TV

HBO smash ‘Silicon Valley’ tackles startup culture

Ever since HBO’s “Silicon Valley” premiered last month, it’s become a parlor game among the tech media to debate the accuracy of the Mike Judge comedy’s satire of startup culture, from the uniform of its characters to the Valley’s “change the world” ethos.

And as with every satire, not everyone appreciates the way they’re portrayed — but the “Silicon Valley” stars insist it’s an homage, not a critique.

Thomas Middleditch and Josh Brener star in “Silicon Valley.”Jaimie Trueblood

“The purpose of the show isn’t to take Silicon Valley down a peg,” says star Thomas Middleditch. “Why you want to watch the show is you want to watch these guys struggle, essentially going from rags to riches.”

Middleditch plays Richard, who invents a file-compression algorithm called Pied Piper that sparks a bidding war in Silicon Valley. The first season follows him, his blowhard business partner Erlich (T.J. Miller) and the rest of their motley crew of programmers as they endeavor to turn Pied Piper into a viable business to present at the TechCrunch Disrupt startup conference.

In a bit of life imitating art, Miller and Middleditch spoke at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York this week — and saw the fictionalized world of their show validated by reality.

“We had been exposed to the HBO ‘Silicon Valley’ fake version of this, where they had sort of set it up to satirize that, and now [we’re] at the real version in New York City and it’s f–king weird,” Miller says over drinks at the Refinery Hotel. “It’s very similar to what we were satirizing.”

The show, in fact, is partially inspired by Judge’s experience as a Silicon Valley engineer in the late 1980s, and Middleditch — who met Miller 10 years ago on the Chicago comedy scene — considered pursuing computers as a career when acting wasn’t panning out.

That’s all history now that “Silicon Valley” is averaging 5.4 million viewers per episode and HBO has already renewed it for Season 2 — a success its stars credit to the show zeroing in on a culturally relevant topic that is ripe for satire.

“There is this strange moment where people do understand what an algorithm is, what apps are,” Miller says. “They’re reading about Snapchat turning down the offer for billions of dollars from Facebook.”

“What kind of world begs to be taken seriously when they turn down $3 billion?” adds Middleditch. “If you’re like, ‘We don’t deserve any satire or parody,’ I think maybe you do. You just turned down a country’s wealth.”

T.J. Miller and Thomas Middleditch star in “Silicon Valley.”Jaimie Trueblood

With three episodes left to air this season, writers have yet to start tackling a narrative arc for Season 2, but the stars say it will likely deal with the next stage of their fledgling start-up and how success impacts their group dynamic.

“Even if they get more money, that’s mo’ money, mo’ problems,” Middleditch says. “There’s that conflict and that struggle and that mounting pressure that’s never going to end, that’s the crux of the show.”