Silicon Valley HBO Is A Real Hit

We have already watched five episodes of HBO’s new series Silicon Valley and we think this is the right time to make a general overview of what the crazy minds behind this show are broadcasting. In the past years, movies, such as The Social Network, have inspired thousands of people in starting their own business and it was just a matter of time before someone was going to make a tv series about Entrepreneurs. The Big Bang Theory has been the first program to show the cool side of “geeks” and it was and still is a success.

Silicon Valley takes what TBBT has achieved from a different perspective. We are not at Caltech anymore, but in the richest valley of the world, where people create products and fail at the same time. The first big aspect of this tv series is the way the figure of the engineer is presented. We are in a world where we need more people who are able to create and innovate, so anyone that tries to depict this image as cool, it’s on our side.

The program underlines what has happened in Silicon Valley in the last thirty years, which is “the revenge of nerds”. Engineers are not losers anymore. Nowadays they are those who can innovate by creating interesting products that millions of people can use and that’s the image depicted in the tv series. Although the dropout generation is not particularly underlined, the inventor of Pied Piper is the classical awkward (with a bit of asperger) person that is able to build a revolutionary algorithm through his hands and mind.

In the program, the references to the actual startup world are immense. Starting from the main investor of Pied Piper, who resembles Peter Thiel and in particular the Thiel Fellowship by hating people who go to college and encouraging a new dropout generation. In the same way, the “accelerator” of Pied Pieper is run by an entrepreneur, who made a small fortune by selling its previous company, that takes inspiration from Steve Jobs and his life experiences, starting from LSD.

Further, if we look even deeper, we find a main company that wants to conquer the whole market. Although there aren’t many explicit references, the company resembles Google by the work experience and the quantity of talented people who work there. It also makes Google’s motto (don’t be evil) a joke, with the company having a dissociative identity disorder (a good and evil side).

This tv series is a must watch for anyone that is building something. You are not going to learn anything, but you are going to laugh a lot, if you know the topics covered. On the other hand, if you don’t have any background info, you’ll start understanding the dynamics behind the life of an entrepreneur in a “funny” way.

Although Elon Musk and other people in the Valley haven’t liked the way the tech world is depicted, a few days ago, I was talking with the co-founders of a young startup and they were saying that the program seemed to be the story of their startup journey. They were able to connect to the program, which shows the same difficulties and problems that any business face. In particular, the problem of making financial decisions, the way equity is split, the idea of failing, the stress and all the aspects that characterise the startup life.

Silicon Valley is a good laugh and if you want to see the world from a different and cool perspective, it’s the right thing to watch. We think this is beneficial for the community because it will encourage more people to undertake the startup life, which is going to bring more innovation and creative products.