start-ups:silicon valley

Start-Ups: Silicon Valley Ep. 8 -- the grand delusion

Last night saw some history in "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley."

Yes, given its rather tawdry ratings -- 20 percent of those of "Real Housewives," so rumor has it -- this could be the last episode ever. So the excitement was more palpable than that for the discovery of the tomb of a hitherto unknown ancient Egyptian king.

We began with grunting. Yes, Sarah (blonde lifecaster, recently recovering from not having breast cancer) and David (gay, vaguely sane) are working out.

Sarah has found a wonderful sponsor for the launch party of David's app. It's called … Read more

Silicon Valley Ep. 7: Dressed to the benigns

As "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley" staggers toward an uncertain future, it's easy to wonder that the protagonists are in a similar position.

This evening's penultimate episode began with lots of dynamic speak from these partying entrepreneurs. There was talk of the coding/entrepreneurship axis, which sounds like a very dangerous alliance indeed.

But, within seconds, we had David (gay, relatively sane) visit Sarah (blonde lifecaster) in order to find out what had happened in the last episode.

No, he clearly hadn't watched it. So here he learned that Sarah had a fight with Hermione (Brit, blonde, … Read more

Silicon Valley reality show canceled? No, no, no

It's been a hellish year.

I have experienced more disappointments than Kate Middleton in a Motel 6. I have even been told by a gnome that everything in the garden wasn't rosy.

But I never thought it would come to this: I heard a rumor that Bravo TV was going to cancel "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley."

Should your obsession with gazelle documentaries have kept you away from this opus, it involves six supposed tech entrepreneurs who go to a lot of parties and occasionally kiss each other and dance around with strap-ons.

Yes, all while trying to … Read more

Start-Ups Silicon Valley Ep. 6: Booty calls and booted dolls

Last week, we left our protagonists on "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley" hanging on the end of a strap-on.

No, wait. It was Hermione (blonde, British, boozer) who was hanging on to a strap-on at the end.

Her brother Ben (short, pretty, pretty short) was livid with her, even though it was her birthday party. One doesn't play with sex toys in front of VCs.

Not unless those sex toys are social and can entice 100 million users within a week.

Ben reveals to Hermione something more important than whether they lost $500,000 to her dildo dancing: he … Read more

Start-Ups: Silicon Valley episode 5: The birthday party favor

The other night I met someone who is utterly riveted by "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley."

It was Windsor, the stellar barperson at my local restaurant, Sushi Ran.

"Why do you like it?" I asked.

"Because it's great," was her excited reply. I probed. She insisted it was great "because it is."

I wonder how great she would have found last night's episode 5. It began with Hermione (British, blonde) embarrassed at her drunken psychotic behavior last week.

It's just the stress of getting funding, explains her brother Ben (short, pretty, … Read more

Start-Ups: Silicon Valley Ep. 4: Lose it, drink, lose it again

Those watching "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley" will have learned many things over its first three weeks.

They'll have learned that you can't get money from VCs just by knowing their phone numbers and fluttering your acronyms. They'll have learned that doing a start-up is so hard that you need to party a lot. And they'll have learned that date-cheating just isn't on if you're a lifecaster.

Last night's Episode 4 began with Sarah (fake blonde lifecaster) kissing her dog. This was presumably to make up for the fact that last week she didn't get to kiss Jay, … Read more

'Start-Ups: Silicon Valley' episode 3: A glass totally empty

I spent a little time last week trying to persuade my colleague Shara Tibken to audition for the second, New York series of "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley."

She seemed reluctant. I'm not sure whether it was the compulsory bikini shots or having to access a vast egotistical madness within that seemed to put her off.

Worryingly, viewers seem to be increasingly put off too. The Bravo Ratings site, which monitors performance, suggested that a fulsome 50,000 fewer bright young things cared to watch last week's second episode.

This led to Randi Zuckerberg, the show's executive … Read more

Silicon Valley's new show: A reality check

It's all right watching a reality show and accepting it as mere entertainment.

It's quite another thing to face that reality and decide whether the show truly reflects it.

So before sitting down to watch "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley," Bravo's real husbanding of the tech world, I went to see what these people were like face to face.

Somehow I secured a ticket to the red carpet party in a place that had a rather gray, sticky carpet in San Francisco's Marina district.

I took with me my 6-foot blonde Amazonian bodyguard, Angelina, who is … Read more

Your first adorable snippets of Silicon Valley reality show

You might decide, on viewing these two clips from the new Bravo TV show "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley" that words fail you.

Please don't be alarmed.

Words sometimes know when they have been defeated. They realize that there are occasional moments in life when they can and will have no effect.

So please just click the play buttons here and marvel, say, at the straight face of VC Dave McClure, as he examines a pitch from a couple of very beautiful people -- whose words will make up for your lack of them.

Yes, one of them finds … Read more

Silicon Valley's reality show: A new trailer of beauty

What it must be to be ugly and in tech.

What it must be to be, oh, in one's late 20s or even early 30s and be ugly and in tech.

How does anyone cope? The Valley shrinks must never go home to their VC lovers.

This obvious truth is underlined by a new trailer for Bravo TV's forthcoming reality show about Silicon Valley -- which enjoys Randi Zuckerberg as one of its producers.… Read more