact that VCs, seeing the markets imploding, stopped giving companies money, but they didn't do enough work to help founders cut burn. SBB said it themselves, the burn stayed the same. What is going on inside of these boards?

• 28:05David Sacks?

  I think that's crazy because, listen, I mean, we started doing portfolio updates with our entire portfolio of founders in February last year, saying this is a regime change, you gotta cut costs. We did another one in May. You can watch them both on YouTube, okay? And we were telling founders, cut your burn, do it now, don't wait. We were beating the drum on this so hard and in every board meeting and privately, and I like, you know, and it takes multiple times, frankly, to get through.

• 28:33Jason Calacanis?

  I think your point, Chamath, about not wanting to be unpopular with the founder crowd led some young capital allocators to maybe say, okay, yeah, let's try this ditch effort before we do, you know, another riff. Let's try this new product. Let's change our sales strategy. I don't think it's young versus old. I think it's experience versus unexperienced. No, I think it's experience. That's better. I think that's more accurate.

• 28:55David Sacks?

  Yeah, I think, there is, there is experience. Listen, if you've never lived through a bear market, you don't know how bad it can get. And tech is a boom bust cycle and the busts are really hard.

• 29:05Jason Calacanis?

  Really hard.

• 29:06David Sacks?

  Really hard. And if you've never lived through a regime change before, like there was in 2008, nine, or 2000, 2000 was the worst.

• 29:13Jason Calacanis?

  2001 to three.

• 29:14David Sacks?

  Then you're totally unprepared and you have no idea. And, you know, and I Everything experience does matter and there aren't that many VCs around who live through the dot com craft.

• 29:22David Friedberg?

  No, probably eighty-five percent have not. By the way, if you guys pull up just that slide on the loan portfolio at SVB, I just want to make the case, Sax, I hear you. It's a risky, it seems like a risky investment to make. But don't you guys agree that a balance sheet business like SVB or an insurance company or any business that has, you know, some amount of money coming in that sits on the balance sheet and then they invested for a period of time, there's a laddering of risk and there's a laddering of duration that you have. And so if you look at Silicon Valley Bank from their, from the update they did last week that triggered all of this. If you look at SVB's loan portfolio, seventy percent are really these asset-backed loans, which are fifty-six percent of the portfolio is like, you know, prepayments on LP commitments.

• 30:07David Friedberg?

  And then fourteen percent is private banking loans, which is loans against, you know, public securities that people have. Only ten percent of the portfolio is venture debt, which is seven billion. And, you know, look, if the asset historically has performed at an eighteen percent kind of rate of return, what is the venture debt portfolio going to look like in a distressed environment? Is it negative one hundred percent? Is it negative fifty percent? Negative forty percent? Negative thirty percent? I mean, you guys can have a point of view on this, but you, look, I mean, for any business that's managing a large balance sheet of assets against, you know, a short kind of liability tree, they're going to have some riskier assets. I think, you know, the question is, was ten percent too much of the loan portfolio?

• 30:48David Sacks?

  I think one percent's too much.

• 30:50Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, and I'll add to that. You know, one of the issues here that we saw qualitatively, Sax and I both saw qualitatively, is the standard for giving these and the size of them got lower and lower. In fact, the covenants went away and this is what we kept having founders say to us, it has no covenants. They offer me no covenants. I don't have to have a certain amount of cash. I don't have a half a certain amount of revenue. Those covenants were there for a reason to filter out the people who can't afford the house, right? And this is exactly what happened in two thousand and eight when people started giving those no recourse or no background check mortgages. Remember those where like you didn't have to do a background check to get a mortgage? That's what happened in venture. They just gave these, I saw it firsthand, willy-nilly. I begged founders to not take them.

• 31:32Jason Calacanis?

  And I only won that discussion, Sax, one out of five times because founders are like money.

• 31:38David Friedberg?

  We're having this debate, but there's no indication and there were no losses in this portfolio to date that showed that venture debt's underperforming. We're, we're, we're saying that this is stupid.

• 31:46David Sacks?

  What's the expression? Past performance is no guarantee of future performance.

• 31:49David Friedberg?

  Exactly.

• 31:50David Sacks?

  It was obvious to us on this podcast.

• 31:52David Friedberg?

  You guys are arguing about venture debt when the real loss that happened at SVB.

• 31:57David Sacks?

  No, we understand that.

• 31:58David Friedberg?

  That they bought a bunch of treasuries and interest rates went from 2% to 5%.

• 32:02David Sacks?

  Let me, I have to explain. There's two things going on here. Okay, Free Bird, when, when I see your chart and you talk about laddering this and laddering that and X percent and all this kind of stuff, I think about the smartest guys in the room. Okay, this is long-term capital management. This is Enron. This is the 2008 bank failure. They think they can basically do financial engineering to make this work. You know why it doesn't work? It's because number one, they're not in fully liquid assets. Number two, they're not marking to market every day. If you're a deposit bank, you should be required to keep all of your assets in fully liquid securities that you mark to market every day. It's that simple. And what do they do? They put it in 10-year duration mortgage bonds. Yeah, we need to explain this.

• 32:44David Sacks?

  Where the value got devastated with the rise of interest rates. They didn't have to mark that to market. And second, they put 10% of the portfolio in basically loans to creditless startups. So when there is a run on the bank, you have a what, like roughly 30% gap between deposits and their actual, the value of their portfolio. Yeah. And, and listen. That shouldn't be allowed. And, and the reason it's allowed is frankly, I think regulators are completely asleep at the wheel. Where's Powell? Where's Yellen? Two days ago, two days ago, Powell was testifying in front of the banking committee. And they asked him, do you see any systemic risk in the banking system because of the rapid rise in interest rates? He said, no. No systemic risk.

• 33:27David Friedberg?

  Sax is right. I agree. The, the, the rise in interest rates is the key driver here. It drove down venture investing. It drove down valuations and it's driving down the value of long-term bond portfolios, which by the way, is the main standard, the standard of how a lot of these businesses invest and operate. And it's caused distress and stress on the system. My biggest concern is the contagion effect. arises next if you go in and you continue to assume interest rates climb and everyone's holding on to these bonds and they're getting written down meanwhile you owe people all this money in cash and the other thing that's happening if you hold cash today you're likely want a higher interest rate to compete with treasuries because you can invest in treasuries today and

• 34:03Jason Calacanis?

  so let's pause for a second here I just want to make sure that the audience understands

• 34:06David Sacks?

  and Yellen put out a statement today Jake Al just to finish the the thought that they're they're monitoring the situation yes she's sitting there like a bump on a log I mean it's ridiculous they need to be out front on this they don't understand like that this is a cascading situation this so listen either this weekend either this weekend they place SVB in the hands of a JP Morgan they do basically a bear or a womu they either do that this weekend or this thing keeps cascading next week and look I could be wrong maybe they're working on it right now behind the scenes if they are kudos to them they'll have an announcement before the market opens on Monday but if they're not and Yellen's just like we're monitoring the situation while

• 34:47David Sacks?

  three days ago she was in Ukraine this is incompetence at work all right hold on we'll

• 34:53Jason Calacanis?

  figure out a way for you to dub this into January 6 next take a pause he connected Silicon Valley Bank to Ukraine it was yeah exactly it's beautiful the piece here that's important

• 35:02David Sacks?

  what is our treasury doing in Ukraine I mean seriously

• 35:04Jason Calacanis?

  okay take it easy take it easy here's what happened just so people understand US treasuries were at 102 you get like a 2% a year they bought a bunch of those that was actually when you think about it you would say that's a safe bet the problem is those are locked up for 10 years and nobody anticipated on the Silicon Valley Bank team that the rate hike would happen so quickly so violently remember we saw the 25 25 50 50 75 75 all those increases now what happens to a 2% US Treasury when the interest rate goes up is they get devalued they're not worth as much so if you did need to sell them you would have to sell them at a discount if you held them to

• 35:46Jason Calacanis?

  maturity you would get that complete return and what happened here is they needed to sell these early and they sold them early and they took a massive loss billions of dollars and that's what lit the fuse that's the slide I showed like the price basically goes down I just want to make sure the audience understands that if they had sold these earlier or if they hadn't bought these they would have not had this problem go ahead Shama

• 36:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  now why why in that meeting did they have to decide to emergency sell it's because

• 36:13Chamath Palihapitiya?

  VCs stopped giving startups money, so startups couldn't deposit more money into the bank, but they kept spending at the same rate that they were spending.

• 36:22Jason Calacanis?

  In other words, the deposits went down.

• 36:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah. In the last 18 months, not enough folks read the memo.

• 36:28Jason Calacanis?

  Mm hmm. Yes.

• 36:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And by the way, the tragedy of that is, let's just say that you did get the memo, and you did make the hard cuts, right now, and let's say you're working on something, and you can fill in the blank on the thing that you care about, okay? So for the listeners, let's say it's climate change, let's say it's breast cancer research, whatever it is. This had nothing to do with you four days ago. You had your money in the bank, you did everything you needed to do to go and, you know, figure out product market fit, you know, try to get to market, try to sell your product. And all of a sudden, because of some other set of folks and actors who couldn't get their act together, now you're on the precipice of bankruptcy in 36, 48 hours. That's crazy to me.

• 37:11Jason Calacanis?

  This is the challenge, Sax, I think you could speak to this as well, is we did all this portfolio management over the last year. These were the troubled companies. And then yet the companies, a large portion who did the right thing, they had a big war chest, and they had set the burn at the right pace, and now they, the other portion of our portfolio, that had big war chests, they're now at risk. So if you're a capital allocator right now, you're looking at a group of companies that you tried your best to save, and they're, and they're anchored, and they're wounded, and now the strong ones are wounded too. This is cataclysmic for Silicon Valley. If this does not get stopped this weekend, not only, and I, I don't want to be hysterical.

• 37:51David Sacks?

  You're right, this is a meteor hitting the dinosaur, it's extinction level event. You're right, J Cal, listen, we have portfolio companies that had tens, or, you know, millions or more in Silicon Valley Bank, and their account showed that their money was in the safest money market funds. Money market funds with a publicly traded ticker symbol that were managed by BlackRock or Morgan Stanley, okay? That's what their account showed them they had. And then they're told all of a sudden, no, you're only protected to 20 $250,000, everything above that, that your, your money market fund is just an asset of SVB, which is in receivership.

• 38:30Jason Calacanis?

  You get a certificate.

• 38:31David Sacks?

  Yeah, and you get a certificate. Do you see this announcement? By the way,

• 38:33Jason Calacanis?

  I mean,

• 38:34David Sacks?

  the California regulator made things worse. The California regulator stepped in and they froze everything. So our companies were in the process. We have companies that submitted a wire yesterday. By the way, we spent all day yesterday on the phone with our portfolio companies trying to get them out. We had wire requests that went in before the deadline and for some reason, we're in a queue.

• 38:53Jason Calacanis?

  They didn't get through.

• 38:54David Sacks?

  And they didn't get out. They didn't get through. And then the California regulator steps in this morning and freezes everything. And what did they announce? They said, oh, you're good. You're good for your insured amounts. How much is that? $250,000. For your uninsured amounts, which is everything above 250, you're going to get a certificate. A certificate? What does that mean? That means you're a creditor in bankruptcy. So the mutual fund that you thought you owned was actually not hypothecated in your name. It was in SVB's name at BlackRock. And so our companies have been calling BlackRock and calling Morgan Stanley, saying, hey, do you have my money market fund? And they're like, no, sorry, that's SVB. So now

• 39:30Jason Calacanis?

  This is the crazy thing.

• 39:31David Sacks?

  They're sitting in a, in a creditor line in bankruptcy.

• 39:35Jason Calacanis?

  We got to explain this. These were called sweep accounts. So what Silicon Valley Bank did with some of these large portfolio holders, let's say Saks and a bunch of other VCs gave you 30 million bucks. Yes. And they would, they took your money and they said, you know what? Just to be safe, we're going to take your money, we'll automatically sweep it and distribute it across two other accounts. So we got this BlackRock over here for you. Great. We got this Morgan Stanley over here. Great. Whatever it is. You could only get to those through the Silicon Valley Bank interface. And so it was supposed to protect you, but there is no recourse, it seems. Those are frozen too. So the only thing you can do that's logical, and I had a mentor 30 years ago when I had the magazine and we started hitting millions of dollars in revenue. And he said, I said, how

• 40:18Jason Calacanis?

  much money we have in the bank? He said, which bank account? And he had four bank accounts and he would load balance them. And he did it every Friday. God bless Elliot Cook. He did it every Friday for me. And I've always done that. I've always had multiple bank accounts and load balance them. But in this case, Silicon Valley Bank did it through one interface. I have multiple startups today who did this exact thing, Saks. And they couldn't even log into Silicon Valley Bank today to even see where they're at. I mean, I think you can't log in now.

• 40:44David Sacks?

  Yeah, you're right. Everything got frozen and the California regulator froze them and they brought in the FDIC. So there's a couple of problems now with the working out of this. This is basically a bankruptcy process, a receivership process. It's that we've got all these companies that need to make payroll in the next few weeks, right? And so these processes don't work at startup time. If you could just figure out like over the weekend, okay, SVB lost 30 cents on the dollar. And everyone's just going to be prorated and you're going to get 70 cents on the dollar and you get your money on Monday. It would be a hit to the startup ecosystem, but people would recover and move on. But the fact of the matter is it's not going to be on Monday. It could take weeks or months to figure out how many cents on the dollar you have.

• 41:21Jason Calacanis?

  Are they liquidating Silicon Valley Bank? Are they selling the debt? Is everybody getting laid off?

• 41:26David Sacks?

  FDIC is going to liquidate everything.

• 41:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, you have two paths here. Path number one is if you actually try to sell these assets. But the problem is, who do you think the buyer is? The buyer are the sharpest sharps on Wall Street who will purposefully underbid these assets. And so that then takes you to path two, which is then the only other real solution is for the Fed to warehouse them and guarantee them. And that's an equivalent version of what they had to do during the great financial crisis, which was this thing called TARP, which is the Troubled Asset Relief Plan. It was just a backstop and a mechanism so that these, at the time, those toxic assets, which were a bunch of mortgage-backed loans, could be cleared through the system over time,

• 42:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  which effectively meant that the Fed basically warehoused that risk. So I think what we need to see now is Saks, it could be 50 cents on the dollar. It could be 60 cents if you want immediate liquidity. You know, a friend in our group chat was mentioning that there was one claim, a company that had $100 million inside of SVB was offered 60 cents on the dollar today for that claim.

• 42:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Now, that's a really, from a third party who said, "I will take you, I will give you 60 million today in return for that certificate, plus the 250,000 that says you're owed 100 million." Because they're willing to take the risk that they'll get, you know, 80 million, right? And then they take the difference. Now, the point is that if you're, if you're seeing today that kind of a discount, that's not a good sign, I think. And it does speak to the fact that regulators have to step in. Now, here's the other reason why I think it's important. I think what regulators, and I think the people, and there's a lot of them in Washington that listen to this, what this does is it torches years of US innovation.

• 43:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And you should not let that happen. There are companies working on really important things for the United States and for the rest of the world. And if it's, if, if the company fails because they can't make the product work, so be it. We take that risk every day. If the company fails because customers don't want to buy it, so be it. If the product fails because a better product comes out, so be it. But it shouldn't fail because we can't get money that is in a deposit. That should not be why we torch hundreds of startups and what they're working on. Maybe thousands.

• 43:54Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, this is, this would be a lost decade, a lost decade for Silicon Valley.

• 43:57David Friedberg?

  Jake, Al, first of all, do you, do you guys want to talk about second and third order effects? Just so folks really understand those, because I think it's important to highlight why it's not just about a couple hundred tech bros in Silicon Valley not being able to make payroll, but there's important downstream consequences. For example, there are payment processing companies in Silicon Valley that use Silicon Valley Bank to store their capital and to, to, to move money around. There are payroll companies that do payroll for many businesses, not just tech businesses, but many businesses in different parts of the economy that store their cash at Silicon Valley Bank and process money through Silicon Valley Bank. Today, it was announced that Rippling, one of those companies, could not hit their payroll cycle today because they had money tied up at Silicon Valley Bank.

• 44:41David Friedberg?

  Fortunately, they announced that they also have money at JP Morgan and other places. So they will Be able to kind of get the payroll processed early next week and get everyone back on track. But this is hundreds and potentially thousands of companies that use their payroll software to process and pay their employees. And then there's all the payment processors. We don't know how many of them have what level of exposure. And a lot of infrastructure companies that move money in and through Silicon Valley Bank. And so if they start to go down and then payroll doesn't hit the air conditioning company that's using the tool in some, you know, in Arizona and then, you know, the Stripe service isn't able to process e-commerce payments for a small business owner that runs a website.

• 45:22David Friedberg?

  You can start to see how there can be very significant trickling effects and more importantly, like we saw in 08, perhaps to a different degree, but still a significant concern is the contagion of panic. Where people say if there isn't reliability in the things that I thought were reliable before, I start to have real questions in the soundness of the system overall. And that's why it's so important, as Sacks said, to step in, shore up the problem this weekend. I don't think it's about bidding 50 cents or 60 cents on the dollar. Every depositor needs to get paid 100% of their money. And that cash needs to be made available to them by early next week. And if that money is not available to them within the first 48 or 72 hours of the end of this weekend, then we are going to have a real crisis on our hands.

• 46:04David Friedberg?

  Because then you will see a lot of people trying to move money away from any institution that stores their money in some sort of security that's not 100% liquid like cash. And that's going to cause, that's going to cause, that's going to cause a massive run. And so what has to happen, the only way this can happen, is if someone takes over Silicon Valley Bank this weekend. And that the federal government, unfortunately, as much as I hate to say it, because I absolutely hate the federal government having a role in this stuff, has to say, we will guarantee 100% of those deposits to the company that takes over, the bank that takes over this portfolio, and says, let the portfolio of assets run its lifetime. See what you get paid. Whatever the delta is, we'll make it up to you. But we need to make sure that there's cash here today for all of these depositors to get paid tomorrow.

• 46:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You had something you want to say? If not, I have something I want to say. The other big thing that SVB was, was an on-ramp for a lot of investors, including many US investors, to get money into China. And without commenting on whether that's right, wrong, or indifferent, the point is that China has a very complicated capital market structure, which requires you to basically use an offshore bank, i.e. non-domesticated Chinese bank, and to be able to get those dollars. And so what would happen is Chinese startups that raise money, would raise money from US investors and abroad using these bank accounts. And so this issue now doesn't just touch the United States innovation economy, it also touches China's innovation economy,

• 47:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  which, you know, creates actually a complicated set of trade-offs for the US government and Treasury as they think about what they want to do in this heightening great power conflict that Sacks talked about last week.

• 47:40Jason Calacanis?

  And I want to just make a very important nuanced point here. I know there is no bank that the public, specifically, you know, people who don't want to support, you know, rich people already, like big tech or billionaires. The reason to backstop this with public money is because we have a roadmap for this. People don't know this widely, but TARP was just over $400 billion. It actually returned a $15 billion profit to the American people. This would require maybe $25 or $50 billion. 10%, maybe, 5%, 10% of the totality of TARP would be enough to cover what's happening here with Silicon Valley Bank and work this out. That's $50 billion for the people listening in Washington

• 48:25Jason Calacanis?

  or for the people who will say, hey, why are we, you know, bailing out big tech? You're bailing out small tech, as Chamath said. You're bailing out innovation on breast cancer, on, you know, renewable energy. But most importantly, this can easily be structured so that the American people return 20%, 30%, maybe even double their money. You could structure this so it is senior to everything else and is exactly what the government is supposed to do when there is a crisis. That doesn't mean the people who run Silicon Valley Bank should have their equity worth a lot. They should get wiped out. They didn't do their job properly. The equity, the people who ran the management team there, if they don't get anything, that's okay.

• 49:06Jason Calacanis?

  They understand that. But the people who had their money at deposit to pay the salaries and to pay for this innovation, it is unconscionable that we wouldn't backstop it. And I guarantee you, the US government could get some warrants on those companies or warrants in ownership in Silicon Valley Bank and make at least 50 cents on the dollar, maybe even double. And that's the way this bailout should be structured, and it has to be done this weekend.

• 49:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You bring up a great idea. I think, I think if the US balance sheet does step in over the weekend, I'm going to say on behalf of the US taxpayer, you must get a piece of these companies. And the reason why is that that's the way to make it fair for everybody that's not in tech, who's on the outside looking in. And if you look inside of Twitter as an example, there's a lot of negative sentiment around even the idea of a bailout happening. And it's for this exact reason, because I think people believe that it will benefit just a small sliver of people, right? So to step in and to save these companies, Jason, would still be, you know, really only helping,

• 50:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  say, several hundred thousand or several, you know, and, and, and the thing that that gets wrong, in my opinion, is that these companies, if they're, if they're allowed to germinate, should be building things that actually help everybody.

• 50:30Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, including jobs and taxes.

• 50:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Including, and so if you can view it that way, and if you can view a share of it, now, obviously, look, we're very, we have a very deep incentive for that to happen. But I think it's important to present the other side of it. The other side would say, this industry has a little bit run amok. It's not well regulated.

• 50:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You know, you guys push the boundaries and get away with a lot. And there haven't been a lot of consequences?

• 51:00David Sacks?

  You're saying the banking industry.

• 51:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, I'm saying the tech industry. No, no, I'm saying that the average person that's on the outside looking into the tech industry can make that claim. And now they would be pointing at big tech, but the problem is we all get swept in together under the same thing. And then what they would say is, I don't think it's right to, to, to step in. And I think that you have to give the US taxpayer an incentive if they are going to do it. And I think the, the incentive should be that they should just get a share in all this innovation.

• 51:26David Sacks?

  If they take over the venture debt portfolio, then they would have that, right? The venture debt portfolio comes with warrants, so they would have that. I think there's a big risk here that precisely because tech is unpopular and people I think are confusing big tech with small tech, that the government doesn't step in here and the, the dominoes start falling and we start getting all the systemic risk playing out. Remember, the beneficiaries here aren't just these, this sort of current generation of tech companies and everyone they do business with. It's also wherever the contagion goes next. And we're already seeing, I think, multiple regional banks under pressure. Their stock down, people asking questions. We know people in our tech groups who are wiring money out as fast as they can.

• 52:12David Sacks?

  Just because, why take a chance? You know, and you have to understand that the game theory around these bank runs, people describe them as a panic, but that implies that it's irrational. It's not irrational. It's actually rational.

• 52:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And what this, what this is really highlighted is that what you said earlier at the beginning, Sacks, which is that the regulatory oversight is actually extremely pristine at the biggest banks. But the smaller and smaller you get, there's a level of opacity and... A lack of regulatory follow through that allows this stuff to build.

• 52:47David Sacks?

  So the Wall Street Journal right now is reporting that US banks have 620 billion of unrealized losses just on treasuries. I don't know what the unrealized losses are on these long dated mortgage backed securities. Like I said, I have no idea why regulators allow banks to hold these bonds at their book value instead of marking them to market every day. That's crazy.

• 53:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And on the equity side, you have to do it. Buffett talks about this all the time. The equity side, you have to mark to market the equity portfolio at the end of every quarter. And he sees these wild swings and he complains about it, but it's the right thing to do for exactly this reason.

• 53:22David Sacks?

  Right. So think about the game theory here. Okay. The banking system, the banking regulators have created this opacity in the system. You've got all of these assets that are being held by these banks that are not mark to market. So nobody really knows what the true level of exposure is. So what's the response? Why take a chance? Let's move your money to JP Morgan. So I think there's a chance that if the federal government doesn't step in here, the whole regional banking system could be decimated and you're just going to be left with four too big to fail banks. How's that benefit anybody? That doesn't benefit the little guy.

• 53:53David Friedberg?

  Guys, there's a, there's a pretty good set of regulatory disclosures that happened, but I do think that the real question is, you know, are the ratios right? Do they, should they really be allowed to invest in these types of assets with deposit or capital? And if so, with what percent of the deposit or capital should they be allowed to do it? And maybe, you know, that seems to be where the biggest, you know, issue is. We've, we've come a long way. I mean, I just pulled up the statistic. It's insane. There were 505 banks that failed in 1921. Failures continued to rise in the early twenties and averaged 680 banks per year failed between 1923 and 1929. So obviously, you know, coming out of 08, there was a lot of controversy around, hey, banks can't make money anymore. It's too restrictive, the disclosures

• 54:38David Friedberg?

  and so on. The disclosures are actually quite good. You know, you guys can go to these, these sites that regulate the banks. You can go to the SEC site. You can get a very detailed schedule of every asset held by every one of these banks. It's good transparency, I would argue, but should they be allowed to invest in? Securities that are effectively not fully liquid, that are risky, that are long dated with short dated deposits, right? It seems it's a fundamental question about what banks are supposed to be doing.

• 55:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  In a world of computers that can calculate everything, the idea that you can't solve duration matching doesn't seem like one of those problems that's intractable in 2023.

• 55:13Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, if people can make an AI version of the podcast, they could do that. Yeah.

• 55:18David Sacks?

  I mean, Freeburger also like take this, I think venture debt's the most extreme example. How do you mark to market a loan to a series A startup? I mean, that just 100% depends on whether you're going to raise a series B or not.

• 55:30David Friedberg?

  I actually, I'm a believer you can underwrite anything. I think you can under for the right interest rate, for the right premium, you can underwrite insurance, you can underwrite loans. I mean, there's a lot of ways that you could kind of.

• 55:38David Sacks?

  And how do you mark that to market on a daily basis?

• 55:41David Friedberg?

  You're right. No, you cannot. You're right. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And so from a reporting perspective.

• 55:45David Sacks?

  So you disclose it. How does that solve the problem? No one knows how to market.

• 55:49David Friedberg?

  They've got different tiers of regulatory capital guys. And so, you know, there are rules around what the ratios need to be and where you need to fall. And so they bucket this stuff up differently, right?

• 55:58David Sacks?

  If you're a bank and you want to buy securities, you want to invest in something that's not liquid and mark to market every day, you should have to package it up in some period of time and sell it. If you want to make a loan to a, you know, to a venture backed startup, package those up and syndicate that and sell it as a security. And if you can't do that, you probably shouldn't be investing in the asset class anyway. Same thing with like, you know, mortgage, these mortgages already get packaged up and sold, right? So it just doesn't make sense to me that like customer deposits, that's what we're talking about, which you assume should always be 100% safe, right? This is not a source of capital where anyone's ever expecting to lose money. If you want to use risk capital

• 56:39David Sacks?

  to get some sort of outsized return, go raise that from LPs, but to like take customer deposits and use it on, on risky, non liquid investments makes no sense.

• 56:50Jason Calacanis?

  It makes sense. There's one thing I could, I could just help people frame this. The aggregate amount of dollars in these bank accounts, I would estimate equals 10% of the value of the startups they represent. Would we all agree on that? It's about 10% of the value of those startups, maybe 20? How do you, what? How do you, how do you calculate?

• 57:11David Sacks?

  I don't know.

• 57:12Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I'm thinking about the startups who recently did a round of funding. They diluted 10%. That represents all of their treasury or half of their treasury. So if that cash for the startup portion of this equals 10% of the value of startups, I can guarantee you those startups with access to that capital again Monday will be able to outperform the backstop that the government would provide.

• 57:33David Sacks?

  This, this sounds like Enron math to me.

• 57:34Jason Calacanis?

  No. Okay. If you, one of your startups, just take any of your startups, they have 30 million in stock.

• 57:40David Sacks?

  Jake, we don't have time, listen, we don't have time here for the government to figure out how to be a partner in, or an investor in all these startups. I'm sorry, we don't.

• 57:48Jason Calacanis?

  I'm not saying that.

• 57:49David Sacks?

  They either have to step in or they don't.

• 57:50Jason Calacanis?

  If they do step in.

• 57:51David Sacks?

  If they don't step in, you'll have systemic failure.

• 57:53Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, but do the math with me here. Of one of the companies, pick one of the companies that has 20, you have a company that has 20 million there or 30 million there? What does that represent if you were to take their valuation from last year when they raised that money and cut in half?

• 58:05David Sacks?

  It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who's the depositor. It does not matter who the depositor is.

• 58:09Jason Calacanis?

  It matters for people to understand how much value is going to be lost and how easily recoverable it is if these companies are allowed in aggregate to deploy that capital. That's the point you're not getting, or I'm not explaining to you properly. If allowed to deploy that, it's going to return a multiple, an adventure multiple, two, three, four, five X. But if we destroy that money, these companies are going out of business next month.

• 58:35David Sacks?

  But Jake, that money is their money. It's their deposits.

• 58:38Jason Calacanis?

  I agree with you. I'm trying to create a framing here for people to understand exactly how much value is going to be lost.

• 58:44David Sacks?

  I think the better framing is that when you put your money in a FDIC insured bank and you put it in a customer deposit that's supposed to be completely safe, that's paying you a couple of percent interest, and that is reflected even as a money market fund on your account, you do not expect that money to be turned around by the bank and put in risky assets.

• 59:02Jason Calacanis?

  So you're saying raise the FDIC limits?

• 59:03David Sacks?

  That makes no sense.

• 59:04Jason Calacanis?

  Raise the FBI.

• 59:05David Sacks?

  Like, banks should not work that way.

• 59:06Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 59:07David Sacks?

  Look, I think it's crazy that you could set up a bank account, okay? Because you just want to write checks. And you could lose that money because the bankers decided to loan it to some startup. That's insane. Or the bankers decided to buy a 10-year mortgage-backed security who doesn't understand interest rate risk. That's not the way the system's supposed to work. And you got all these people on Twitter pushing back, no bailouts or whatever. That's the depositors' money. I agree, no bailout for SGB. They should lose everything. All those executives, their stock options are worthless. All the stockholders of that company, their shares are worthless. But the question is, should depositors lose money in these banks? They just thought they're signing for a checking account. I mean, are you kidding me? And if you let that happen, there will be a cascade here.

• 59:47David Sacks?

  Because the logical consequence will be, everybody's going to say, put my money in JP Morgan or Wells Fargo or Bank of America. There'll be four banks, that's it. And all the regional banks are going to shut down.

• 59:58Jason Calacanis?

  Tens of thousands of highly-paid workers, and not just tech workers, are going to be out of jobs. And they don't have jobs waiting for them at Amazon or Google to bail them out. And this is the start of a contagion, if it doesn't get stopped.

• 1:00:13David Sacks?

  Yeah, what do they do wrong, J Cal? What do they do wrong?

• 1:00:15Jason Calacanis?

  Nothing. They used what is considered one of the most reputable banks in the world.

• 1:00:19David Sacks?

  They used a top 20 bank that the regulators said was in compliance. So, did they do something wrong? Or were the regulators asleep at the, at the wheel?

• 1:00:27Jason Calacanis?

  I don't know. Some way, I think it's, this is Biden's fault, or Zelensky's.

• 1:00:34Jason Calacanis?

  It's Biden or Zelensky's fault.

• 1:00:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What do you guys think this means for VC?

• 1:00:39David Friedberg?

  It is a chilling effect. I talked with some LPs in the last two days in the VC world. I'll give you a couple anecdotes. I have a friend runs a fund. He looked at his portfolio. They have $270 million, or sorry, $350 million tied up at Silicon Valley Bank. They need $27 million for cash for the next 30 days. So, he's called his LPs and he's trying to get his LPs to front him money, to wire money, so that he can front his company's money, so they can actually pay their operating expenses and cover their payroll. And then I spoke with a couple of LPs in the last 48 hours. They have gotten dozens of calls from various venture funds. Everyone is asking the same question. Can we do a capital call?

• 1:01:24David Friedberg?

  Can we get money delivered early? Can we use that money to support our companies? Because their cash is stuck. Coming out of this, the uncertainty that this creates in the investment environment, I think is going to have a real chilling effect, not just with the GPs and their proclivity to sign term sheets right now and wire new money over, but also with the LPs as they're making capital commitments and actually following through with capital commitments that have already been made, given where's the capital actually going to land up. That was never a question mark before. It was never anything that anyone even considered that capital could be disappeared or locked up or tied up. And the fact that this is adding this unique friction

• 1:02:04David Friedberg?

  in the market is a layer on top of an already distressed and challenged environment for fundraising, for GPs, for LPs, and it seems to be exactly the icing on the cake we did not need right now, no matter how this gets resolved.

• 1:02:20Jason Calacanis?

  I think private markets in VC could seize. I think you're going to see people pull term sheets, maybe half as many fundings are going to occur as people try to do triage.

• 1:02:29David Friedberg?

  Another VC friend of mine just sent me a text. He can't make payroll next week. He has a fund, small fund.

• 1:02:34Jason Calacanis?

  For his VC fund.

• 1:02:34David Friedberg?

  His VC fund, their employees cannot, he cannot pay his employees on Monday.

• 1:02:39Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, my Lord.

• 1:02:40David Friedberg?

  And so, yes, I do think funds could shut down coming out of this. I think that companies that were, call it, 75% distressed are done for now. No one's going to step in and bridge them and fund them. It's going to accelerate a lot of shutdowns because people are now, cash is king, now cash is king, right? It's like a big shift.

• 1:03:01David Sacks?

  I think that was really well said. I think you're right about all that. Jake, how you tweeted that you think this is going to cause a 60-day freeze in deal-making activity. I think that's more or less right. You're right, because all the VCs out there have to think about shoring up their existing portfolios.

• 1:03:15Jason Calacanis?

  Exactly.

• 1:03:16David Sacks?

  What if you got companies that are now in distress that are perfectly good companies? You got to focus on, maybe you're going to make new investments in them.

• 1:03:22David Friedberg?

  You're picking a few winners. You're picking one or two winners, and you're going to focus on that. You're going to say, you know what, the rest of them could be good, but I can't. It's going to be a tough decision.

• 1:03:29Jason Calacanis?

  I have three open deals right now that we're doing. I now have to figure out how to get those deals done, and I have four companies that are in this payroll situation in a major way. So now I've got capital, and I've got to, and we're not personally affected by the Silicon Valley Bank thing, thank God, but now we have to do triage the known winners in your portfolio that did nothing wrong. Or do you make the next three investments or four investments? And I'm going to make good on those three investments. But next month, maybe not. Maybe next month I'm taking off and I'm focusing on the portfolio. And I think that's what's going to happen writ large.

• 1:04:10Jason Calacanis?

  We're in triage mode now, full on triage mode. If this doesn't get resolved, if they can't get those. Jamath, what do you think?

• 1:04:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This dark. I had a meeting three weeks ago with a US LP. And, you know, you guys know how I run this business here, but it's, there's, there's like a lot of risk management. You know, we think about this stuff a lot. And the message that came back to me was, I don't think risk management is worthwhile in venture. I didn't understand where that was coming from. Because if you're investing your money across a very risky asset class, you have to be always thinking about how you could lose money. And I think that venture has always romantically been described as like buying lottery tickets. And so it doesn't matter if you lose.

• 1:04:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But when you have that kind of attitude, you just become super complacent. And you don't think about left tail risk. You only think about right tail outcomes. And this is an example of like left tail risk that came out of nowhere that could wipe out entire portfolios. So you had, you know, folks invest into funds that spent a few years, probably 2019, 2020, 2021, really misallocating money, right? Writing ginormous checks into companies at valuations that didn't make sense, who then went and burned it. And now what little cash they had left may also be gone, which means those valuations are even more impaired. Which means that the LPs that gave them the money are even more underwater.

• 1:05:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And that cycle, I think, is really terrible. That'll take a, so maybe this is the wake up call where now risk management is actually in vogue and cool. And it's important to know this stuff. I don't know.

• 1:05:55Jason Calacanis?

  We have breaking news while we're taping this. The Department of Financial Protection and Innovation of the State of California has published findings on SVB. We'll pull it up on the screen for the best. To respond to on March 8 2023, the bank announced a loss of approximately 1.8 billion from the sale of investments. We've talked about that already. On March 8 2023, the bank's holding company announced it was conducting a capital raise despite the bank being in sound financial condition prior to March 9 2023, investors and depositors reacted by initiating withdrawals of $42 billion in deposits. So that would be over 20% I think of the of the total deposits from the bank on March 9 or even more 2023, causing a run on the bank. As of the close

• 1:06:40Jason Calacanis?

  of business on March 9, the bank had a negative cash balance of approximately 958 million. Despite attempts from the bank with the assistance of regulators to transfer collateral from various sources, the bank did not meet its cash letter with the Federal Reserve. The precipitous deposit withdrawal has caused the bank to be incapable of paying its obligations as they come due.

• 1:06:59David Friedberg?

  Right. This is what we said at the beginning. $42 billion of withdrawals is 25% of total deposits, but 42 billion is greater than the 14 billion of cash they had on hand and the 26 billion of liquid securities that they had. So you add those two up together, you're at 40 billion. And then to get more cash, they're going to have to sell a bunch of loan portfolios. And selling loan portfolios, you got to package them up. It takes weeks or months to do that. And they're going to be sold at distressed prices. So this is where a classic run on the bank problem actually causes a decline in the asset value of the business and the assets that they own. Because if you have to go and turn around and sell those assets in the market super fast, you're going to take a huge loss. You guys remember that movie Margin Call with

• 1:07:44David Friedberg?

  Demi Moore and what's his name? And they make this plan to go and market and they're like, we got to sell. What's his name? No, not Patrick Swayze. No, Jeremy Irons. Jeremy Irons. He plays the best character. He's like the chairman of the bank. And they're like, we have to sell all this, but we're going to take a huge loss. And they make this big trade that happens at the beginning of the morning. But that's what happens when you have to sell a lot of assets very fast. As you guys know, you end up selling them at a discount. So the rate at which deposits are coming out of the bank can actually impact the asset value held at the bank. And that's fundamentally what a run on the bank causes. And the irony is, as they point out, the company was fundamentally financially sound. They had enough assets marked at the current market value or whatever to meet all of their obligations. But the rate at which assets started to get

• 1:08:29David Friedberg?

  pulled out is what drove those drove the company, the bank into distress. And if you think about It's an ironic point of view on Silicon Valley. Because Silicon Valley operates with such, we all joke about what a herd mentality. And what an incredibly tied and deep network Silicon Valley is. We all got dozens and hundreds of texts and messages from friends, colleagues, coworkers yesterday, all relaying the news about what they were going to do. And as soon as that happened, that's how tightly intertwined Silicon Valley is. Within 24 hours, every CEO and every venture capitalist was on a chat group or on a message group with other people in the valley.

• 1:09:10David Friedberg?

  And once there was any indication of panic, the entire market flipped. And you guys saw this, we all saw this, within 24 hours, at the beginning of the day yesterday, it was like, they'll get through it, it'll be fine, they just took a little markdown on their portfolio, they got plenty of assets. But then it's like, well, Founders Fund said we should probably get out. Okay, well, Founders Fund is getting out, maybe we should get out before everyone else does. Well, if we gotta get out before everyone else does, let's go now. I'm getting out right now, I'm telling my best friend, I'm getting out right now. And then everyone tells their second best friend. And then all of a sudden, the whole valley knows it. And then the whole valley's running for the door. And this is a really interesting and unique scenario. It's not like the classic consumer run on the bank where you're trying to pull cash out. It's the Silicon Valley 24-hour cycle of, we all gotta do it because everyone else is doing it, like what we're seeing with investing cycles in Silicon Valley, where

• 1:09:55David Friedberg?

  everyone chases and these bubbles emerge. The reverse, I think, happened yesterday, where the herd mentality drove us all to rush for the door as quickly as possible. You know, I'm not sure that, that might be why it's not as much of a contagion, you know, as you might expect elsewhere, because places, other kind of regional banks, don't have the same sort of intertwinedness as we saw with all the depositors here in Silicon Valley Bank. I don't know.

• 1:10:18David Sacks?

  I don't know. So this is where, I think that describing what happened as a panic kind of misses the fundamental rationality of the response.

• 1:10:28David Friedberg?

  Both are true, by the way.

• 1:10:29David Sacks?

  Yeah, so it does seem like a panic, but that doesn't mean that each individual decision maker's motivation is panic. I actually think it's a rational upside-downside calculation. I mean, this is all game theory. So if you think that there's a risk of other people... Pulling out their assets. And in fact, you're hearing that they are, you don't want to wait and be the last one to leave. And so you think about it, there's no penalty or downside to taking your money out, right? So the downside of taking your funds out immediately is zero. And the upside is you might save 100% of your money. So it's a rational decision when confidence is lost to take out your money. And in fact, it was rational. There were a bunch of VCs, not a lot, but some of them tweeting yesterday

• 1:11:15David Sacks?

  that, you know, SVB has been a great player in the ecosystem for 30 years. We should show our support right now by not taking our money out. Well, guess what? What happened to them? They got stuck and now their money is frozen. And they're not sure whether to get, you know, pennies on the dollar or not. Whereas the people who rushed for the exits yesterday got their money out. It's prisoner's dilemma. It is a prisoner's dilemma, but here's the thing. It's not even about anymore whether the institution is solvent. It's about whether there's confidence. And I think there is a risk now of contagion spreading to these other regional banks because people aren't sure. And there's already huge cash outflows leaving these other banks because why take a chance? The game theory of it is move your money out until this is over.

• 1:12:00David Sacks?

  And if you're okay with, you know, moving it back in a few weeks, if it turns out not to be around the bank, that's fine. So a lot of this can be self fulfilling. You have to remember that runs on the bank, Friedberg, you said this 100 years ago, were extremely common. Every decade, there would be a giant financial panic and there'd be a run on the bank, run on many banks. And the only way that the federal government stopped it was by introducing FDIC. And they said to depositors, your money is safe. And at that time, $250,000 was enough. The problem we have is that with these business banks, $250,000 is not enough. So all of a sudden, there's going to be a crisis of confidence. If you think a business bank can go under, again, you're just going to leave all these regional banks. You're going to go to the top four and that's going to be it.

• 1:12:44David Sacks?

  So I think that the situation right now is really dynamic. And if the Fed does nothing and just says, oh, you know, these depositors should have known better. You know, the loss is on them. Then I think the rational reaction for depositors at all of these other banks would be just to leave. Because I don't think depositors are in a good position to assess the liquidity and creditworthiness of a bank. I just don't think they are. I think stockholders are. They're the people who should lose all their money if the bank goes under, but not depositors.

• 1:13:20Jason Calacanis?

  Any advice or takeaways for founders and capital allocators going forward? Obviously, have your money in multiple bank accounts.

• 1:13:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I sent you guys a list that was just published of all of the funds that custody at SVB, and it's unbelievable, the list. It's every single major VC in Silicon Valley.

• 1:13:39David Friedberg?

  Wow. Where'd you get this?

• 1:13:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I have my ways.

• 1:13:41David Friedberg?

  Oh, extracted from SEC filings. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. This is amazing. Wow. Holy shit.

• 1:13:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, everybody's in there.

• 1:13:49Jason Calacanis?

  Exel, Greysen, Sequoia. We're going pretty fast here, but yeah.

• 1:13:55David Friedberg?

  Yeah, everyone's in there. I mean, this is my point. By the way, all these guys.

• 1:13:59David Sacks?

  That we were, we were out. A few months ago, when we were talking about venture debt on the pod, I didn't believe that SVB should be in this business. So I told.

• 1:14:09Jason Calacanis?

  Well, look, there's Kraft. There's Kraft.

• 1:14:11David Sacks?

  No, well, hold on. I'll tell you. Does it say how much money we got in there?

• 1:14:16Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, go to the right.

• 1:14:16David Sacks?

  I'll tell you what happened is so after the conversation we had on this, the show about venture debt, I'm like, I don't really like that SVB is in this business. So I told my guys, set up an account somewhere else. So we did that. So we moved our firm accounts over and we were just using SVB to make, you know, warehouse loans or whatever. So I thought they were just a lender to us. So yesterday, when all this stuff went down, I said to our guys, like, we're out of there, right? They're like, well, actually, we had about $45 million that we were about to distribute to LPs. And I'm like, whoa, that's crazy. So we were able to sweep that to an account we use to make in-kind distributions. And then we got on the phone and we called as many portfolio companies as we could to get them out. And we got a huge number of them out. But unfortunately, some of them didn't get

• 1:15:01David Sacks?

  out. Here's the thing that I think people in Washington don't understand. We're doing this with the next set of banks. The triage is still happening.

• 1:15:08David Friedberg?

  Guys, I will tell you, look, Sax, I appreciate the siren call, but I think the only way that what you're saying, because you're saying that triggers the next siren call and the contagion spreads, I'm not blaming you, I'm just saying it's a reality and you're right. The game theory optimal way to play this as a depositor is to move your money out and get it somewhere that it's completely safe and you know you have your cash secured or buy a security in a brokerage account where it's totally safe and it's registered with the securities exchange or something. But in the meantime, for this to get resolved, there has to be a bear hug solution offered up this weekend, I'll say it again.

• 1:15:46David Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:47David Friedberg?

  In order to stop the next set of siren calls, to drive the next panic to the next

• 1:15:51David Sacks?

  No, but this is not a siren call. Listen, this is the thing I hate about the run on the bank conversation is that if you warn people that there's a possible run on the bank happening, you're actually creating the run on the bank. That's why it's so pernicious when these things get started. And yesterday, we were calling all of our portfolio companies because we were warning them, because our obligation was to them, but we weren't, you know, I don't think we were putting out like a siren to the world. And by the afternoon, it was really clear that if they listened and got their money out, they were in much better shape than the ones who didn't listen. So this is the pernicious thing is that every individual actor has to do what's in their best interest. And we're not trying to start a another run.

• 1:16:31David Friedberg?

  I'm not saying that, sorry.

• 1:16:32David Sacks?

  But hold on, but we know things. We know that people very close to us, big players, are withdrawing their money from other banks right now out of an abundance of caution.

• 1:16:42David Friedberg?

  So let me just finish my point. My point is, what you're saying makes a ton of sense. And it's gonna cause this, as you described, kind of pernicious escalatory problem. And the only way to stop it is a bear hug, which may not cost the taxpayer anything if the Fed or some federal agency stepped in and said, we are going to backstop all of these banks with all of these deposits with cash and we're going to guarantee it today. And here's a $500 billion facility. And just by saying that, Everyone stops trying to pull their money out. And you don't actually need to backstop it with any money.

• 1:17:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's it's it's already started. So Nick, if you just the link that I sent you in the in the group chat, can you just throw that link up there? I think this is the best proxy for what Saks is talking about. So sort of, I think, very unemotionally, how would we know that there is a contagion that's afoot? You would look at the equity layer of all these regional banks. So what is this? This is the iShares Regional Banks ETF. And what you start to see is this decay. And go to the one week view, Nick, please. It just starts to fall off of a cliff. And so why is this happening? Well, it's happening because the equity tier of these banks are now increasingly worried that their equity will get wiped out.

• 1:18:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And so that's why they're selling. And so the I think what David said is already afoot, unfortunately. It starts at SVB, but forget the name for a second and take Silicon Valley out of it. This is a top 20 bank that now is in the receivership of, you know, the authorities. And so there does need to be something that needs to happen in really short order because what's to prevent bank number 35?

• 1:18:26David Friedberg?

  Let me just say it again. If a federal agency comes in, if the Fed comes in and says, you know what? We are going to backstop all of these banks. And we are going to put $500 billion behind it. And we're going to guarantee that all these deposits are going to be made whole. It stops the panic. At that point, you don't even have to put up any money. Because as soon as it's a first derivative problem, it's a feedback loop. As soon as you stop people from doing the withdrawals, the whole market subsides. You don't actually need to use it. You unplug it. And I think that's what needs to happen this weekend. That's what should happen today is they, number one, need to go get Silicon Valley Bank, hand it over to a big balance sheet and guarantee that balance sheet that they're going to make money by taking this thing on. And number two, they got to make a statement, we got another 500 billy for you.

• 1:19:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Where's the president? Where's Yellen? Well, they'll make a profit on it too. So I mean.

• 1:19:11David Friedberg?

  They don't need to use any money to do it.

• 1:19:12David Sacks?

  Right. The thing that's missing in our system is that there's no FDIC for $25 million accounts. What like 250 is not an effective amount.

• 1:19:22Jason Calacanis?

  That's a personal account.

• 1:19:23David Sacks?

  It's for a personal account. But businesses need confidence in our economy and our banking system, or the whole thing starts to unspool. So what the quid pro quo should be is you can get a 25 million FDIC business banking account. And the bank is highly restricted in what it can do with that money. You can't put that money in fagazi venture debt. You can't put that money in laddered 10 year bonds that don't get mark to market. It's only highly liquid, secure, mark to market assets. And the downside of that for the bank is they'll make less money and pass on less interest to the, the business, the, the depositor.

• 1:19:57Jason Calacanis?

  The shareholders.

• 1:19:58David Sacks?

  Yeah, but so what? That's the way it should work.

• 1:20:00Jason Calacanis?

  How are stable coins looking like a better option right now? I mean, the crypto guys right now are like, why didn't you listen?

• 1:20:06David Sacks?

  They're not, J K.

• 1:20:06Jason Calacanis?

  They're not. I've, it was a joke.

• 1:20:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Nothing can revive the crypto market as we're seeing today. Even in a run on the bank, which is exactly what everybody was afraid of in a Bitcoin world, that thing is down 10%.

• 1:20:17Jason Calacanis?

  So what?

• 1:20:18David Sacks?

  Whenever liquidity, whenever, there's a reason for that, Chamath, is just that what we've seen is that liquidity is all correlated. So when people are panicking about the state of their finances and worried about getting access to their cash, the first thing they dump is crypto because it is very liquid. So everyone is trying to free up cash right now.

• 1:20:38Jason Calacanis?

  I just want to be clear. It's the end of the show here. We were dancing around, is this going to be a contagion? And I think what we know and what we're seeing is the, the next dominos are already falling.

• 1:20:51David Friedberg?

  It cannot be a contagion. It cannot be a contagion. We have to stop it. That's the point.

• 1:20:56Jason Calacanis?

  That's your feeling and I agree with you, but I just want to make sure people understand we started this. We didn't want to go there, you know, I think with some reticent, reticence to, to going there.

• 1:21:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Let's, let's put it this way. If you, if anybody, if you have initiated a wire in the last 24 hours, you are worried about contagion.

• 1:21:16David Friedberg?

  Yes. If you're in DC and you have any ability.

• 1:21:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Management matters.

• 1:21:20David Friedberg?

  And if you have any ability to influence what's going to happen this weekend. We strongly advise that someone comes in and bear hugs the market this weekend and says, "We will not let contagion happen with a very big slug of capital to support it that will likely not even be needed to support it." Because once you say that, the contagion will stop.

• 1:21:42Jason Calacanis?

  We've got to calm this down.

• 1:21:43David Sacks?

  Yeah, Friedberg, we're going to know on Monday whether these regulators and the administration know what they're doing at all.

• 1:21:49David Friedberg?

  The other black swan problem is that this weekend, we will find out what some of the unintended second and third order consequences are going to be of SVB being in receivership this weekend. We talked a little bit about the pipes problem, but there may be several other businesses and other institutions and companies that we don't know about that may trigger another set of cascading effects that are unrelated to a banking problem, but could drive some more significant business and economic problems that we're going to kind of probably end up talking about next week. So, you know, this weekend, I think-

• 1:22:21Jason Calacanis?

  We're obsessed with payroll, but there are other things that this money goes towards, you know, mortgages or rents. So, the cascading effect of this, if people stop paying their rents, if people stop paying mortgages, I mean-

• 1:22:32David Friedberg?

  Real estate.

• 1:22:34David Sacks?

  Biden visited Kiev instead of East Palestine. Yellen visited Kiev instead of Silicon Valley. Do these people know what's going on here?

• 1:22:43Jason Calacanis?

  Come home.

• 1:22:44David Sacks?

  They promised more financial assistance for Ukraine, and they're saying they're monitoring the situation here. We're in the process of what could be a run of banking failure.

• 1:22:54Jason Calacanis?

  What's the bill for Ukraine this month versus this bailout is, you know, probably the same. So, I think we have to really think this through, folks. Yeah.

• 1:23:06David Sacks?

  We'll know on Monday whether these people have a clue or not.

• 1:23:08Jason Calacanis?

  No, they have to be on TV tonight or tomorrow. This has to be a presser on Sunday.

• 1:23:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Hold on. I think a lot of these guys do know what they're doing. So, let me just say it to them in language they understand. Folks, when you look at the equity tier of these regional banks, people are liquidating the equity tier because they know that that is the first domino to fall if banks go into receivership. Please act accordingly. You can see it in the ETFs. You can see it in the trade flows. This is not a Silicon Valley problem anymore. It is a regional bank problem, and it will get worse unless you do something to make it better.

• 1:23:48David Sacks?

  Right, and Jake, I'll just use the word bailout. I don't like that word because

• 1:23:51Jason Calacanis?

  No, not bailout, backstop.

• 1:23:53David Sacks?

  There were big, you know, too big to fail banks in 2008 in the financial crisis who did get bailed out. Those people should have lost the value of their stock. Okay, that was wrong. That's not what we're talking about here. SVB is wiped out already. What we're talking about is protecting depositors. These are people who trusted that when they put their money in a top 20 bank, that our regulatory system is compliant, that they will not lose their money. When it says on their computer screen that my money is in a BlackRock or a Morgan Stanley mutual fund, or money market fund, rather, the safest instrument there is, that that money is where it's supposed to be. And if regulators allow that bank to put their money in stupid assets that are not mark to market,

• 1:24:34David Sacks?

  and that's why they shut down, that is not a good reason for depositors to not get their money.

• 1:24:39Jason Calacanis?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:24:40David Sacks?

  We're taking care of depositors here and not bailing out stockholders.

• 1:24:43Jason Calacanis?

  This is not for the executives at the banks. It's for the depositors who did nothing wrong, and nor did their employees and their customers and the innovation that they're working on. All right, this has been a great all-in podcast. Sorry, we didn't have time to talk about the shaman, QAnon shaman. I know that's a passion project for Hugh Sacks, but you can announce your Kickstarter for him and your GoFundMe.

• 1:25:05David Sacks?

  Free the shaman.

• 1:25:07Jason Calacanis?

  Free the shaman. But where's the bulldog? Give me that bulldog one more time.

• 1:25:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The shaman, the shaman, the shaman is an intersection of three of a very interesting Venn diagrams. He is very athletically fit, incredibly hairy, and oddly tattooed. That's a, that's a trifecta that you rarely see. You rarely see that.

• 1:25:28Jason Calacanis?

  Also cultural appropriation. So yeah, we have to keep that in mind. And conspiracy theories. I mean, this guy's got it all. Are we gonna play poker this weekend and just, like, as the, as the media is coming?

• 1:25:39David Sacks?

  It's kinda sad. He's kinda, he's kind of an odd, that, seriously, the shaman, what's his name? Is Jake?

• 1:25:46Jason Calacanis?

  He doesn't seem like he's all there.

• 1:25:48David Sacks?

  No, he's, he's a guy who has diagnosed mental illness, but he's completely nonviolent. He's completely nonviolent. He actually believes in the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi of no violence towards any creatures.

• 1:25:59Jason Calacanis?

  He's a Vichyran. Yeah.

• 1:26:01David Sacks?

  He, you know, he's a bit of an odd duck.

• 1:26:03Jason Calacanis?

  He's a Friedberg of QAnon.

• 1:26:05David Sacks?

  And he didn't assault anyone. He just wandered through the Capitol, apparently getting a tour from police officers who were just guiding him through it.

• 1:26:13Jason Calacanis?

  He's the January 6th free bird.

• 1:26:14David Sacks?

  And he got four years. Hold on a second. He got four years in jail for that because he became the face of an insurrection because he just looked so weird with the Viking horns and the face paint or whatever.

• 1:26:24Jason Calacanis?

  He also made some threats to politicians too, but yeah, I mean, it does seem like it might not be the appropriate sentence. He wrote a note saying, we're coming for you, I think on, you have to look into the case, but he was sentenced by a Republican judge from Texas and he had made threats, written threats and put them on the desks of folks. And he was one of the first people into the building. So I think they got him for that. But I agree with you. There is some compassion that can happen here.

• 1:26:46David Sacks?

  If he didn't break a door down or didn't smash a window, if he, if he damaged property, that's one thing. If he assaulted someone, that's one thing. But if he just wandered through the Capitol, I think four years is kind of excessive. And I think the reason why the guy got four years is because of his mental illness. He's not able to defend himself the way that he should be. This is just a fundamental civil liberties issue. If you have any compassion at all, you shouldn't let a guy like that get scapegoated.

• 1:27:09Jason Calacanis?

  There's 400 people who, of the thousands of people who broke in, who were violent and who got sentences of some degree, they were all settled, like plea bargained, including his. They didn't go to trial. And if, you know, I think we can all agree, the violence that occurred that day is, you know, should be punished and the nonviolent stuff should be a speeding ticket, you know, and we don't need to.

• 1:27:33David Sacks?

  I think three categories, Jason. I think violence, the assault on cops or so forth, punished most severely.

• 1:27:39Jason Calacanis?

  Full extent of the law.

• 1:27:40David Sacks?

  Then damage of property and then, but the people who just, people who just trespassed or wandered through who may not even have known they were trespassing.

• 1:27:47Jason Calacanis?

  Probation.

• 1:27:48David Sacks?

  That, that, that's not, that's not jail time. That's not a felony.

• 1:27:50Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. I mean, we want to promote peaceful protests. If they had come with guitars and sang kumbaya and we shall overcome, we'd be having a different discussion here. Instead, they'd beat cops, you know, and you can't beat cops up. Sorry.

• 1:28:02David Sacks?

  Those ones go to jail.

• 1:28:03Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. Period. Full stop. We're in agreement. Okay, everybody. This has been another amazing All In Podcast. Sorry, we couldn't get to all the news, but we felt that this required a big unpacking for the Sultan of Science, the dictator and the Rain Man. I am the undisputed world's greatest moderator. We'll see you next time on the All In Podcast.

• 1:28:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Not this week.

• 1:28:35Speaker 04

  And instead, we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, Westlife. Queen of Kinoah.

• 1:28:48Speaker 04

  Besties are back. That is my dog taking a piss in your driveway. Oh, man.

• 1:28:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We should all just get a room and just have one big, huge orgy because they're all just... It's like this, like, sexual tension that we just need to release somehow.

• 1:29:07Speaker 04

  What, your, B, B? What, your, B, B? B? What? We need to get merch. Besties are back.