MAFIA: Method as entertainment
Founders Fund's new game show is one of the most honest portrayals of venture-backed tech I've seen—though not in the way the producers intended.
Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund recently released the first episode of MAFIA, a game show where Silicon Valley/tech insiders, such as Sam Altman and Palmer Luckey, play the eponymous game.
It’s entertaining.
It’s also one of the most honest portrayals of the venture-backed tech industry I’ve seen.
Though perhaps not in the way the producers intended.
Several things jumped out at me.
First, the name evokes the PayPal Mafia, which has seeded and shaped a large and influential share of Silicon Valley companies. Calling the show MAFIA may be an inside joke (or not, I don’t know), but it operates as a lineage claim, one that underscores the strength of the network.
Second, the show does a masterful job of cultivating an aura of proximity. A sense that you’re being invited to participate in the Inner Ring, watching the people who decide what gets built and who gets funded relax among themselves.
But you are not in the ring, and you won’t be.
To that point, look at who is in the room and who isn’t. There are no Black people. The reflex is to call this a diversity problem (it is), but this outcome is what closed networks produce. Black-founded startups received 0.32% of venture funding in 2025.
Finally, there is the game itself. Of all the games they could have played, they chose the one that elevates lying, prevarication, and the sowing of distrust as means to an end.
Look, it’s a game.
But when it’s played by an industry that preaches “fake it ‘til you make it” and sponsored by a firm that bankrolled Facebook—a social media platform that eviscerated social trust—the revealed preference is a bit too on the nose.