Can Community Banks Survive the Next SVB? | ModernFi CEO Paolo Bertolotti and Former Comptroller Gene Ludwig

The a16z Podcast • November 20, 2025

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The former bank regulator who invented deposit networks just revealed why SVB's collapse was inevitable—and why the solution that could have saved them is finally being rebuilt. Gene Ludwig ran the OCC during the Clinton administration, created a half-trillion-dollar market solving a problem his Aunt Betty faced riding buses between banks, then watched his invention fail to save Silicon Valley Bank because the technology, economics, and incentives were fundamentally broken. Now he's partnered with Paolo and ModernFi to build what could become America's eighth systemically important financial utility: a bank-owned consortium that's signing 25 institutions per week and racing to protect the 4.8 trillion in uninsured deposits that make the next crisis inevitable.

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