The flood of cash into the tech start-up scene in recent years has led to persistent warnings of disaster. Most often, these have turned on the kind of meltdown that hit Silicon Valley at the turn of the century, when a stampede to make money on the early internet led to massive over-investment.
It’s safe to say, though, that none of the disaster scenarios envisaged the kind of financial implosion that struck this week at SVB Financial, the parent company of Silicon Valley Bank.