Silicon Valley has a history of being disconcertingly close to its subject. One tech employee angrily called executive producer Alec Berg to complain about the lack of women in the show's depiction of TechCrunch only to learn that the footage was from the actual event. The line between the show and the industry it satirizes may have fully blurred in "Not Hotdog," an app ostensibly developed by Silicon Valley character Jian-Yang as part of SeeFood, a Shazam for food. (Eventually, "Not Hotdog" is used to tell whether or not a dick is on a screen.) The SeeFood concept isn't even that comic—a real app in 2011 tried to do the same thing, relying on underpaid workers standing in for artificial intelligence.

If Silicon Valley's bad startup pitches can get made by HBO or by real startups, why not mine other sources of bad ideas? We got on the phone with Martin Starr, who plays the show's resident Satanist curmudgeon Gilfoyle, to run him through some ideas from popular Facebook group One Sentence Startup Pitches. Which are real, which are fake, and which receive the all-important Martin Starr VC investment?

"No, definitely not. Not interested. Not—no."

Is there an elastic strap on the baby's head, so it changes the shape of their soft skull?

"As if babies aren't annoying enough, you're going to put aviators on them to make them seem like douchebags when they're crying? Look, I like babies—I don't want to send the wrong impression—babies are cool, man. Are we going to get them mini-Harley Davidsons, too?

I'm not investing. If I know dogs, they're happier outside than inside. So I would let the dogs enjoy a night in the grass on the way home to their families. Plus there's no financial stake. No investment in that company is coming back.

Eh, that already exists. Maybe an app to help buffalos who are afraid of everything become more resilient and strong, called Buffalo Chicken. There was one already on there called Buffalo Chicken but it wasn't the right version. If you're going to use it, use it! That's what I say. "If you're going to use it, comma, use it, exclamation point." That's our motto.

HBO

That's a tiny favor. Unless you have someone like family coming into town, having somebody pick you up from the airport isn't something I want anyone else to do for me, and I don't particularly want to do it for other people. I like to be alone in the car on my way home from the airport, it's nice. We're getting off-topic. There's a huge cost issue, because you've got to rent land for the monuments to be on, unless you're talking about a really tiny monument. And even then, the cost of land in any big city is gonna be high price.

That exists. Eh, it's just, it feels like reusable condoms to me. Those feel like they're in the same vein—in fact, it might be the same person coming up with both of them. And I enjoy licking the cheese off my fingers at the end of the cheeto bag. And if you're asking, Flaming Hot Cheetos are the only way to go.

For nocturnal animals? Now that, I like. I would invest…. I think you have to have a separate zoo with just the nocturnal animals attached to the other zoo, and just have the zoo be open 24 hours a day.

And it has a club attached, so you can rave with the bats.

[Untz untz untz]

Is that an investment?

That's a "hell, yeah."

I don't know, I'd have to see it in action. It's a little scary, because of the difference between massive cutting blades for grass and a suction machine. It'd have to be the size of a lawn mower. You have no handle on the lawn mower, and it somehow gets the parameters of your lawn—you put up the fake fence, so the machine knows the edges.

Meh. No. If you don't get it, you don't get it. That's just how humor works. You're not going to figure out the reference and then be like, "Oh, now I get this!" You missed it. You already missed it. It's long gone. But I do think Shazam for quotes would be good. Because people misquote all the time.

You're looking for hot roommates?

No, it just asks you questions and has a match percentage, like, "How often do you take out the trash without being asked?"

Oh, that's good. But people could lie. So I don't know how effective it would actually be, but it's a good idea. I don't think there would be a lot of unclean people admitting how dirty and messy they are. Although maybe someone would want to find another messy person so they're both happy, but most of the time messy people don't want to be messy. They prefer that the house is clean, they just don't want to do the work.

HBO

Do you have any ideas for these yourself?

I feel like most of the ways I want to challenge myself aren't inside my phone. I feel like I veer more away from technology than toward it. I'm a little scared of the direction we're going, to be honest. It feels like a sci-fi novel from the '50s, the way we can control everything and the solitude we each have in our own little bubbles, and yet we feel like we have social interactions. We're moving in a weird direction, at least.

Is that something that gives you pause, working on a show about the people developing those tools?

Maybe, just because these questions are a part of my life. But I also can avoid dealing with them however I see fit—I don't have to be on social media, it's not in my contract. HBO is very welcoming to being more active on social media, but there's no pressure to do it, which is really nice. I can kind of do it at my own pace, and sometimes I don't want to do it. It feels a lot like message boards when the internet first happened.

Maybe this is dating myself here, but I remember when I found the first message boards and was messaging on them, people were just living in a make believe fantasy land, because there were no consequences to their actions. So people present an idea of a human being, as opposed to themselves. And of course, we have someone in office who lives on that motto, doing whatever they please in whatever moment, with little attempt at honesty.

What were those message boards?

I was like 13, so I was probably exploring my exploring my sexuality and asking "are there girls on the internet?" So I was waiting 20 minutes for a .jpeg of a black-and-white, very pixelated naked woman from Playboy to appear. That's the era of the internet I remember. I did meet someone on those message boards in real life, and she was not a fake human being. I met her at a Buddhist meeting like a year later.

Was that a meaningful relationship?

Yeah, I think we were friends for a bit. It was definitely awkward, as is the nature of all young relationships, friendship or otherwise—and that was just a friendship. I'm sure in real life I was not as appealing as she had hoped, but she was nice, and we were friends for a bit.

So you're looking for a pitch for an internet polygraph?

Well, what if there was the quotes thing mixed with Twitter, so if you're typing that the Earth is 112 miles around, it can fact-check it as you're saying it, so you know, and anyone who reads it knows, that something is fake.

There are people who are trying stuff like that, but then you just have fights over what is and is not "certifiable" as bullshit.

Maybe it could just automatically check stuff, eventually using sources that are reliable.

So it eventually becomes a tendentious Skynet?

Exactly. I would invest in that.

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