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The Ron Conway Bailout

Was the insidery uber-angel the factor—with his last-minute call to Kamala, intimate dinners with Obama, and furtive emails to Andreessen—in getting the White House to truly perceive the horrors of an SVB collapse?

As the public bickered over what would constitute a bailout for SVB, Ron Conway, a political mega-connector, felt he was uniquely positioned to help foam the runway.
As the public bickered over what would constitute a bailout for SVB, Ron Conway, a political mega-connector, felt he was uniquely positioned to help foam the runway. Photo: Brian Ach/Getty Images for TechCrunch
Theodore Schleifer
March 14, 2023

On Friday night, Ron Conway found himself at dinner in San Francisco with Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, offering the two Democratic monarchs something of a tutorial on the sudden failure of Silicon Valley Bank. Sure, Conway was talking to Joe Biden’s former boss, and perhaps the most important lawmaker in America. But as the so-called Godfather of Silicon Valley who has worked in the industry longer than SVB has even existed, he understood the bank’s interconnectedness more intimately than anyone else—the manner in which the bank provided the liquidity for the broader tech economy.