Venture Capitalists Stare Into the Post-SVB Abyss

Halogen Ventures founding partner Jesse Draper was in the midst of planning a private dinner party with Silicon Valley Bank when the financial institution failed on March 9

Draper’s event, at which she and one of her SVB contacts planned to bring together two dozen first-time female venture investors, was exactly the sort of party that lubricated venture capital’s startup-creation machine, and the kind the bank was famous for helping arrange. SVB served not only as a place for startups and VC firms to keep their money, but also as a creditor, investor, customer, personal financial adviser, recruiter and matchmaker for the people and companies that make up the startup industry. Although signs of trouble had been mounting for a year, SVB’s sudden failure felt like an acute trauma to industry insiders. But maybe the party that the entire industry had been having since Draper was a teenager was also finally waning. “Someone just threw a bomb into tech,” she says. “What are we supposed to do now?”