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By Bloomberg

The HBO comedy Silicon Valley isn't just a hit — it's especially popular in the world that it lampoons. That's something, given how merciless some of the jokes are. Even Google Inc. co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were spotted wearing T-shirts of Hooli and Pied Piper, the fictional tech giant and disruptive startup that battle each other in the show.

It turns out that creator Mike Judge and executive producer Alec Berg are eager for approval from real-life tech royalty. As the series continues its second season, I sat down with Judge, best known as the guy behind Office Space and Beavis & Butthead, and Berg, formerly a top writer on Seinfeld. We talked about all the research that goes into getting the show right, bubbles and "haters" like Elon Musk. Here’s a portion of our conversation airing on Bloomberg Television's Studio 1.0.

When you ask doctors about Grey's Anatomy, they always say, "Oh god, it's nothing like that." What do you want engineers to say about Silicon Valley? How important is it to you to get it right?

Mike Judge:We've gotten a lot of people saying that we've gotten it right for the most part. That's what we want.

Alec Berg: We try and get the technical details right. We do a lot of research and we have a lot of consultants who ask a lot of questions. But I think it's also just the personality types and that world. Like, you know, Mike was an engineer. My dad's a biophysicist. My brother is a computer guy. His wife works at Microsoft. I feel like I know those personalities and he knows those personalities.

Mike Judge:I also feel like it's good if we can make the actual people who work in this world actually laugh and really enjoy it on that level, that's good, too. So far it seems like for the most part, that's been the case. I mean, there's a few haters out there.

I have to mention Elon Musk. He told Re/code, "None of those characters were software engineers. Software engineers are more helpful, thoughtful and smarter. They're weird, but not in the same way. I really feel like Mike Judge has never been to Burning Man, which is Silicon Valley. If you haven't been, you just don't get it."

Mike Judge:I have not (been to Burning Man). I mean, Elon Musk is at the top of the game here. So he might see things a little differently. I mean, I'm not gonna ever say that I know Silicon Valley better than Elon Musk. I mean, we're looking for comedy here. We're not looking to just glorify and put it all up on a pedestal.

So, who did you talk to to make sure we're getting it right, to make sure you had geek cred?

Mike Judge:Oh, lots of people. Early on, before this went to series, I didn't have quite the resources. So one of my best friends from high school, his nephew is a top programmer at Google. My old roommate from college is a biophysics guy. There's a lawyer we had a connection to who works with startups. But once we got going, I mean, we went all over the place — Google, Facebook, Yelp, Dropbox.

Larry and Sergey and Mark Zuckerberg — were they happy to talk to you?

Mike Judge:We have not met them yet.

Alec Berg: No. Although we saw that Larry and Sergey were wearing our shirts when they did the Ice Bucket Challenge. That was exciting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDIzL61H4aY

Mike Judge:Yeah, they had a Hooli and a Pied Piper shirt on.

Is it at all strange criticizing Silicon Valley from Hollywood, which is its own epicenter of anxiety and ego? You often hear entrepreneurs and CEOs say they're trying to change the world and make the world a better place. What do you think they're doing?

Mike Judge:Some of them are making the world a better place. But, it's not to say Hollywood is better, but I'm sure that the top people, successful people in Hollywood — J.J. Abrams, Chuck Lorre — aren't saying, "My shows are making the world a better place by making people laugh." You just want to make good stuff. It's just a different culture. I think they just have more money up here. That's all. But they don't flash their wealth in Silicon Valley the way they do in Hollywood, or especially the way they used to, like, 20 years ago or so.

Alec Berg: Yeah, it's a very interesting code that you can't drive a certain car because it's too pompous, but you can fly 50 of your friends to France for the weekend and have a million-dollar party.

Who in tech is most overdue for lampooning?

Mike Judge:Tom Perkins?

So what would you like to happen in the real-world Silicon Valley? In the next season, are all the unicorns going to blow up and is the bubble going to burst?

Mike Judge: We'd be taking these meetings and people would be describing deals that happened and how "50 million users from this app were worth this much and we flipped it." We found ourselves just (asking), "God, is there just a giant bubble that's about to burst here somewhere?" I would like to see the bubble not burst. I don't think that would be good for anybody.

But do you think there is one? Is there a bubble?

Alec Berg: Well, when we first started doing research for season one, one of the things we wanted to do was make it hard for them to get money to fund this company, because that's more compelling. And we kept asking people, like, "OK, what are the reasons that they couldn't get $10 million or $15 million in funding?" And most of the people we talked to kept saying, "Oh, there's no reason." We're, like, "Well, if you had to invent — if you made up a reason why, hypothetically, so that our show was more interesting, what would that reason be?" "Oh, no. There's no reason."

Watch Chang’s full interview with Judge and Berg on Bloomberg TV'sStudio 1.0on Thursday, May 21 at 7:30 p.m. ET or stream it at bloomberg.com/tv.