The annual SXSW festival of music, art and technology in Austin officially kicked off today. It’s already clear that there will be at least one central focus of the show. The ongoing collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and its consequences.
I landed on the ground this morning and overheard people talking about it on the plane from Toronto (filled with entrepreneurs, Shopify employees, and investors). One person asked about it on the street without prompting (the only person I stopped and spoke to on the street). And then I heard, first as a murmuring of the crowd, then as the first topic of a panel titled “Dog Lifespan: Longevity Science Comes to Life” discussing advances in biological sciences to extend the lifespan of dogs.
The panel, featuring The Longevity Fund’s Laura Deming and Loyal’s Celine Halioua and moderated by The Atlantic’s Andrea Valdez, was a bit distracting because Deming told the audience, “I was just waiting for a transfer.” It started with an apology in advance for what happened. [her fund’s] She paid while checking her phone. After that, she began looking at her cell phone whenever she was not being actively questioned.
Halioua immediately sympathized with her investor, saying, “I’ve been thinking about where to put my money all morning.” She later joked that the innovations her company is developing “will double over time, just like interest on bank deposits will disappear.” , I was looking down at my Apple Watch without interruption.
Note that neither actually funded the SVB directly. They were concerned that banking institutions could suffer repercussions.
Image credit: Darrell Etherington/TechCrunch
Valdez asked a question about the impact of the SVB collapse to open the panel after both panelists spoke spontaneously. Conditions of the startup world.
If you’ve been to tech or startup conferences in the past, you know that panelists don’t put devices on stage and usually don’t actively check them out for whatever reason. That, coupled with half-joking nervous laughter from both investors and founders, was truly remarkable.
Even before the session started, various groups in front and to my right were discussing SVB, with varying levels of knowledge of the situation. You might think it’s too early to call this a topic of the show, but seeing established startup industry players with such frank anxieties on stage, and other people in the room. Hearing general topics and tensions from everyone at SXSW is probably not what this year’s SXSW was meant to be the focus of.
