Ron Conway, Founder, SV Angel: Silicon Valley Bank Crisis

34:25Ron Conway:Okay. So we had Eric kind of keeping everyone under control. Okay. So we basically agreed to who the key people were, that the key players would be Janet Yellen. She's going to be key. And then Deputy Secretary of Treasury Wally Adeyama. Biden's chief of staff, Jeff Zients, he's going to be key. Leo Brainerd in the White House, she's going to be key. And then we stepped back and said Barney Frank, who wrote the Dodd-Frank Act after the 2008 bank collapse, who is basically an expert on bank collapses. Yeah, yep. we're going to have to call Barney. And then looking at other people who had gone through the experience, remember Obama had gone through the experience.

35:19Hank Paulson, we're going to want to get his pattern recognition. From the financial crisis. Of 2008. All these people who had pattern recognition, let's just you know let's know who who's the field of people who can help us and then obviously Tim Geithner who was Obama's Secretary of Treasury and then of course the head of the Federal Reserve Jay Powell so those, yeah that's a pretty good list

35:51Ron Conway:yeah and remember we got the pressure to go sit down at the table But we at least agreed who we needed to get to, that the situation inside the FDIC, in our opinion, was not good and we were going to need to apply pressure in certain places. And reminding ourselves that FDIC reports to Congress. So very key, Sherrod Brown and Maxine Waters. Maxine Waters already had a good relationship with. Of course, Obama and Pelosi have good relationships with all these people. President Obama, very judicious. It didn't take any assignments or anything. But God knows what he did that weekend. But one of the conversations during this in the war room, I'm so glad I remembered this.

36:57Nancy Pelosi says to Obama, do you understand that all of my small businesses and all of my startups are not going to meet payroll this Monday? and it was the only time he kind of raised his voice and he said don't you tell me about the small businesses and the startup impact don't you tell me that i was with ron yesterday in a room full of them. I saw the horror on their faces. You do not need to get me excited about this issue. I was there. Oh, wow. And so we were all sufficiently wound up that we had work to do. Yeah. So then we went to the dinner. Okay. The dinner ended and we all just said, we will reconvene in the morning.

38:02And as we left, we basically knew who the players were. And we kind of came to the realization that Marty Gruenberg and the FDIC was just not going to be easy when they are talking about, you know, we'll just take over the bank or we'll find another bank to buy the bank by Monday. These are not practical solutions. And it was like Marty Gruenberg runs the FDIC. He doesn't run these banks. He runs a government agency. He's talking about something that we think is irrelevant. And we've got to go get to work. Yeah. So I went home. And by then, Gavin Newsom, the governor of the state, is swinging into action.

39:06And I'm hearing from Anna Patterson and Jason Elliott on his team, basically saying, we're part of the club. You know, whatever you and Nancy are doing, you know, you have to coordinate with us. Okay. And I said, of course, you're the governor of the state, and you can make a lot of noise here, too. So the next morning had to be like 730. Nancy and I jumped on the phone together, and she had not told me this the night before because we had lots of other things to talk about. But she said, Ron, I have a horrible predicament. A very close friend of ours lost their child, and Nancy was giving the eulogy.

39:58So Nancy said, I just want you to know, like from 7.30 to 10 o 'clock, when the funeral starts, I'm going to be gone for a couple hours at least. And believe it or not, just her being gone for two hours was like traumatic. because by then every member of the House of Representatives in the California delegation was in a complete panic. And they had convened a call at 10 o 'clock, every member of the California delegation. And Nancy, knowing that she was not going to be there, deputized Mike Thompson. to run that meeting. I forget how many members of Congress there are from California, but there's like 36 or 40 people.

40:52It's a big group. So they were having a big call, and Nancy said, Ron, you sit on that call, figure out what they're figuring out, and then after the call, you call Mike Thompson, and you keep the ball rolling on action. And so the California delegation was getting ready as a group, as I recall, to talk to Treasury, probably Wally or Yellen. So they were getting their act together on what they were going to pitch to them. Once again, just guarantee the deposits. But when you have the entire California delegation calling the Department of Treasury, that's going to wake up the Department of Treasury because obviously they were very unified, very coordinated.

41:46Yeah. Can I ask a real dummy question here? But is it normal for sort of a private citizen like you to be involved in this meeting with the California delegation? No, but I know most of them. And Nancy said, sit in on that meeting so you know what they're saying. Okay. She invited you, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this was because we were getting inputs from lots of other people. And this is where Ruth Porat comes in. Ruth Porat was then the CFO of Google. But she was ex-Morgan Stanley, and during the 2008 financial crisis, while she was at Morgan Stanley, Hank Paulson said, I want a few of the brightest people who are not in the government to be part of the 2008 banking crisis war room.

42:56Oh, that's interesting. And he yanked Ruth out of Morgan Stanley and put her in the war room. Wow. And now she's the CFO of Google. Now she's the CFO of Google. That is really interesting. Ruth calls me and says, let me call Hank Paulson and some of the others and try and get some precedent for what we should be doing here. And there was a very famous lawyer, Raj Cohen from Sullivan and Cromwell, who worked in the 2008 crisis that Ruth highly recommended once again for pattern recognition, precedent. How are we going to get this done? So Ruth was talking to them plus others, then reporting back to me.

43:58And a lot of the work was about moral hazard. And what is the precedent for moral hazard? Is this a case for moral hazard? Obviously, we were saying no. But we wanted every law precedent in the books. And in addition to the tension between moral hazard and contagion, there was also the precedent around the government invoking systemic risk exception. so there was a lot of discussion about that as well with with Hank Paulson and and Raj Cohen and all these people you know it was a chess game of all these different variables and how we could use those to convince the lawmakers that we had to guarantee the deposits so Ruth did a beautiful job of briefing me.

45:11And when Nancy freed up from the funeral, I said, Nancy, let me brief you, because we wanted to ask her permission for Ruth and all the people she was working with to spring into action with these arguments that we had come up with. And I had written them all down because we wanted Nancy to approve the arguments. And God bless Nancy. She said, and it was a lot of stuff because people were throwing all this data at us. And Nancy said, listen, we don't have time for that because we need to keep executing. and she said, it was one of the most flattering things she's ever said to me. She said, do you like what's on that piece of paper?

46:15I said, yes, it's very logical to me. It is the arguments we should all be using. She said, I trust you. That's done. I am not going to waste a half hour going through picking apart that. That is done. Tell Ruth to execute all that research. That is good stuff. Let's get to work. So with that, she couldn't wait to talk to Janet Yellen. So she wanted me off the phone. So we fed all this information to her. And then she called Janet Yellen. For sure, she called Jeff Science. And we're all coordinating who's calling who, who's talking to Gavin Newsom, et cetera, et cetera. Now, I did not know Sherrod Brown at the time.

47:05Mark Kelly, who's a very good friend of mine, who's our astronaut, awesome senator. Mark Kelly, because it's Silicon Valley and he knows what I do here, Mark said, run. This is Saturday afternoon, run. I'm going to put you on with Sherrod Brown. and I already knew from Friday night that the FDIC reports to Sherrod Brown. I said, thank you. So I spent Saturday afternoon educating Sherrod Brown on exactly what was going on because he just thought Silicon Valley Bank was just another old normal bank. And I said, please just believe me. After our discussion, I could tell Sherrod had intellectually understood everything I said and said, now I understand this is different.

48:02Let me go to work. And I said, thank you. Thank you, Sherrod. And then I also was talking to Maxine Waters and then many, many members of Congress. And then Wally Adeyamo and I, I kind of shook off Graham Steele and Wally was taking my calls directly. Okay, at this point. But by then the magnitude of it was so high. He knew I was working closely with Nancy. We're friends. And he knew that I knew the Silicon Valley ecosystem. So he would call me every few hours with an update or he would text me like it's going good. It's not going good. The White House is not understanding what the hell they need to do.

48:56Oh, Ron. And so Saturday night, this thing was not in a good place. It was the U.S. government just acting like just a bunch of bureaucrats who can't make a decision when it was so clear to me, you have to guarantee the deposits. A whole bunch of people are not going to get paid on Monday. The 16th largest bank is gone. First Republic is on its way. that meets the definition of contagion you know let's get on with it can i ask you what nancy and janet did they connect like what was oh yeah yeah nancy nancy and janet talked many times i i assure you because she would call me and say you know here's where here's where janet's at and you know here's where jay powell is at here's where ziance is at I am sure that Nancy also talked to Biden a couple of times.

50:08But in my calls with Wally late Saturday, I could tell that his sense of urgency was also increasing. So Wally was not disagreeing with me. Wally was becoming increasingly frustrated because guess who Wally was hearing from?

50:29Ron Conway:Marty. No. Marty, kind of my strategy with Marty was we need to get the White House to call Marty and tell Marty, this is what you're going to do. Well, that's what I was going to ask. Because Marty was still trying to sell the bank without giving anyone any data. Well, Ron, if I can stop you, you said everyone was acting like bureaucrats. One of the things that's hard to parse, and maybe you guys are struggling too, is whose decision was this? Like, was this definitely going to be a group decision or was there one person who could say yes, no? Well, ultimately, it's definitely, definitely President Biden.

51:14Ron Conway:Oh, OK. But President Biden gets all of his input from Jay Powell, Janet Yellen, Sherrod Brown, Maxine Waters, Jeff Zients, for sure. And so you basically need to influence them to make the recommendation to Biden to call Marty and say, guarantee the deposit. Okay, so it is an executive decision. Oh, for sure. Oh, okay, that's actually good to know. By Saturday night, the situation was beyond frustrating because Marty Gruenberg was still saying the FDIC can just take over Silicon Valley Bank. When it was our opinion, well, that's not even what the FDIC does. So we're just not sure why you would even say that.

52:12Because that's not your job function. And then he was saying to the banks, somebody's got to come in and buy this bank before Monday and save us, so to speak. And he wouldn't provide any data. And I even called people inside Silicon Valley Bank and I said, have you been told that you can't provide data to the potential buyers of the bank? And they said, yes. that we we have been told that we that we cannot provide that data and and so we're not however luckily despite the resistance from the fdic the buyers were able to somehow get the information they needed which gave me a sigh of relief because maybe by sunday one of the banks would come in and buy Silicon Valley Bank.

53:12Now it ended up, as history be told, no buyer of the bank came forward.

53:19Ron Conway:Too tight of a time frame. Yeah, too tight of a time frame. That's preaching fiduciary duty of the buyer bank to do it that fast, especially with limited data. Right, right. But there's another release valve that was happening in parallel. I can't stress enough how many activities were going on in parallel. You had Janet Yellen and Wally Adeyamo turning Treasury upside down. You had Sherrod Brown and Maxine Waters turning Congress upside down. You obviously had Zients in the White House turning everything upside down. But what was also happening is the tech community banded together and said, why don't we get a bunch of buyout firms to buy the bank?

54:16and we assembled 40 heads of buyout firms and venture capital firms who were willing to participate. Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst were all on this. I remember this. We convened these calls a couple of times. Scott Cooper from Andreessen Horowitz was a ringleader, but the guys at Apollo were the ones who were saying, we've got money to spend right now. We're willing to spend it. So we'll be the lead. Just like investing in a company, Apollo was saying, we'll be the lead. I forget how much money they were putting up. What's everyone else willing to put up? Obviously, we needed other big private equity firms because they have many more assets than Sequoia and Andreessen.

55:20All of that activity was going on at the same time. Unfortunately, even though it was a massive effort, it did not lead to an offer. Once again, Apollo couldn't find enough PE firms to buy the bank. You just couldn't move that fast. That does not mean they didn't try. These calls with 40 people, that was only the heads of the firms. It was Mark Andreessen, yada, yada, yada. It wasn't for a lack of trying. So that huge effort was going on in parallel. And so I would jump on those Zoom calls and listen while I was also waiting for Nancy or Wally or Gavin Newsom or all of that to happen in parallel.

56:17But by Saturday night, when I talked to Wally, Wally said, wow, he goes, you know, we're going from bad to worse here. Oh, no. I'm getting calls from foreign governments who are very worried about what's going to happen when the markets open on Monday. If the U.S. is going to let the 16th largest bank go under, that is going to reverberate around the world. Anyone who thinks it's not is fooling themselves. And so there were heads of governments saying, why don't you guys hurry up for God's sake? It's pretty obvious what you need to do. hurry up and do it because you are going to impact us yeah and the markets in japan were opening a sunday night sunday night yeah yeah sunday at 7 p.m eastern and that was d-day that's when japan opens okay but we had many many governments in europe saying hey it's called contagion And it's not going to be restricted to the United States.

57:38You have to do something.

57:44So Saturday night, just not feeling good, feeling like a lot of bureaucracy going on. Sunday morning, so I had my little three hours of sleep. And I get up to see Janet Yellen on the Sunday talk show. And in that interview, she says, we are not going to guarantee the deposits.

58:20Ron Conway:Does she have authorization to say that? Well, she's Secretary of Treasury, so. Did your heart sink, Ron? Well, no, it didn't sink, it exploded. I was furious. How dare you say that? Like, how can you? Because now we're getting close to D-Day. In D.C., it's 12 noon, and we only have until 7 o 'clock. So we're seven hours left. We've got seven hours left, and you guys are saying we're not guaranteeing deposits. which made absolutely no sense beyond infuriating. Now, in hindsight, if you try and recreate what was going on, it was clear that there was not consensus in the White House why there couldn't be on something that to me is common sense.

59:25But there was not consensus in the White House. And so she had really no choice but to say there's no guarantees on the deposits because she didn't know what the regulators were going to ultimately decide. She's obviously a huge recommender, has a seat at the table. but for her it probably would have been bad form for her to get ahead of the regulators.

1:00:01Ron Conway:Yeah. And so she just kind of stuck to the party line which was completely infuriating and panicking. So I was really, really, really furious. So I'm watching her on TV. I'm screaming at the TV. And my cell phone rings. And it's Sherrod Brown. Hey, Ron, just checking in. I kind of wanted to report to you on what's going on. Oh, Sherrod is all I have to say right now. Yeah, Sherrod here. Oh, boy. And we had had some really good discussions on Saturday. He understood the gravity of the situation. and on Saturday I am his pal I am explaining things to him and I am saying please and thank you but Sunday I listened to Janet Yellen saying hey guess what we are not going to guarantee the deposits the phone rings and it's Sherrod I'm already really really pissed off and he says he kind of says we're doing this and this.

1:01:22He has a sense of urgency, but not the sense of urgency I have. And at that point, I did decide I had absolutely nothing to lose. We have seven hours left, and I made the decision it's okay to swear it's okay to insult him it's okay to threaten him because silicon valley is going down if this guy doesn't get his act together and i took my civics lesson i know the fdic reports directly to him right directly so can you give us a sample of what you said to him. So he explains where things are at. And I said, in a very raised voice, somehow you have missed the message. We have seven hours left for you to guarantee the deposits, or Silicon Valley Bank goes down, First Republic goes down, we have contagion out the gazoo, We have the banking crisis of 2008 again, except this time it will be worldwide.

1:02:48What in God's name could be holding you up? What is wrong with you? Is your head screwed on straight? What's missing? What do I need to tell you? You need to guarantee the deposits or there could be, for sure in the United States, there's going to be a bank collapse, just like 2008. And in this case, you can solve it because it's just one, maybe two, seven hours left, and I don't see you doing shit. And he goes, well, what do you think I should do? You should call Biden and Zients and Janet Yellen and Jay Powell, and you need to insist that they tell Marty, guarantee the deposits. What the hell are you doing sitting on the phone with me?

1:03:50You need to hear me keep talking? You need to go do your job. and he was super nice. Not super nice, but he said, but he got the point. Hey, this guy is telling me Silicon Valley's going down and he's also telling me that there's going to be contagion. And for sure, other people were telling him that too. And so I gave him a sense of urgency. So when he hung up, I did say to myself, he is going to do something.

1:04:25Ron Conway:Okay. Because now, now I've got him wound up. So my job was to wind him up so he calls Biden and choose him out, choose out Zion's, where in the hell is the deposit guarantee? Yeah. This is elementary school, in my opinion. Just do it. Simple fix. Yeah. And we're down, you know, we're 48 hours in, we've got seven hours left, and you're still talking about it? You all could have had a good night's sleep if you did it last night. Because they ended up doing that anyway. So I hang up on Sherrod. I'm completely beside myself. I'm still furious at Janet Yellen. The phone rings. Again, my cell rings.

1:05:10And it's some voice. Is this Mr. Conway? Yes, this is Mr. Conway. This is Kamala Harris's office. She's going to come on in about two seconds. I said I can't wait to talk to her So Kamala Vice President

1:05:31Comes on the phone But first just know I have known Kamala since she was the District Attorney In San Francisco Then she became the Attorney General Then she became U.S. Senator And then she became Vice President I have known her her whole career. And we know from the Napster interview, you hung out at Sean Parker's wedding with her. We most certainly did. And she drove us in her car up that steep hill that I'm still thankful for to depart the wedding. So yes, we're pals with Kamala. So I got steam coming out my ears and Kamala says, I want it straight. And I said, you want it straight. I will give it to you straight.

1:06:25What the hell are you doing? And then I went through, you are going to decimate small businesses in California. They're not going to meet payroll tomorrow. First Republic's probably going to go next and there's going to be contagion all over the place it's 2008 all over again probably worldwide this time and what in god's name could you possibly be waiting for what in the hell is wrong with you um she kind of rude to the vice president very rude so So I was just screaming at her because between Janet Yellen and Sherrod Brown, I was out of control, rude, and very disrespectful. And she knows how to swear, too, and we were both swearing a lot.

1:07:27but we were not arguing with each other we weren't arguing with each other about the the issues in essence we were really arguing about the sense of urgency and i was saying to her once again like i said to sherrod why are you talking to me i like it that you called me because she said give me the lowdown but i gave her the lowdown and i said okay i've given you the lowdown You need to get off your duff and you need to go call Yellen, J-PAL, the guy down the street, Biden, and you need to stop this nonsense. Tokyo is opening in six hours. What have you been waiting for? The bank went out on Friday.

1:08:17We got six hours left. What in God's name? What are all of you doing back there? I don't understand you. It's obvious what you need to do. You need to go do it. What's holding you up? So like Sharon Brown, I contend that I wound her up and got her like really irritated at the situation. She's a Californian. California is going to be decimated by this. And I said, you need to grab the bull by the horns and start kicking some ass there until people give us the deposit guarantee. And so she said, I've got it. And I could tell she was really pissed off at the situation. And I could tell she agreed with me.

1:09:16We have to do the deposits and what the hell are we waiting for? And now I'm going to swing into action. I knew she was going to call Yellen and obviously Biden and Jeff Zients, Jay Powell, because she said so. And I have since verified she called all of them with very high sense of urgency. And I bet you Biden has never heard her talk the way she talked. you know when she said what the hell are you doing yeah yeah you got six hours left well what the hell are you waiting for so she goes i gotta go because then she had she had her script she knew who she was gonna call so so i said you cannot hang up and she goes a few swear words and I said, you can't hang up.

1:10:15Now I'm really serious with you. You are the Vice President of the United States. I apologize for being disrespectful and swearing at you. And she said, duly accepted and hung up. That's a great ending.

1:10:30Ron Conway:I love it. And then she went to work. I love that. She went to work for her state. She didn't want to end like that. You had to have a little closure. She went to work for her state. She's a hero. Wow. And it's very well verified that she went to town for us. Okay. And that Sherrod Brown went to town. And finally, before Tokyo opened, came out the press release that the deposits are guaranteed. Did anyone text you and say, it's happening now or anything? What was the next sign? I got a heads up about a half an hour before, and I'm not going to say from who. Okay. Because. Because you're a private citizen.

1:11:15Yeah, I'm a private citizen. I knew a little bit before that we had won. So when, what time of day was the announcement? It was like four in the afternoon. Oh, my God, a mere three hours before Japan. Yeah, it was four in the afternoon here because it was seven o 'clock in D.C. and the opening of Tokyo. It was literally simultaneous almost. Oh, they did it just before. Oh, my God. So that there wouldn't be a—the crash would have started in Tokyo. But there was no crash. But they certainly waited to the last minute. I'll say. What did you do when you got that heads up and knew it's happening? There was a football game on, and I was just super relieved.

1:12:02We've been through a lot of crises with founders. Yeah. And once we win, I'm just very relieved and very happy. I do not like losing. I know that, yeah. But the magnitude of this one was huge. Yeah. And the magnitude of things I've worked on, it's probably Silicon Valley Bank, number one by far. Yeah. And then number two, the OpenAI coup, because we didn't want OpenAI to be assumed by Microsoft. Yeah. Wow. But the Airbnb during COVID, that was a crisis. Yeah. Then we got the new capital in. You feel a very, very great sense of relief. And I remember being relieved because, you know, at Y Combinator we were freaking out because of all of our portfolio companies.

1:12:58The petition that Gary Tan organized was huge. Oh, yes. Because that petition was aimed at members of Congress, aimed at everybody, but it was aimed at members of Congress. And remember, the FDIC reports to Congress. And so we targeted the right pressure point. And those petitions got massive numbers of signatures in record time. And politicians look at that. And I should say, Gary and Luther on the team at YC really, this was one more thing that was going on this weekend. They sprung into action and they just tapped into our network, our extended network. and they sent out a survey. And what they were able to compile was, this is not just a Silicon Valley local situation.

1:13:53There were clients who were going to not be able to make payroll across the country.

1:13:59Ron Conway:Well, you can be, I mean, it's digital, right? You can be anywhere. So like the zip codes where we had companies that were trying to make payroll all over the country, even if there wasn't a Silicon Valley bank there, because you could still start, you know, they open these accounts when they're at YC in the valley. And then they go off and they run their businesses all over the U.S. And so it would have impacted tons of workers all over the U.S. That was just one more nugget of data for the government to see the impact. In hindsight, I don't know why it took so long. The government has lots of inertia.

1:14:38And we had to break through the inertia because we only had 48 hours until Monday. So there was this huge threat of contagion. And yet it feels like there were people in the government who were willing to let Silicon Valley Bank fail. Was that because it was called Silicon Valley Bank rather than the Bank of Santa Clara? Well, there's resentment towards Silicon Valley, but even more so not understanding that Silicon Valley banks served small businesses. They thought it was the bank of Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, General Catalyst. That's their conjured up thinking of Silicon Valley Bank. Once they got educated about that, that no, it's thousands of small businesses and tech startups.

1:15:35Then they said, oh my God, that's the aha moment for Sherrod Brown on Saturday. But I guess he wasn't able to communicate that. And it lobbed over to Sunday. and then I had to treat him rudely to get the sense of urgency that we only have a few hours left and we're going to have to move faster. You've just chronicled this incredible effort you made to stop this catastrophe. You are a private citizen working to stave off this economic disaster. Is that normal? Well, it's normal if you have relationships with lawmakers And I have 20-year relationships with Nancy Pelosi, with Chuck Schumer, with Cory Booker, with Adam Schiff, more recently Senator Padilla.

1:16:37SV Angel has always been civically engaged. we've always thought that it's important for the tech community to have relationships with lawmakers look at the legislation going on right now on crypto and AI hopefully every Silicon Valley CEO regrets that they didn't get started sooner building relationships with policy makers in Washington D.C. who impact our business. And this is a huge example of that. So, you know, when I left Balboa Cafe, like, what am I going to do? I was able to call Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, you know, Sherrod Brown, Wally Adeyamo. And these are the differences for me. They pick up the phone.

1:17:37I'm their friend. Yeah. You know, I tell all the Silicon Valley CEOs, do you have a relationship with lawmakers? You bet I do. And then I give them the quiz. Have you met the lawmaker's spouse? Yes, I have. Tell me the spouse's name. Oh, not sure. Oh, have you been to dinner with the lawmaker and their spouse? Oh, oh, is that what a relationship is? Yeah. Have you been to dinner three times a year? That's a relationship. And you enjoyed being with them. Do you know the names of their children? Oh, I don't know the names of their children. You are a bullshitter. You do not have a relationship with the lawmaker.

1:18:24You have a transaction. You have a transaction with the lawmaker. That's terrible. Lawmakers don't.

1:18:37they conduct transactions in making laws, but they're only going to communicate with people and pick up the phone for people they have relationships with, where your phone number pops up and they smile. I like that person, and I'm going to take their call. This is a great circle back moment. Oh, my gosh, Ron.

1:19:02Ron Conway:This is huge. Chapter one of this saga is you explaining how you develop relationships. And it's really powerful. Like if we go back and listen to that episode where you're just getting started and you explained all that, not about lawmakers, just about people you like. And having a genuine interest. Yes. Yes. I mean, like this is such a theme. And to accomplish things together. But I always say SV Angel's biggest asset is its relationship network. And on the weekend of Silicon Valley Bank, we just took the policy-politic part of our relationship network and spent the whole weekend with that piece of the pie.

1:19:48We didn't spend time with other parts of the pie. But everyone picked up the phone. I do feel like all the companies in Silicon Valley and the investors and the government really needs to be appreciative of your Herculean effort in this whole thing. Well, it was teamwork. I know it was teamwork. The heroes of the day were Ruth Porat, Nancy Pelosi, Wally Adeyamo. Sherrod. Sherrod Brown. But Nancy Pelosi in particular. I mean, California is her state. She gets job creation. She loves founders. And no one needed to explain the problem to Nancy. She knew instinctively. So there are a lot of heroes.

1:20:46Gary Tan was a hero. All the VCs trying to get the private equity firms to round up the money, that was a Herculean effort. There just was not enough time, which is why, in the end, we needed those deposits guaranteed. Thank you. I think that's the theme of this whole episode, guaranteed deposits. Just guaranteed deposits. It's the deposits, stupid. Right?

1:21:18Ron Conway:Whoa, what a story, Ron. Thank you for sharing this. Yeah, this is very inside baseball, and it's great stuff. And a lot of people are going to be interested in this one. So thank you so much. Thank you, Ron. And hopefully some lessons learned on getting civically engaged, having relationships with lawmakers, so when this happens again, there's more people helping. Yeah. Yeah. Ron, thank you for sharing this story with us. I know people are going to love listening to it so much. The only bad thing is everyone who went through it never wants to think about it again. This is true. But this will kind of tell them what happened behind the scenes.

1:22:05Lots of other people did things, too. This is just what me and Nancy and Ruth pour at. Yeah. What we did, what the SV Angel Relationship Network was able to accomplish. Which is a lot, and it's a great story. It's amazing. All right. Thank you, Ron. It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure.