Rich Inventors And Great Ideas Are Getting A Reality Series

By Nick Venable | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

silicon valleyHBO’s comedy series Silicon Valley follows a group of computer-savvy innovators living together to develop the start-up company Pied Piper, which produces a music app with a super-snazzy compression algorithm. Syfy is currently developing a real-life version of Silicon Valley called Bazillion Dollar Club, which will be about big brains turning big, sci-fi-friendly ideas into reality. I’d joke about wanting to live in the future where I could watch this show on a portable screen I can carry in my pocket, but I can already do that.

The Bazillion Dollar Club has been ordered straight to series, though it’ll only consist of six hour-long episodes. The docuseries will take place in the middle of California’s real world Silicon Valley and will center on two of the most progressive minds out there. Dave McClure is a West Virginia-born entrepreneur who worked for a series of large companies (not to mention creating one) before founding the highly successful investment-oriented company 500 Startups, which has put money into over 500 companies thus far, and has raised roughly eleventeen-jabrillion dollars. Ignite co-founder Brady Forrest is currently the vice president of hardware startup accelerator. Both men are well versed in giving money to other people to make fortunes. Not a talent I happen to share.

The series will follow these guys and their think tanks as they brainstorm where the future may be headed and how we can get there most effectively. Here’s how Syfy exec Heather Olander puts it in the press release:

The inventors that are part of Dave and Brady’s program are developing products and technology that seem like they are ripped straight from the world of sci-fi, but these innovations will be our future reality.

You’d think this would be the place where someone figured out how to make a hoverboard into a real thing, although that’s already been done, I guess. I’m intrigued by the idea of The Bazillion Dollar Club, though I expect we’ll be seeing more app-heavy innovations than lasers-on-Jupiter systems that could save us from aliens. (Billion-dollar idea, people!) But that’s almost fine, as long as it’s interesting. McClure and Forrest are super smart and smooth when they speak publicly, so I’m guessing their TV presences should be comparable.

I bet we won’t see any exchanges like this, though.

Syfy is planning on putting The Bazillion Dollar Club into production later this year, and will bring the series to viewers at some point in 2015. How much richer do you think these guys will be by then?