SVB’s Demise Swirled on Private VC, Founder Networks Before Hitting Twitter
Don’t blame social media for Silicon Valley’s banking crisis.
WATCH: Why the Silicon Valley Bank Collapse Matters
Politicians called the dramatic collapse of Silicon Valley Bank the “first Twitter-fueled bank run.” But in the highly networked tech industry, public social media feeds didn’t actually drive the fast-growing anxiety over SVB’s financial position — that happened in private.
Channels like messaging platform WhatsApp, email chains, texts and other closed forums were full of chatter over the bank’s financial precarity well before those fears showed up Twitter. In tech, where executives’ networks can dictate whether companies have access to the best information, warnings about SVB had been simmering for a while when they boiled over into wider view online.