Striving to be as real as possible, more like in King of the Hill rather than Beavis and Butthead, Mike Judge’s upcoming Silicon Valley TV show mixes in healthy doses of real startup life. That means TechCrunch Disrupt plays a big role in the show. And I guess that means you could be on the show too if you attended Disrupt SF last year.
Bits and pieces of Disrupt can be seen in the behind the scenes video embedded here.
A source familiar with the show tells me the last two episodes revolve around the show’s startup, Pied Piper, competing in Disrupt SF. Apparently they make it to the finals since he tells me they pitch twice. Even better, Jason Kincaid plays himself during these scenes.
It’s true Mike Judge’s team attended Disrupt SF last year. They wanted to see first hand how startups operate and the pains they go through to pitch their life’s work to thousands of people.
Silicon Valley premieres on HBO on April 6th and the show’s Tumblr, which will probably be packed with taglines from the characters, launches on March 24.
Matt Burns is a longtime technology journalist, now Editorial Director at Insight Media Group and formerly Managing Editor at TechCrunch. At Insight Media Group, he guides coverage and contributor programs across fast-growing tech publications. Before that, he spent 15+ years at TechCrunch, rising from contributor to Managing Editor, helping scale the newsroom and program Disrupt’s stages and TechCrunch’s other events. Earlier, he also wrote for Engadget. Matt co-founded the Resilience Conference, an event series at the intersection of defense, security, and startup innovation. There he builds agendas, hosts sessions, and launched “Launch @ Resilience,” a showcase for early-stage teams building nation-defending technology. Across roles, he’s reported on and moderated conversations in AI, mobility, frontier tech, and the hard problems technology companies face. He’s interviewed world leaders, top investors, startup founders, and public-company CEOs. Lifelong Michiganian with plenty of Silicon Valley miles, he brings Midwest empathy and an editor’s eye. Offstage, he works with teams to sharpen narrative and validate go-to-market plans, and, when possible, camping along Lake Michigan.