The popular sitcom ‘Silicon Valley’ has a fan you wouldn’t expect — Bill Gates. On Monday, headmitted his love for the showin hisblog postand shared his thoughts on the HBO show, which is a tech industry parody.
Gates sees Silicon Valley as a rare show thatcaptures life in the tech world “right.”He wrote, “If you really want to understand how Silicon Valley works today, you should watch the HBO series Silicon Valley.”
He admits thathe relates most to Richard, a character of an awkward entrepreneur played by Thomas Middleditch, “who is a great programmer but has to learn some hard lessons about managing people.”
The story revolves around Richard’s startup, Pied Piper, which develops groundbreaking technologies, deals with scheming venture capitalists and rivals with a predatory tech giant (bearing a resemblance to Microsoft or Google) who are trying to steal their technology.
Gates acknowledges that the show “exaggerates things, but like all great parodies it captures a lot of truths.” Hedoesn’t agree with one thing though— how the show portrays the small startup mostly as capable and its giant competitor Hooli as mostly inept.
He thinks thatsmall companies can be inept toobecausebig companies have the resourceswhich can create an impact. But the software giant’s co-founder also admits thathe is biasedon that point.
The Microsoft co-founder alsosuggests that his friendsin Silicon Valley shouldwatch the showand “lighten up,” but they refuse to watch the show asthey think it makes fun of them. But he tells them that they should watch it “because they don’t make any more fun of us than we deserve.”
Gates also mentioned a fewbooks in his post that nail the spirit of Silicon Valleysuch as “Fire in the Valley,” by Michael Swaine and Paul Freiberger, and a pair by Walter Isaacson — “Steve Jobs” and “The Innovators.”
