Silicon Valley: Startup Satire

It took me a while to warm up to it, but six episodes in, I've become a wholehearted fan of HBO's Silicon Valley. The satire, which started out a bit too broad for my liking, has become much more precise and incisive over the past few episodes, leading to explosively hilarious half hours every Sunday night.

The series follows a group of men who are navigating the tricky waters of establishing a successful startup in the hyper-competitive world of Silicon Valley. Our hero is Richard Hendriks (Thomas Middleditch), an unassuming software developer who works at a Google-like corporation called Hooli and unwittingly develops a compression algorithm that could become the next big thing. After getting caught up in a bidding war, Richard chooses to take a startup investment from eccentric billionaire Peter Gregory (Christopher Evan Welch), instead of selling his algorithm to his boss at Hooli. After making this momentous decision, he is faced with the harsh realities of managing a tech startup. He is a software developer, not a businessman, and as CEO of Pied Piper (the much-ridiculed name he gave to his company), he quickly learns that he's in over his head.

Richard lives in a "tech incubator" owned by Erlich Bachman (T. J. Miller), a loud stoner who sold his great idea and now runs this incubator with the deal that he owns 10% of any idea that his tenants come up with. He isn't helpful in terms of tech or business savvy, but he turns into Richard's spokesman, projecting a confident brash belief in Pied Piper that Richard sorely lacks. Richard's colleagues are the moody Satanist, Bertram Gilfoyle (Martin Starr), the sarcastic Pakistani, Dinesh Chugtai (Kumail Nanjiani), and the painfully awkward Donald "Jared" Dunn (Zach Woods), who is the only one with any business sense. Richard's best friend is Nelson "Big Head" Bighetti (Josh Brener), but he is quickly kicked out the company when everyone realizes he has no programming skills. Hooli hires him as a potential spy into Pied Piper's operations who could reverse-engineer the algorithm, only to discover they've made a massive mistake. While Richard feverishly works on turning Pied Piper into a viable company, Big Head just has to kick back at Hooli with the other "unassigned" employees, waiting until his contract expires so he can vest his stock options. 

The show is never funnier than when it tackles a very specific problem that highlights the absurdities of the modern business world. In one episode, Erlich is in search of someone to design the perfect company logo, a project that is destined to go disastrously wrong. Questions of corporate culture and management style plague the company: they're just a group of guys who code, what do they know about business plans and delegating tasks? After getting the investment from Peter Gregory, Richard discovers he can't even cash the check because it is made out to Pied Piper, a company name that is already registered in California by a man with a successful sprinkler business. 

Silicon Valley is a tale of awkward geniuses who set out to live the dream and end up in a startup nightmare. The first season is just eight episodes, allowing for a concentrated dose of weekly tech humor and heart. It's an excellent companion piece to the political satire of Veep, and should become a staple of your Sunday night TV line-up. So if you haven't been watching Silicon Valley, log on to HBO Go and get started.