Why take a random small program being run at the bank, and imply that it was somehow linked to their failure, when their failure is well understood and has nothing to do with the Atlas program?
If your bank is willing to take on excess risk in one area, it's reasonable to assume that it's also willing to take on excess risk in other areas.
The very fact that it was catering to startups was high risk behavior.
And let's not pretend that extending loans to 15 year old "startups" that have never made a dime in profits and have no clear exit path was a sound business.
It's business 101 that you need a diversified customer base. If you're too heavily concentrated in one industry, you're entirely exposed to any downturn in that industry.
In this case, things were made even worse since SVB's customers were VC-funded startups, and VCs have an outsized say in the decisions made by VCs. Particularly in 2023 when we've seen startups shed more and more equity to VCs.
If I was running a business similar to SVB, I would have asked myself if I was too over-exposed to VC-funded startups, and if those VCs were always going to play nice.
