Managing capital is a vital part of any business but a small team of 5 does not have the same resources or requirements as a team of 500 or 5000.
SVB has been a vital supporter of startups for decades. Why would a resource constrained startup spend time worried about it? Money goes in and out the bank, great, that’s all most startups should need to worry about.
If you support a culture where people look at $250,000 and don't care what happens to it, then I hope you aren't surprised when it turns out the management class are serially incompetent. Their literal responsibility is to look at large amounts of capital and decide what happens to it.
The startups had a strategy of pooling their money - their huge amount of money, as it turns out - into a fund run by people who couldn't keep a bank solvent. If you want to shield the people doing that from consequences then, frankly, you don't have an interest in running a high-integrity system geared to competence. Because there need to be direct and painful consequences to an action that stupid. Oh there are only 5 of them! Well there is only 1 of me and I can tell you how dumb they were in isolation. The only reason to act this way and keep all the eggs in one high-risk basket is because of an assumption that the government will come in and conduct bailouts if any risk eventuates. IE, a management class that doesn't ever expect to succeed on their own merits. Although since the bailouts did happen that suggests that sticking to a dumb strategy is what winners should do.
The entire capital management system here is out of control.
SVB has been a vital supporter of startups for decades. Why would a resource constrained startup spend time worried about it? Money goes in and out the bank, great, that’s all most startups should need to worry about.