Silicon Valley Eats Itself

There’s a mythology around startups that I find genuinely appealing—the idea that you can write some code and change the world, that the right algorithm in the right garage matters. But there’s also the other side, which is mostly just money and ego dressing itself up in innovation language. Mike Judge made a show about that collision, and it’s funny because he’s not exaggerating much.

Silicon Valley follows Richard Hendrix and his small team through the startup machinery. They have a lossless compression algorithm that works. Now everyone wants a piece of them—VCs, mentors, other companies. The machinery activates. Everyone’s looking for the next big thing, which is to say everyone’s looking for a return on money they had lying around.

What makes the show work is that it’s being made inside the exact world it’s satirizing. Judge isn’t mocking some distant industry; he’s pointing a camera at the room he’s in. The specificity is brutal. How these people actually talk, move, think. How innovation becomes pure ritual.

I watched the first episode expecting to enjoy it as satire, and I did. But I’m also curious whether he can keep the show focused on something real—the actual texture of startup people and their logic—or whether it’ll just become a series of guest stars and in-jokes. So far he seems to know what he’s doing.