Trailer for Bravo's Start-Ups: Silicon Valley | Hacker News Reader

Trailer for Bravo's Start-Ups: Silicon Valley

bravotv.com

26 pointsfinisterre49 comments

This show had some potential but instead it's just another reality tv junk show--except this time it's about "us". Now I know what people in Jersey feel like.

IMO one of the larges inhibitors of entrepreneurship is a lack of confidence that is instilled by the education system. A thoughtful show about Silicon Valley could show how people from all different walks of life come here to build their dreams. It could inspire kids interested in technology to learn, it could show them that all you really need is an internet connection. Instead it shows that the typical tech entrepreneur is white(-ish), good-looking, outgoing and a party animal.

IMO one of the larges inhibitors of entrepreneurship is a lack of confidence that is instilled by the education system.

No, I think it's that most people can't afford to work for free for months at a time, and very few people are born into the kind of VC connections that make that a positive-expectancy move.

For people who don't have EIR gigs to go back into, startup failure is really unpleasant and can take a long time to recover (career and savings-wise) from.

None of these people have real-seeming connections either (check out the sfist story on the cast and look at their previous "startups").

Moments later edit

And who are these people with the "EIR" backup plans that you're thinking of? The "EIR's" I've met have all been former successful founders who are simply being effectively pre-funded. That's not some class privilege; it's an additional perk of having won in the past, and it's not one of the bigger perks.

True. I'm guessing they value their time less than we do. They don't strike me as "real" anything. Just overprivileged wankers playing around.

Wondering how much these people value their time is like wondering how much the Jersey Shore cast values the soil quality in New Jersey. It's a reality TV show.

I agree with you but we're talking about two different things.

My point was about teenagers trying to figure out what to do with their life. I came to Silicon Valley from another country with no connections and definitely no means from back home. Obviously part of being an entrepreneur at a young age is being able to deliver enough value to an employer to always land back on your feet.

That's not what's holding somebody who has been told throughout all their life that they'll never accomplish anything back, though.

"A thoughtful show about Silicon Valley could show "

The purpose of this TV show is to sell advertising and make money for the network. Nothing more than that. That's their (Bravo's) business model. And they are executing it brilliantly. Many of their shows are tremendously popular and have inspired spinoffs as well.

> The purpose of this TV show is to sell advertising

so it's just like most startups?

zing!

Fantastic: everything I hate about TV, combined with everything I hate about the industry I work in.

I've met one of the people in the show and I think it's fair to say that this is about the tech industry in the same way that a show featuring publishing PR agents is a show about writing books- which is to say, not at all.

Should the situation arise, I will actively avoid working with anyone 'starring' in this show.

A model, an up-and-coming film impresario, 4 social media marketers, and (I think) this guy:

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dw5ight

One assumes he's the one shouting "Negative cycles? Bellmans algorithm or Dyson's?!"

Dwight cofounded Carsabi, which acqui-failed into Facebook presumably after getting zorched with C&Ds from Craigslist. So you have Craigslist to blame for this show too; if Carsabi hadn't taken off, who'd be writing the code on this show? DAMN YOU AGAIN, CRAIG NEWMARK!!!1!1!

To Dwight's (I've met him a few times, too. He actually seems like a clever guy) credit, it sounds like he said Dijkstra ;) Just goes to show how little the producers of the show care about the "techy stuff".

Yes, he said Dijkstra. He's a FoaF, the mutual friend is a coworker of mine, and this was the topic du jour in one of our IRC channels this afternoon. The context for the discussion was trying to determine whether he was too drunk to math, or needed another drink.

Well if you're going to have negatively weighted vertices, Dijkstra's algorithm is out of the picture from the start :)

Depending on your use-case, you can often just add the value of the largest negative edge weight (pair of vertices, not a vertex) to all weights and use a simple algorithm like Dijkstra

Interesting- thanks! In what cases can't we do that? (ie. why did Ford and Bellman bother at all?)

In a use case where you don't actually need a shortest path?

Or if you know the path will be a constant numbers of edges, I guess, otherwise adding weights would bias the algorithm toward fewer hops.

>One assumes he's the one shouting "Negative cycles? Bellmans algorithm or Dyson's?!"

I'm assuming he's talking about shortest-path algorithms here (and actually referring to the Ford-Bellman algorithm)— anyone have info about the Dyson algorithm he's referring to?

Never heard of it and googling wields nothing.

I assume he was thinking of Dijkstra's algorithm.

I assume he crossed Dijkstra's algorithm with the Dyson sphere.

Relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh3U7C0xLW4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exmwSxv7XJI

More seriously I wonder why random signals that appear to be noise but if noticed are actually quite pertinent to predicting trends have such a great effect on people.

Example follows:

Kennedy later claimed he knew the rampant stock speculation of the late 1920s would lead to a crash. It is said that he knew it was time to get out of the market when he received stock tips from a shoe-shine boy

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_P._Kennedy,_Sr.

For example if my mom came to me with an investment decision my response would be a big fat no - might even go out and look at it for a short. If my hairdresser recommended a stock to me - I'd feel immediately like selling. These are by definition low signal events that should be classified as pure noise - but they seem to be a rather useful thought model.

So party like it's 1997 - get in and get out.

I was squatting in the office hermine and her crew were in while some of this was filming, and it was absolutely fascinating to peer over the shoulder of the director and P/A's, and see just how much of this was scripted and the various re-takes and whatnot.

You always have this feeling about "reality TV" that it's fake, but it was rather eye opening to see it firsthand.

Yeah, they pretty much all have some degree of scripting. The best shows sort of create the situations they want and then make the show in the editing room. The worst just write the whole thing out.

I fully plan on avoiding this until it goes away. Considering the fact that they'll completely miss both the uneducated reality TV audience (too much nerdiness) and the nerd audience (no need for explanation), I don't plan on that taking too long.

"uneducated reality TV audience "

Why do you feel that the audience for reality TV is "uneducated"?

I know of people who went to Ivy League schools, have medical degrees, are professors, teachers, professionals who watch and enjoy reality tv.

What about people who watch sports? Do you want to lump the beer drinking tailgaters (who may be educated actually) with others who may enjoy watching sports? Is there anything intellectual about that? Is there anything intellectual about watching anything that is purely entertainment on TV?

A lot of people who deny watching this stuff watch it.

Big Brother US just finished its 14th season. Jersey Shore is in season 6. Real Housewives Of Orange County going into season 7. Somebody's out there watching it.

Having said that, this does look particularly light weight. The appeal of Silicon Valley in the tv sense is the money, but these will be people without money. The promo makes it look like a show about wannabes on the party circuit. I guess that might work, but if I were doing that kinda show I'd aim at Hollywood or maybe NY.

You can have no viewers with IQ over 100, and still have 100 million people in your addressable market.

I never said that was the whole audience, that's just the part of the audience they'll miss.

I think I threw up in my mouth a little.

duh - every character is white. fail. one of the women is slightly Indian looking but still.

It's not TV, it's Silicon Valley in truth.

Discrimination by start-ups is enshrined in law. If you are a racist, you don't like old people, or you don't like Jews - no problem until you have 15 employees.

Fire your pregnant employees at will, crack down on sodomy - the start-up world is your discriminatory oyster: http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/coverage_private.cfm

California does have a law that tightens things up a bit, called FEHA. You only need 5 employees in California before you need to start treating people as you should: http://mccabeconsultants.com/forms/ADA%20Chart.pdf

I kid a bit in this post, but the limits on these laws are a two-edged sword. I think small companies can be crippled by pregnancies, and having the threat of a lawsuit about age discrimination can mess with your mind on hiring the right people. You can also imagine that a Hacedic markets should be run by Hacedic Jews. But there is certainly some amount of bad consequences from the limits on these laws, and a few too many white people running start-ups.

It's 2012, not 1970. CS majors from Berkeley and Stanford don't have lily white friends or peer groups.

Although as far as I can tell, white guys in boatshoes only know other white guys in boatshoes.

What's a Haced?

He means Hasid and Hasidic Judaism. They're a more conservative branch, and are known for their traditional clothing.

It's 2012 not 1970, I'm always amazed when people won't google something before asking a question.

Yes. THAT'S the fail.

They're also too thin, with a confusingly even gender ratio.

And all good looking. It's almost like it's a TV show.

I feel like everyone would be willing to tune in to watch neckbeards and turtlenecks shout at each other about whitespace conventions.

> While trying to find balance amidst their complicated social network they discover that in the fast paced world of Silicon Valley success and failure can come and go with just a simple keystroke.

oh the drama

> There's the bloggers, the engineers, then the investors. None of it would work if there wasn't each part.

One of these things is not like the others.

I'm confused by that statement in the video. From my experience bloggers don't have the same level of importance as investors and engineers do.

Can anyone explain how bloggers are so necessary that "none of it would work if there wasn't each part?"

Sometimes people say things on television that are not true.

mind=blown

37signals? Patio11? Tech crunch?

This show is the air that inflates tech bubbles.

Or the pin that pops it.

I hate this trailer too, but I bet some of that is because it makes my illusion of individuality shrink.

Video overloaded? or region locked? "This content is currently unavailable" - Australia

Punch me in the mother fucking face.

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