Austin’s annual SXSW music, arts and tech pageant formally kicked off right now, and it’s already clear that there’s going to be a minimum of one central focus for the present: The ongoing collapse of Silicon Valley Financial institution (SVB) and its repercussions.

I arrived on the bottom this morning, and overheard individuals speaking about it on my flight from Toronto (crammed with entrepreneurs, Shopify staff and a few traders); had one individual ask me about it on the road with out prompting (the one individual I ended and talked to on the road); and heard it mentioned first as the gang babble after which as the primary subject on a panel referred to as “A Canine’s Life: Longevity Science Will get Severe” about extending the lifespan of canines through advances in organic sciences.

That panel, that includes The Longevity Fund’s Laura Deming and Loyal’s Celine Halioua, and moderated by The Atlantic’s Andrea Valdez, kicked off with Deming apologizing to the viewers prematurely for being barely distracted as a result of she was “simply ready on a wire to switch [her fund’s] cash out of SVB” as she checked her telephone. She then proceeded to take a look at her telephone at any time when she wasn’t actively being requested a query.

Halioua adopted that instantly by commiserating along with her investor, saying “all morning we now have been attempting to determine the place the fuck to place our cash.” She later additionally joked that the improvements her firm is creating stand to “compound over time, similar to the curiosity that I’ll now not be getting on my financial institution deposits,” which rightly earned laughs from the gang. Halioua wasn’t glued to her telephone: She was wanting down at her Apple Watch with out interruption as an alternative.

Picture Credit: Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch

Valdez did ask a query concerning the influence of the SVB collapse to kick off the panel after each panelists volunteered their very own remarks, and Deming famous that in case the viewers wasn’t conscious, this was successfully “the worst banking disaster since 2008” when it comes to the startup world.

In the event you’ve attended tech and startup conferences up to now, you realize that panelists usually by no means have their gadgets out on stage, nor are they often actively checking them if for some motive they do. That, mixed with the nervous laughter each investor and founder delivered their half-jokes with, had been really exceptional to look at.

Earlier than the session even began, totally different teams each in entrance and to my proper had been speaking about SVB, with various ranges of familiarity with the scenario. Whilst you might imagine it’s early to name this because the speak of the present — watching that form of candid nervousness onstage from established startup trade gamers, and listening to the final buzz and stress from everybody else within the room, makes it clear that this 12 months’s SXSW received’t be about something it in all probability meant to give attention to.