Bank runs used to take days but in the age of social media a lender can collapse in just hours.
It was the trill of WhatsApp and Slack message alerts, arriving with escalating persistence that alerted Australia’s tech set that something potentially earth-shattering was brewing.
”In a hyperconnected world, where people have exposure to probably 1000 VCs across the world, it only took a few Tweets for it to go,” says Craig Blair, the co-founder and partner at big money Sydney VC firm AirTree Ventures. ”I think the real ‘Ah-Ha moment’ was Saturday morning, about six o’clock our time,” Blair says. He, alongside seven of his colleagues, formed a “virtual war room” to share the latest developments and give individual counsel to founders as rumours raged.
Blackbird set up a forum for its founders to talk together as the weekend unfolded, which its general partner Nick Crocker says resulted in hundreds of people weighing in with help and advice. Like AirTree and Blackbird, most of Square Peg’s Australian portfolio companies were untouched by the unfolding drama, but Square Peg has a significant number of investments in Israeli start-ups, which were much more exposed to the unfolding carnage.
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