You're fired! No – you're acquired! Reality TV hits Silicon Valley startups

First, Trump with The Apprentice. Now, Jason Calacanis in San Francisco

First comes satire then something that makes satire impossible.

To be fair, it's been a long time coming, but Silicon Valley is about to gets its own reality TV show and it's going to star Jason Calacanis.

Who? You know, Jason Calacanis, the poor man's Marc Cuban. And it's a good choice, since Jason embodies everything that is truly ludicrous about this tiny part of California.

Just like Cuban, Calacanis has become immensely rich despite having no discernable talent beyond being part of a self-contained world with too much money and having an unfathomable confidence in his own brilliance.

Both Cuban and Calacanis made fortunes by cashing in on the idiocy of the dotcom boom's two biggest names: AOL and Yahoo! Cuban sold Broadcast.com – which did nothing more than stream radio over the internet – for $5.7bn to Yahoo!; Calacanis did less well but still raked it in by selling publishing tool Weblogs – which wasn't very good or useful either – to AOL for $30m.

Since then, both of them have made more money by investing in a long series of failing startups and then very occasionally putting money into one that became successful.

Investments

Cuban notable successes include IceRocket, toilet-seat maker Brondell, Goowy Media and Motionloft – the latter resulting in an insider trading investigation.

Calacanis has been much more prolific, having invested in roughly 100 startups with such household names as gdgt, Gowalla, Blippy, Backupify, Boxbee, Thumbtack, NewHound, StyleSeat, Wanderfly, Pen.io, Red Tricycle, HandUp, Mouth – we swear we're not making this up – Swell Radio, Brilliant, Ramen, Calm, Frequency, Fresh, Backyard, Birdi, Red Clay, Skift, WizzyWig, SpaceMonkey and StorkBrokers.

But along the way he also managed to invest in Uber and Tumblr. And we know that because he has never spoken for longer than five minutes without mentioning the fact.

Both Cuban and Calacanis have also invested in new journalism ventures with miserable results. And Cuban invested in Calacanis' Weblogs.

But while Cuban has been mercilessly lampooned in satirical comedy Silicon Valley as angel investor Russ Hanneman, Calacanis has yet to make the hallowed halls of being so ridiculous that he is worth putting on TV as a punchline. Until now, that is.

Everything you need

Calacanis himself reveals numerous exciting facts about the not-yet formally announced reality TV series, including the fact that he has "turned down a dozen offers to do a show over the past decade," and that it will be "the most authentic show ever created about Silicon Valley and startups, because, well, I came up with the concept of the show myself."

What does being "authentic" mean to Jason? He tells us!

"As part of making it authentic, I insisted on a half-dozen elements. I get to pick all the startups, the judges, the winner, and the location where the show will take place, San Francisco. This ensures that the show won't turn into some trite, insulting version of what we all do for a living."

Yes, we know – everyone can see it except him! Isn't that what makes reality TV fun?!

In fact, it's not hard to see why Calacanis has been hand-picked for this excruciating entertainment. He has all you need in a reality TV star:

• Overwhelming sense of his own brilliance, despite the evidence otherwise? Check.
• Tendency to argue first and think second? Check.
• Inexplicable wealth that has only served to feed his worst tendencies? Check.
• A certain sense of desperation that can be wonderfully exploited for filmable drama? Check.

It's going to be great.

And we would rather have our eyes plucked out than endure any of it. ®