Bill Gates says “Silicon Valley” Captures a lot of Truths

While some people in the real-world Silicon Valley think that HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” the network’s long-running satire, is too critical of the tech industry, Microsoft’s multi-billion dollar co-founder disagrees.  In fact, in a new blog entry, Bill Gates puts it bluntly: lighten up.

“I have friends in Silicon Valley who refuse to watch the show because they think it’s just making fun of them,” writes Gates. “I always tell them: ‘You really should watch it, because they don’t make any more fun of us than we deserve.'”

“Silicon Valley,” which is going into its sixth season, details the adventures of Pied Piper, a data compression startup that can’t quite seem to catch a break. It also follows Gavin Belson, the CEO of Google-esque mega-corp Hooli, who allegedly borrows attributes from real-life execs including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Oracle founder Larry Ellison.

In his blog entry, Gates says that he’s one of the many tech execs who were consulted by Mike Judge, the show’s creator, to ensure authenticity.   Gates writes that all of that effort paid off, as the show is an accurate lampooning of the types of people and companies that he knows so well. He says that he identifies the most with Richard Hendricks, the founder of Pied Piper, “who is a great programmer but has to learn some hard lessons about managing people.”

Although he does take umbrage at the show’s depiction of Hooli, the Goliath to Pied Piper’s David, as bloated and inept, he admits that one might hit a little close to home. “Although I’m obviously biased, my experience is that small companies can be just as inept, and the big ones have the resources to invest in deep research and take a long-term point of view that smaller ones can’t afford.”

“The show is a parody, so it exaggerates things, but like all great parodies it captures a lot of truths,” writes Gates.

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