New series about Silicon Valley | Hacker News Reader

New series about Silicon Valley

kickstarter.com

56 pointsfapi197429 comments

If you want to make a series on "The Valley", why don't you just do it? Looks like you already have the cameras, audio and editing equipment. Putting it up as a web series would be pretty cheap/free. If it's good, you'll attract an audience and you can make money on it.

Asking for $25,000 on Kickstarter doesn't compute with me. If you were really scrappy, you'd already be doing it.

I've spoken with a lot of people about this, and the most compelling thing for me about going the Kickstarter route is that you can really test out the audience for your idea, and hopefully create a group of people who have a vested interest in seeing it succeed. There are so many stories of guys who quit their day jobs to produce a web series - which believe me costs much more to produce than you'd think - and end up way out of pocket with something that doesn't rate and/or can't be sold. I actually really want to tell these stories and I can certainly do it in an efficient way, but I'd definitely like to break even!

I would pay if I could see a sample of what I was getting, i.e., the finished polished first episode.

Free money you never have to pay back.

Isn't that sort of true of any Kickstarter project? There's an inherent leap of faith in supporting anyone's efforts. I suppose I never say it in the pitch, and perhaps I should, but all of the money would be spent on production - writing, actors, location permits, etc. I assumed that was a given but perhaps I should go back and edit it. Would you be concerned I was going to run off with the money based on what I've filmed and or written?

Sorry, yes. It was a reply to "why use kickstarter?". I guess to put it another way would be "risk mitigation".

But it's a free market, if people are willing to pay into the project, then more power to you. Good luck I say!

Although, I'd be interested to hear the legal side of handing out "shares" in a project like this...I've never seen that done before.

Oh the shares are for fun only - is that not clear? I'll put in a disclaimer right away - good catch!

"Evita is the street-smart, smoking-hot hipster"

Sigh.

Do we REALLY need any more fetishization of startups and founders? When did entrepreneurship become a spectator sport?

And, why go to Kickstarter? I'd be weary to invest in anything startup related that can't find real funding... its not hard for someone who's "done a bunch of startups."

I certainly don't view it that way. To me it's simply focusing on something that many people are interested in today - entrepreneurship and founder culture. And I definitely disagree with the "it's not hard [to raise money]" argument - that's why Kickstarter exists!

I know Fernando, and I'm hopeful that this will be a very cool project that could further spur entrepreneurship in the US. The key will be to demonstrate not just the successes, but the toil too! I hope it's not just a glamorized view of Silicon Valley. There is so much selection bias via TechCrunch and whatnot that I think so many people think it's all "champaign wishes and caviar dreams." This could be a real opportunity for people to see what really goes into building a startup, not the Social Network. Knowing Fernando, he'll do a great job. Good luck!

Definitely - in fact I'm doing these daily founder vignettes on the fundraising page itself - and the one I focused on today was a founder who kept grinding away for 8 months just to find a co-founder. I'd be remiss if I didn't tell both sides of the story - but that's the challenge and also why I want to do it!

It's a great day to be a new HN account.

Yeah - my wife and a couple of her friends got a bit overzealous - I had to ask them to delete a couple of comments.

Unfortunately, nothing in that trailer convinced me that he can make a series with the same tone and sense of humor as Entourage. I think posting a trailer for the series would be helpful.

Yes - this has come up in comments a couple of times - I think I explained it before, but we discussed the "pitch" versus the "trailer" and it seemed like most Kickstarter projects went the "pitch" route.

This is the official launch of the project - there was a previous thread where I was gathering stories for the project here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3220610

Don't you mean official relaunch?

This sounds really similar to Bootstrap - http://watchbootstrap.com

It looks like it is! Let a million flowers bloom...

I remember seeing this project on kickstarter a while back. Does anyone know if it's the same group of people?

Yes, it is. My old pitch video was me talking into a webcam - which wasn't really awesome. People liked the idea, but they advised that I demonstrate more ability to pull a team together and actually produce something. So I canceled it and relaunched it.

Ugh.

great idea! can't wait to see the first episode!

whoa, looks cool! entourage meets the office - I can see the stories already. There's so many interesting personalities here in San Fran, so I see lots of potential for character driven comedy.

we'd like it to be substantive as well as cool. not sure if you noticed, but we had all sorts of inside jokes in the pitch itself - you should read some of the post its!

I like the concept but I couldn't even watch the whole promo video. I get the impression the show would be like the pitch video (which is the hard thing about pitching video with video) in which case I definitely would never watch it. If the show would be more substantive, I would ditch the inside jokes and make the pitch closer to what the show would be like.

We struggled with this - in the end we decided on the little sizzle in front that didn't really show faces, and me doing the pitch. It seemed to be a common way to do things in Kickstarter - and since the production quality is good we figured that's enough to demonstrate ability. So far so good, at least!

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