Siddharth Choksi

angel investor at @syndicateonevc

[Aditya Shah @tigerprojectadi]

Don’t wake your siblings up on cozy winter mornings
#ranthambore #tigers #wildlife #wildlifephotography

[Syndicate One @SyndicateOneVC]

Syndicate One is starting 2024 with a bang 💥

We are launching the next iteration of our angel investment network: bigger, better and bolder! 🚀

💰 With €4.8M in fresh capital from institutional investors, families, and a whole generation of Belgian entrepreneurs (first close)

[Siddharth Choksi @ChoksiSid]

Undoubtedly in the top 3 OpenAI CEOs this week. Thank you for your service 🫡����🏽

[Emmett Shear @eshear]

I am deeply pleased by this result, after ~72 very intense hours of work. Coming into OpenAI, I wasn’t sure what the right path would be. This was the pathway that maximized safety alongside doing right by all stakeholders involved. I’m glad to have been a part of the solution.

[Siddharth Choksi @ChoksiSid]

Satya upon learning they were using Google Meets:

[Satya Nadella @satyanadella]

We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners. We look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and OAI's new leadership team and working with them. And we’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success.

[Siddharth Choksi @ChoksiSid]

personally gonna miss masa's world class strategy slides the most from the whole wework saga

[Botanix 🕷️ @botanix]

Introducing Botanix Labs

Botanix: The fusion of Ethereum's programmability with Bitcoin's decentralization. 🌱

It's #Ethereum built on #Bitcoin...

🧵👇

[Siddharth Choksi @ChoksiSid]

@madelinelawren my angel returns seem to love minimalism

[Cardi B @iamcardib]

I’m not as mean as I could be and I want people to be more grateful for that.

[Siddharth Choksi @ChoksiSid]

@TheCartelDel @madelinelawren

[Deepak Shenoy @deepakshenoy]

Since everyone's making a thread about SVB, here's my contribution. Silicon Valley Bank is an old boring conservative bank. It is in trouble not because of bad lending practices, but because of a combination of
- strange way to invest short term money
- announcing a capital raise when another bank went bust
- and then telling people not to panic

SVB is not the modern Enron. It's not the modern Lehman. It's the modern LTCM, that thing that invested in good things and still (nearly) died.

SVB got a deluge of deposits after the Covid led low interest rate regime, to nearly $180 bn. Mostly startups, which parked money with it at zero interest. They technically should just park this money in something super liquid and stable, like T-Bills because oh pay out 0% and get even 0.25% and you're good, no?

But no because a) they wanted more and b) maybe can do safe but longer term to get more?

So they invested about half of this money in Mortgage Based Securities (MBS). Which matures typically in 10+ years (average mortgages are 30 yr). They got 1.5% which is good when TBills yield 0.25%

But the Fed hiked rates like crazy and, importantly, stopped buying MBS. The MBS market sulked and yields went to as much as 7%. When yields go up from 1.5% to 7%, the price falls huge. Plus in MBS, it also means no one pays back principal early (because you do not refinance a mortgage when the rates are higher) meaning that those excel sheets which looked at the past and said oh, you'll make back your money in about 10 years were, uhm, wrong.

All in all, massive portfolio that's long term in nature. Liquid indeed, but at a much much lower price today. Losses are huge, but they can hold to maturity and get back their money (at 1.5%) What happens next?

They don't NEED to sell MBS. It might be a very decent lending book, and losses might not be much even if there are defaults since you have a house in a roaring property market. So it wasn't "bad lending".

But what happened was that their customers could withdraw money when they wanted. Which happened in the last year through cash burn, I suppose, and they needed to rejig their portfolio.

They sold $21 bn of securities (including treasuries and MBS) for a loss of $1.8 bn. Given that deposits were still $169bn in end-Feb (From $181 in Dec 2021) it's like they took this decision to just reduce asset duration and take that loss.

Just that and it wouldve been fine. They decided to even raise more capital. Exactly at the time that another bank, Silvergate, was in super-distress because it did the exact wrong thing: make bad loans. When a bank's going down and another bank says:
- oh we made some losses
- oh we need more money

Shit hits the fan. Then, if you tell people that no, we sold very good loans, not bad loans, please don't panic, guess what happens? People panic.

Stocks down 60% and VCs are telling their startups to get their money out. Perception, in a banking system, is reality.

[Siddharth Choksi @ChoksiSid]

"it's not magic, it's AI" is the 2023 startup founder version of "live, laugh, love"

[Siddharth Choksi @ChoksiSid]

@robindchnt Antwerp 🇧🇪❤️ Sint-Anneke is an exotic beach 🌊 and is just an 8hr train ride away from the French Alps 🏔️ The best part is that hours of sun is completely random and varies from 0 to 18 hours a day 🌞

[Siddharth Choksi @ChoksiSid]

4. have an amazing colleague to help finish what you started

[Madeline Lawrence @madelinelawren]

we investors live busy lives. taking control of your agenda is essential. here are 4 rules to live by:

1. never take calls w/ ppl that have lame names. eg cut out all micahels, johns
2. neglect your family & loved ones. they'll get over it
3. don't finish anything you start

[Siddharth Choksi @ChoksiSid]

@sarahdrinkwater 👋🏽

[Siddharth Choksi @ChoksiSid]

@MaroliFede 0

[Siddharth Choksi @ChoksiSid]

@Quintin24 Great initiative! I'd love to be a part of it

[Siddharth Choksi @ChoksiSid]

@madelinelawren I'm reporting you

[Siddharth Choksi @ChoksiSid]

@madelinelawren @Ryanair @oatly @duolingo

[Siddharth Choksi @ChoksiSid]

Gonna tell my kids this is how the term "friends, family, fools" originated

[Sheel Mohnot @pitdesi]

I only recently learned that people charge their friends to attend life events, but I am loving every word of the stories I read about these people.

Here, the bride cancelled her wedding and broke up with her fiancé when guests refused to pay $1500 to attend her dream wedding

[Madeline Lawrence @madelinelawren]

am looking for argumentative self-starters to join me at
@PeakCapitalVC in berlin, amsterdam, or stockholm

help me make the new generations of VC / investors a unique bunch with strong values and who doesn't take themselves too seriously 🙏

#vcjobs #vcinternship #hiring