Josh Stoddard Photo: IC

When online retail giant Amazon decided to join Netflix and Hulu in the online original programming race, it didn't have to look further than its own tech backyard to find a world ripe for comedy.

Betas, starring newcomers Joe Dinicol, Karan Soni and Charlie Saxton as dating app entrepreneurs, explores the hyper-ambition that vibrates among the inhabitants of Northern California's Bay Area.

Tech entrepreneurs, Dinicol says, "are the ones shaping how human beings interact, and certainly the idea of our show is that they're not the best at interacting socially so it's sort of a perfect storm of an environment to have."

The first three episodes of the Josh Stoddard creation started streaming Friday and follow Amazon's first original work Alpha House, a satire about four Republican senators living together, which was rolled out earlier this month.

Like online streaming and DVD rental company Netflix, Amazon has decided it must move beyond being a distributor of shows to producing top-drawer programming of its own.

Reuters