Tech industry elite and the scruffy actors who portray them clinked drinks Friday evening at a lively premiere party for the hit HBO sitcom Silicon Valley.
In a mid-Market loft calling to mind startup headquarters — complete with exposed brick — HBO hosted a party to toast the second season of Silicon Valley, which depicts six young men s quest to create the next killer company in the frothy tech industry. Dining on miniature burritos and tacos, tech legends such as Craigslist founder Craig Newmark mixed and mingled with the Emmy-nominated cast before taking in two new episodes of the show.
Before the lights dimmed for the screening, producer Alec Berg acknowledged the challenges of presenting a show about life in the tech industry to a roomful of the people who know it best. But he suggested that the process of creating a TV show was not so different from launching a startup.
We will do a pilot the same way that you do a beta, he told the crowd.
Show creator Mike Judge, who drew from his experiences as a Silicon Valley engineer in the 1980s, sounded wistful about his departure from the valley.
I think I f***** up, he said. I should have stayed here.
With that, the team began screening the show that occasioned Judge s return to the valley. As Chuck Barney of the Bay Area News Group noted, the success of the show s first season has ratcheted up expectations for the second installment. But the first two episodes at least appeared to win over the crowd, who laughed uproariously as a founder of the fictitious startup belittled venture capitalists to prod them to invest more.
After the screening, technology journalist Kara Swisher quizzed a panel of actors and other creatives about their experiences working on the show and their views on technology.
Notably absent from the group was actor T.J. Miller, who plays a co-founder of the startup Pied Piper at the center of the show. As VentureBeat noted, Miller caused a stir in the valley earlier this year when he hosted the crunchies, delivering a routine that aroused controversy for its depiction of women. HBO s official explanation was that Miller could not make the premiere because he was on vacation, according to VentureBeat.
Above: Silicon Valley actors pose during the filming of season 2 (Twitter).
