Silicon Valley (2014) s01e01 Episode Script
Minimum Viable Product
Whoo.
Yeah.
Somebody make some motherfucking noise in here! Fuck these people.
Man, this place is unbelievable.
Fucking Goolybib, man.
Those guys build a mediocre piece of software, that might be worth something someday, and now they live here.
There's money flying all over Silicon Valley but none of it ever seems to hit us.
What the hell are you eating? Liquid shrimp.
It's 200 dollars a quart.
Wylie Dufresne made it.
How does it taste? Like how I would imagine cum tastes.
You guys taking it all in? Because this is what it looks like when Google acquires your company for over 200 million dollars.
Look Dustin Moskovitz.
Elon Musk.
Eric Schmidt.
Whatever the fuck the guy's name is who created Photrio.
I mean, Kid Rock is the poorest person here.
Apart from you guys.
Ok, there's 40 billion dollars of net worth, walking around this party.
And you guys are standing around drinking shrimp and talking about what cum tastes like.
Yeah, I heard that.
You guys live in my Incubator you've got to network.
That's why I brought you here.
I got us in here.
Javeed over there is my ex-room-mate.
Yeah, but I drove.
Eric Schmidt, Erlich Bachman.
It's amazing how the men and women at these things always separate like this.
Yeah, every party in Silicon Valley ends up like a hasidic wedding.
Not even the Goolybib guys were talking to girls.
They don't have to, Big Head.
This house talks to girls.
Hello! Whoo! I got seven words for you.
I love Goolybib's integrated- multi-platform-functionality! Yeah! Whoo! But seriously, you know, a few days ago, when we were sitting down with Barak Obama, I turned to these guys and said, "ok, you know, we're making a lot of money.
And yes, we're disrupting digital media.
But most importantly we're making the world a better place.
Through constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum code reuse and extensibility.
" So everyone.
Here's to many more nights just like this one.
Take it away, my good friend, Kid Rock.
What a dick.
Big Head, there is a personal ad section on this asperger site.
Holy shit, this one is looking for a "relationship that has the potential to become sexual in nature.
" Boy, is she on the spectrum.
She can't even make eye contact with the camera.
Richard, can I talk to you for a second? - Solo.
- Mm-hmm.
We need to talk about Pied Piper.
What about it? The website's up and running, I'm just redesigning the compression.
It just needs users.
Yeah, no shit.
But even if somebody wanted to use it they wouldn't be able to figure out how to.
It's incomprehensible.
Now, Richard, when you pitched me Pied Piper you said it was gonna be, "the Google of music.
" Which is a really rad way to pitch something.
I mean, I liked it.
I thought it had "applications".
No, it has all that.
Look, when it blows up, and it will once it reaches a critical mass of users, Pied Piper will be able to search the whole world of recorded music to find out if there's a match to see if you're infringing on any copyrighted material.
So, if you're a song writer or a band Ok, first of all, nobody gives a shit about stealing other people's music, ok? Everybody involved in the music industry is either stealing it or sharing it.
They're all a bunch of assholes, especially Radiohead.
- Look, Richard - No.
Yeah, they're assholes.
Now, look, Richard, if you want to live here, you've got to deliver.
I can't have dead weight at my Incubator, ok? Either that, or show some promise for fuck's sake.
Like NipAlert, Big Head's app.
It gives you the location of a woman with erect nipples.
Now, that's something people want.
Richard, you need to get in touch with humanity.
When I sold my company, Aviato, I wanted to give back.
That's why I started this place, to do something big.
To make a difference.
You know, like Steve.
Uh, Jobs or Wozniak? Steve Jobs or Steve Oh, I heard you.
- Which one? - Jobs.
I mean, Jobs was a poser.
He didn't even write code.
You just disappeared up your own asshole.
- You know that? You did.
- Well, technically Big Head, I'm gonna be meditating.
He knew how to package the ideas, but it was Wozniak that What is Hooli? Excellent question.
Hooli isn't just another high tech company.
Hooli isn't just about software.
Hooli.
Hooli is about people.
Hooli is about innovative technology that makes a difference, transforming the world as we know it.
Making the world a better place, through minimal message oriented transport layers.
I firmly believe we can only achieve greatness if first we achieve goodness.
Erlich is gonna kick me out.
And I can't afford to pay rent here.
It's insane.
$2800 a month, $4500 a month With five people.
Jesus! Why is it so expensive here? Look at this place, it's a shithole.
Uh-oh.
Here's another one.
Miss Palo Alto, 2K14.
There she goes.
Oh God, the marketing team is having another bike meeting.
Douchebags.
Yup, another day inside the Gavin Belson cult compound.
Hey, did you hear what Peter Gregory is doing? You mean buying that island in the Pacific? No, he's building one actually.
Baller.
Anyway, he's also offering a hundred k to people willing to skip or drop out of college to pursue their idea.
I don't know what happened to that guy, but he really hates college.
Anyway, he's doing a TED talks in Palo Alto tonight.
- We should try to get in.
- I dropped out of college.
Maybe I should re-enroll and drop out again.
Try and get the money.
Brogrammers.
Oh, no, no.
Hey, uh, a double macchiato for me, dude.
Yeah.
Hey, Rico, you been working out? No.
No, I have not.
I don't have time to even if I wanted to.
I'm too busy working on my website.
Uh, I just, I don't want to end up being a Hooli lifer.
You know, working here forever.
Yeah, working for the most innovative company in the world, with top pay and vested stock options.
I can totally see why you wouldn't want that.
Yeah, you're like an artist.
An entrepreneur.
An iconoclast.
I don't know, maybe.
Dude, we're just messing with you.
But we really want to help you with your site.
What's it called? Pied Piper.
- Dude, sounds amazing.
- Yeah.
Why don't you shoot it over to us and we'll give it a look.
Maybe we can help.
- Uh, really? - Yeah.
Ok, yeah.
I mean it's always good to have more eyes on it.
It's sent it.
Oh, you're making fun of me.
- Dude, no.
- No, you are.
- Aw, Ricky, man.
- Ricky.
Ricky, come back.
It's actually Richard, so that's - Pied wiper.
- Wide diaper.
Gates, Ellison, Jobs, Dell.
All dropped out of college.
Silicon Valley is the cradle of innovation because of drop outs.
College has become a cruel expensive joke on the poor and the middle class that benefits only the perpetrators of it.
- The bloated administrators.
- You are a dangerous man, spewing ignorance! I don't think so.
I'm just saying people should trust themselves more than a system that happily churns out unemployed debtors and provides dubious value.
The true value of a college education is intangible.
The true value of snake-oil is intangible as well.
Fascist.
Anything? The usual riffs on twitter and instagram.
Nothing I'd fund.
Hi, excuse me, Mr.
Gregory? I have an idea I'd love to pitch you, if you have time.
Oh.
Well, that is before I just give up and go back to college.
Don't! Do not do that.
Go work at Burger King.
Go into the woods and forage for nuts and berries.
Do not go back to college! I think I have been played.
Fine.
Go ahead and pitch.
You have until I fasten the seat-belt in my car.
Thank you so much.
Pied Piper is a proprietary site that lets you find out if your music is infringing on any existing copyrights.
So, imagine you were a song writer, ok? I don't think I could write a song.
Yeah, no, just imagine if you were.
I don't even think I could say, "Pied Piper is a proprietary site.
" Well, I just did but it wasn't easy.
Crunching all those songs to find matches sounds like it would take incredible processing power.
- I mean - Yes.
Yes, it does.
No, no.
Its I made an algorithm.
Look, why don't you send me a link to your project and we'll take a look.
Ok, yeah, great.
I put the prototype up on github.
Pied Piper.
I'll look it up.
It's like the fable with the kids and then the rats and the music.
That is a narrow car.
Fucking billionaires.
Hey, wanna check out twig-boy's website? Yes, I do.
You have to download your own media player? Ahh.
Look at me, I traveled back to 2009.
Wait a sec.
What is this file size? Wow, that doesn't sound at all downgraded.
The file size is like, half.
And look how fast this search is.
Holy shit, how did it find a match that fast? It's like it's searching compressed files? No way.
Look at that weissman score.
Hey, where have you two been? We're playing the multi-channel router team in five minutes.
Ok, how the hell did he do this? And the compression is totally lossless.
And he's somehow figured out a way to do a search on a compressed data space.
- Holy shit.
- Yeah.
And I don't think he even realizes what he has here.
He's using it for some silly songwriter app.
All these guys are like that, they're all about consumer facing.
Right, but you take something like this, make it business facing and use it for enterprise? The applications could be endless.
Hey, I thought you were a satanist? I'm a LaVeyan Satanist with some theistic tendencies.
Oh, some theistic tendencies.
Well then, what's with the cross? It's an upside down cross.
Not from here it isn't.
Oh, I see, you know what you should do? You should get another tattoo that says, "this side up" on it.
How does this translate into Farsi? That's not the language I speak.
Frontier Airlines just happened to like mine, Aviato.
And that's how I got to where I am.
So what do you got? Ok, here it is.
Bit Soup.
It's like alphabet soup but it's ones and zeros instead of the letters.
'Cause it's binary.
You know, binary is just ones and zeroes.
Yeah, I know what binary is.
Jesus Christ! I memorized the hexadecimal times tables when I was 14 writing machine code! Ok.
Ask me what nine times f is.
It's fleventyfive.
I do not need you telling me what binary is, just like I don't need you thinking about soup or taking pictures of it.
I need you thinking about apps, software, websites.
This is Silicon Valley, all right, not Paris, Texas.
That's where Campbell's soup is.
It's the Hooli number again.
It's probably those brogrammers.
Can't wait to tell me how stupid my website is.
Assholes.
Hello, Richard Hendricks.
I'm a total fucking retard.
Uh.
Hi, this is Jared Dunn calling from Hooli.
I'm calling a behalf of Gavin Belson.
I didn't hi.
Gavin is very excited about your Pied Piper application and we were wondering if you could come in for a sit-down with us.
- Are you available now.
- Ok.
- Sure.
Yes.
- Ok, we'll be here.
Good-bye.
Uh, I have a meeting with Gavin Belson.
He likes Pied Piper.
- Holy shit.
- I own 10 percent of Pied Piper.
You said it was a shitty idea.
It was a shitty idea.
I'm not sure what it is now.
- What time's the meeting? - Right now.
I'm gonna need a better shirt.
Holy shit.
What the fuck am I waiting for? See ya.
Well, it's like Gavin always says, "it takes change to make change.
" Yeah, I think I've seen that written around.
- Hey.
- Hi.
Gavin is running 30 minutes late but you should know he is very excited to see you, Richard.
He's with his spiritual advisor.
He shouldn't be that much longer.
I'm a VP here and I only get to see him about ten minutes a month.
But that 10 minutes is just incredible.
I heard Richard Hendricks was here.
Have you ever met Gavin before? - No.
- No? Oh, I told him, it's amazing.
That hardly begins to describe it.
It's weird.
They always travel in groups of five.
These programmers, there's always a tall skinny white guy, short skinny Asian guy, fat guy with a ponytail, some guy with crazy facial hair and then an East Indian guy.
It's like they trade guys until they all have the right group.
You clearly have a great understanding of humanity.
And Gavin said I'm not humiliating you, I'm elevating you.
Ah, Gavin.
This is Richard.
It's Peter Gregory.
Ah, no.
Come on, Big Head.
Yeah, I'm coming.
Slow Why are you going that fast? We've got a meeting with Gavin Belson.
Pick up the pace.
- We honestly don't.
- Come on.
I'm actually outside of Gavin Belson's office right now, Mr.
Gregory.
Uh, here he comes, so can I call you back in So, Richard Hendricks is here! There you are, Richard.
So sorry these gentleman have kept you waiting.
- That's fine.
- So here's the thing.
I love what you did.
- Really? - Fill him in, Jared.
Now, as you know, Hooli is seen as possibly the most progressive company in the world.
Part of that is Gavin's commitment to social justice, but part of it is his personal commitment to the people that work at Hooli.
In that spirit Gavin is prepared to give you a very substantial raise And a promotion to go with it.
I own 10 percent.
He created it while living in my Incubator.
Erlich Bachman.
This is Big Head.
I don't know what any of that means, but I'll give you six hundred thousand dollars for it.
We have the reach and the resources to take what you have done and push it to the global level.
That is a generous offer.
Shit, sorry.
Hello.
Really? No shit, that's Uh, yeah, yeah.
No here.
It's Peter Gregory.
Not sure how he got my number? Uh, this is Richard.
I'll give you three million dollars for it right now! Ah, Gavin Belson just offered me three million dollars for Pied Piper.
I'm prepared to give you three hundred thousand dollars.
Peter Gregory just offered me 300, um Did you say thousand dollars? For ten percent of your company.
Ok, four million.
- For five percent.
- Huh? You just went down.
No, you're still valued at four million dollars.
But you own ninety-five percent of a potential billion-dollar company.
And not just that, I will help you build this company.
I will introduce you to the people you need to know and provide the counsel that you need.
I will take a small piece, but the company will belong to you.
Not Gavin Belson.
You have until tomorrow to decide.
Ah, ok.
- Um, you know.
- Pull your head out of your ass, Richard.
I'm offering you four million dollars right now.
I'm That is a lot of money.
You know, I actually have to I've got to go to the bathroom.
I've got to pee.
It's desperate.
I'm bursting.
I'll be right back, but right now Ok, 10 million.
No.
Maybe.
I didn't mean to snap at you.
I'll talk in a bit.
Won't be long.
Little more about me.
I am the founder of Aviato.
And I own a very small percentage of Grindr.
It's a men to men dating site where you can find other men within 10 miles of you.
Interested in having sexual intercourse in a public restroom.
In the homosexual community there's sometimes anonymous I know what Grindr is.
I have gay friends.
So you will survive.
It's just a garden variety panic attack.
Welcome to Silicon Valley.
We see people like you all the time.
- Really? - Yes.
It's just I have to make this decision by tomorrow.
Yeah.
You know, a while back, we had a guy in here in almost the exact same situation, "take the money or keep the company.
" What happened? Well, a couple months later he was brought into the ER with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
I guess he really regretted not taking that money.
He shot himself because he turned down the money? Yeah.
Or no, he took the money.
Or no.
No, he did not.
I don't You know what? I don't remember.
But whatever it was, he regretted it so much that he ended up shooting himself.
- And now he's blind.
- He's blind? Yeah, just fyi, if you're ever gonna shoot yourself, don't hold the gun up to your temple, ok? Because that just basically just took out both of his optic nerves and then, you know, half of his face.
And then his wife left him, because, you know.
- Yikes.
- Right.
He may have been a genius programmer but not so much in human anatomy.
Or decision making, for that matter.
Now he's got to live with all that and whatever terrible decision he made about the money.
Uh.
And what do I do if I feel another panic attack coming on.
Would you be interested in a device that links up to your smartphone and it keeps track of your vitals and it tells you, even before it's happening, whether you're having a panic attack or an actual heart attack? Yeah, that sounds great.
You would, right? Ok, that's great news.
Because it's still in prototype phase right now, but my start-up partners and I are looking for investors.
Like today.
So will you please let me know I'm going to give you my number.
If you do end up taking that 10 million dollars because we could really make the world a better place.
Whoa! Oh, jeez! Richard.
Hi, Monica.
I work with Peter Gregory.
- We met outside the TED - Yeah, I remember you.
What how'd you know I was here? Peter Gregory is invested in a company that uses GPS in phones to track people.
That's creepy.
You don't know the half of it.
And neither does congress.
- Are you ok? - Look, I don't want to waste your time.
I think I gotta take the money from Gavin Belson.
At least this way when I blow my eyeballs out I'll have some money left for my family.
Jesus.
Sorry.
That is a terrible doctor in there.
Richard, buried in that clunky UI of yours is a compression algorithm that blew our engineering team away.
And what do you think Hooli is going to do with it? I don't know.
That's their business.
This is your baby.
Do you even realize the impact that a compression this good could have on the world? Getting any file on your mobile phone in an instant.
Navigation data for self-driving cars, mobile medical imagery, all transmitting with no quality loss.
This is game-changing.
Don't you want to be in the driver's seat when that happens? You really want to just turn it all over to Hooli and walk away? Well, you are not making this easier for me.
I'm not trying to.
I mean you're actually making it worse.
My hands are tingling.
I have this metal taste in my mouth.
Actually, I can't go back in there, so I'm going to go home.
- Let me give you a ride home.
- Good to see you again.
Uh, ok.
Thanks.
Dude, where have you been? Why won't you answer your phone? Man, this has grown way beyond angellist.
Andreesen, elevation and like a bunch of other seed funds are piling onto this thing.
I mean, they've been calling Erlich.
He's out of control.
Yeah.
What if we took Peter Gregory's 200k and built our own company? I'm sorry.
You said we.
Who's that in reference to exactly? You, me, Dinesh, Big Head, us.
I mean, right now Pied Piper just does audio, but I'm thinking of ways to compress images, video I mean, maybe Peter Gregory's right.
Maybe this could be huge.
Look, guys, for thousands of years guys like us have gotten the shit kicked out of us.
But now, for the first time, we are living in an era where we can be in charge and build empires.
We could be the vikings of our day.
- Vikings? - How are you feeling? You look super fucked up to be honest.
Who ate my fucking quinoa again? So you're really about to go tell Erlich that he's not going to get his one million dollars? Yeah, I don't want to be there when you do that.
I would like to be there when you do that.
No, just stay here, please.
Hey.
Um, so, I've been thinking about this whole Peter Gregory, Gavin Belson thing.
And, um, I think I'm going to go with Peter Gregory.
- Uh, which I know means - Richard.
I know that you look at me, and see a guy who has it all figured out.
And for the most part, you're right, I do.
When I sold Aviato, it gave me a house, money, fancy clothes, the universal respect of all the ladies.
But there's always been a hole in my heart.
Not a literal hole like you would find in some babies with congenital diseases, but a metaphorical hole.
I guess that hole is the "what if".
What if I didn't sell? I'll never know.
And so I guess what I'm saying to you now is, you're like me, Richard.
You want to build something and see it through.
So, just to be clear.
You're all right with me saying no to a deal that will net you a million dollars outright? No, Richard.
I'm not all right with it.
I'm excited about it.
Let's see how high this rocket can fly, partner.
Ok.
Great.
That's great.
Not partners, exactly.
But everything else is great.
Call it what you want.
Always blue, always blue, always blue, always blue, always blue, always blue, always blue, always Oh! That was a yellow.
What was that, 17? - Pretty good.
- Hey, guys Guys, can I just kind of say something real quick? I know it's stupid but, um I just want to say, uh, I'd like for this company to be different than Hooli and Goolybib and all the rest, you know? Like, let's like not turn this into a corporate cult with bike meetings and voluntary retreats that are actually mandatory.
And claiming to make the world a better place all the time.
Let's, uh, let's just think different.
Don't think different.
That's Apple.
Uh, umm Let's just Let's just do it.
- That's Nike, man.
- I know that's nike.
- Yeah.
- Uh Fuck it.
I don't know.
Let's just make it Let's just make it happen.
Yeah, agreed.
To his beneficence.
Peter Gregory? - The Dark Lord.
- Of course, The Dark Lord.
Big Head.
God, he's worse high.
Always blue, always blue, always blue, always blue
Yeah.
Somebody make some motherfucking noise in here! Fuck these people.
Man, this place is unbelievable.
Fucking Goolybib, man.
Those guys build a mediocre piece of software, that might be worth something someday, and now they live here.
There's money flying all over Silicon Valley but none of it ever seems to hit us.
What the hell are you eating? Liquid shrimp.
It's 200 dollars a quart.
Wylie Dufresne made it.
How does it taste? Like how I would imagine cum tastes.
You guys taking it all in? Because this is what it looks like when Google acquires your company for over 200 million dollars.
Look Dustin Moskovitz.
Elon Musk.
Eric Schmidt.
Whatever the fuck the guy's name is who created Photrio.
I mean, Kid Rock is the poorest person here.
Apart from you guys.
Ok, there's 40 billion dollars of net worth, walking around this party.
And you guys are standing around drinking shrimp and talking about what cum tastes like.
Yeah, I heard that.
You guys live in my Incubator you've got to network.
That's why I brought you here.
I got us in here.
Javeed over there is my ex-room-mate.
Yeah, but I drove.
Eric Schmidt, Erlich Bachman.
It's amazing how the men and women at these things always separate like this.
Yeah, every party in Silicon Valley ends up like a hasidic wedding.
Not even the Goolybib guys were talking to girls.
They don't have to, Big Head.
This house talks to girls.
Hello! Whoo! I got seven words for you.
I love Goolybib's integrated- multi-platform-functionality! Yeah! Whoo! But seriously, you know, a few days ago, when we were sitting down with Barak Obama, I turned to these guys and said, "ok, you know, we're making a lot of money.
And yes, we're disrupting digital media.
But most importantly we're making the world a better place.
Through constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum code reuse and extensibility.
" So everyone.
Here's to many more nights just like this one.
Take it away, my good friend, Kid Rock.
What a dick.
Big Head, there is a personal ad section on this asperger site.
Holy shit, this one is looking for a "relationship that has the potential to become sexual in nature.
" Boy, is she on the spectrum.
She can't even make eye contact with the camera.
Richard, can I talk to you for a second? - Solo.
- Mm-hmm.
We need to talk about Pied Piper.
What about it? The website's up and running, I'm just redesigning the compression.
It just needs users.
Yeah, no shit.
But even if somebody wanted to use it they wouldn't be able to figure out how to.
It's incomprehensible.
Now, Richard, when you pitched me Pied Piper you said it was gonna be, "the Google of music.
" Which is a really rad way to pitch something.
I mean, I liked it.
I thought it had "applications".
No, it has all that.
Look, when it blows up, and it will once it reaches a critical mass of users, Pied Piper will be able to search the whole world of recorded music to find out if there's a match to see if you're infringing on any copyrighted material.
So, if you're a song writer or a band Ok, first of all, nobody gives a shit about stealing other people's music, ok? Everybody involved in the music industry is either stealing it or sharing it.
They're all a bunch of assholes, especially Radiohead.
- Look, Richard - No.
Yeah, they're assholes.
Now, look, Richard, if you want to live here, you've got to deliver.
I can't have dead weight at my Incubator, ok? Either that, or show some promise for fuck's sake.
Like NipAlert, Big Head's app.
It gives you the location of a woman with erect nipples.
Now, that's something people want.
Richard, you need to get in touch with humanity.
When I sold my company, Aviato, I wanted to give back.
That's why I started this place, to do something big.
To make a difference.
You know, like Steve.
Uh, Jobs or Wozniak? Steve Jobs or Steve Oh, I heard you.
- Which one? - Jobs.
I mean, Jobs was a poser.
He didn't even write code.
You just disappeared up your own asshole.
- You know that? You did.
- Well, technically Big Head, I'm gonna be meditating.
He knew how to package the ideas, but it was Wozniak that What is Hooli? Excellent question.
Hooli isn't just another high tech company.
Hooli isn't just about software.
Hooli.
Hooli is about people.
Hooli is about innovative technology that makes a difference, transforming the world as we know it.
Making the world a better place, through minimal message oriented transport layers.
I firmly believe we can only achieve greatness if first we achieve goodness.
Erlich is gonna kick me out.
And I can't afford to pay rent here.
It's insane.
$2800 a month, $4500 a month With five people.
Jesus! Why is it so expensive here? Look at this place, it's a shithole.
Uh-oh.
Here's another one.
Miss Palo Alto, 2K14.
There she goes.
Oh God, the marketing team is having another bike meeting.
Douchebags.
Yup, another day inside the Gavin Belson cult compound.
Hey, did you hear what Peter Gregory is doing? You mean buying that island in the Pacific? No, he's building one actually.
Baller.
Anyway, he's also offering a hundred k to people willing to skip or drop out of college to pursue their idea.
I don't know what happened to that guy, but he really hates college.
Anyway, he's doing a TED talks in Palo Alto tonight.
- We should try to get in.
- I dropped out of college.
Maybe I should re-enroll and drop out again.
Try and get the money.
Brogrammers.
Oh, no, no.
Hey, uh, a double macchiato for me, dude.
Yeah.
Hey, Rico, you been working out? No.
No, I have not.
I don't have time to even if I wanted to.
I'm too busy working on my website.
Uh, I just, I don't want to end up being a Hooli lifer.
You know, working here forever.
Yeah, working for the most innovative company in the world, with top pay and vested stock options.
I can totally see why you wouldn't want that.
Yeah, you're like an artist.
An entrepreneur.
An iconoclast.
I don't know, maybe.
Dude, we're just messing with you.
But we really want to help you with your site.
What's it called? Pied Piper.
- Dude, sounds amazing.
- Yeah.
Why don't you shoot it over to us and we'll give it a look.
Maybe we can help.
- Uh, really? - Yeah.
Ok, yeah.
I mean it's always good to have more eyes on it.
It's sent it.
Oh, you're making fun of me.
- Dude, no.
- No, you are.
- Aw, Ricky, man.
- Ricky.
Ricky, come back.
It's actually Richard, so that's - Pied wiper.
- Wide diaper.
Gates, Ellison, Jobs, Dell.
All dropped out of college.
Silicon Valley is the cradle of innovation because of drop outs.
College has become a cruel expensive joke on the poor and the middle class that benefits only the perpetrators of it.
- The bloated administrators.
- You are a dangerous man, spewing ignorance! I don't think so.
I'm just saying people should trust themselves more than a system that happily churns out unemployed debtors and provides dubious value.
The true value of a college education is intangible.
The true value of snake-oil is intangible as well.
Fascist.
Anything? The usual riffs on twitter and instagram.
Nothing I'd fund.
Hi, excuse me, Mr.
Gregory? I have an idea I'd love to pitch you, if you have time.
Oh.
Well, that is before I just give up and go back to college.
Don't! Do not do that.
Go work at Burger King.
Go into the woods and forage for nuts and berries.
Do not go back to college! I think I have been played.
Fine.
Go ahead and pitch.
You have until I fasten the seat-belt in my car.
Thank you so much.
Pied Piper is a proprietary site that lets you find out if your music is infringing on any existing copyrights.
So, imagine you were a song writer, ok? I don't think I could write a song.
Yeah, no, just imagine if you were.
I don't even think I could say, "Pied Piper is a proprietary site.
" Well, I just did but it wasn't easy.
Crunching all those songs to find matches sounds like it would take incredible processing power.
- I mean - Yes.
Yes, it does.
No, no.
Its I made an algorithm.
Look, why don't you send me a link to your project and we'll take a look.
Ok, yeah, great.
I put the prototype up on github.
Pied Piper.
I'll look it up.
It's like the fable with the kids and then the rats and the music.
That is a narrow car.
Fucking billionaires.
Hey, wanna check out twig-boy's website? Yes, I do.
You have to download your own media player? Ahh.
Look at me, I traveled back to 2009.
Wait a sec.
What is this file size? Wow, that doesn't sound at all downgraded.
The file size is like, half.
And look how fast this search is.
Holy shit, how did it find a match that fast? It's like it's searching compressed files? No way.
Look at that weissman score.
Hey, where have you two been? We're playing the multi-channel router team in five minutes.
Ok, how the hell did he do this? And the compression is totally lossless.
And he's somehow figured out a way to do a search on a compressed data space.
- Holy shit.
- Yeah.
And I don't think he even realizes what he has here.
He's using it for some silly songwriter app.
All these guys are like that, they're all about consumer facing.
Right, but you take something like this, make it business facing and use it for enterprise? The applications could be endless.
Hey, I thought you were a satanist? I'm a LaVeyan Satanist with some theistic tendencies.
Oh, some theistic tendencies.
Well then, what's with the cross? It's an upside down cross.
Not from here it isn't.
Oh, I see, you know what you should do? You should get another tattoo that says, "this side up" on it.
How does this translate into Farsi? That's not the language I speak.
Frontier Airlines just happened to like mine, Aviato.
And that's how I got to where I am.
So what do you got? Ok, here it is.
Bit Soup.
It's like alphabet soup but it's ones and zeros instead of the letters.
'Cause it's binary.
You know, binary is just ones and zeroes.
Yeah, I know what binary is.
Jesus Christ! I memorized the hexadecimal times tables when I was 14 writing machine code! Ok.
Ask me what nine times f is.
It's fleventyfive.
I do not need you telling me what binary is, just like I don't need you thinking about soup or taking pictures of it.
I need you thinking about apps, software, websites.
This is Silicon Valley, all right, not Paris, Texas.
That's where Campbell's soup is.
It's the Hooli number again.
It's probably those brogrammers.
Can't wait to tell me how stupid my website is.
Assholes.
Hello, Richard Hendricks.
I'm a total fucking retard.
Uh.
Hi, this is Jared Dunn calling from Hooli.
I'm calling a behalf of Gavin Belson.
I didn't hi.
Gavin is very excited about your Pied Piper application and we were wondering if you could come in for a sit-down with us.
- Are you available now.
- Ok.
- Sure.
Yes.
- Ok, we'll be here.
Good-bye.
Uh, I have a meeting with Gavin Belson.
He likes Pied Piper.
- Holy shit.
- I own 10 percent of Pied Piper.
You said it was a shitty idea.
It was a shitty idea.
I'm not sure what it is now.
- What time's the meeting? - Right now.
I'm gonna need a better shirt.
Holy shit.
What the fuck am I waiting for? See ya.
Well, it's like Gavin always says, "it takes change to make change.
" Yeah, I think I've seen that written around.
- Hey.
- Hi.
Gavin is running 30 minutes late but you should know he is very excited to see you, Richard.
He's with his spiritual advisor.
He shouldn't be that much longer.
I'm a VP here and I only get to see him about ten minutes a month.
But that 10 minutes is just incredible.
I heard Richard Hendricks was here.
Have you ever met Gavin before? - No.
- No? Oh, I told him, it's amazing.
That hardly begins to describe it.
It's weird.
They always travel in groups of five.
These programmers, there's always a tall skinny white guy, short skinny Asian guy, fat guy with a ponytail, some guy with crazy facial hair and then an East Indian guy.
It's like they trade guys until they all have the right group.
You clearly have a great understanding of humanity.
And Gavin said I'm not humiliating you, I'm elevating you.
Ah, Gavin.
This is Richard.
It's Peter Gregory.
Ah, no.
Come on, Big Head.
Yeah, I'm coming.
Slow Why are you going that fast? We've got a meeting with Gavin Belson.
Pick up the pace.
- We honestly don't.
- Come on.
I'm actually outside of Gavin Belson's office right now, Mr.
Gregory.
Uh, here he comes, so can I call you back in So, Richard Hendricks is here! There you are, Richard.
So sorry these gentleman have kept you waiting.
- That's fine.
- So here's the thing.
I love what you did.
- Really? - Fill him in, Jared.
Now, as you know, Hooli is seen as possibly the most progressive company in the world.
Part of that is Gavin's commitment to social justice, but part of it is his personal commitment to the people that work at Hooli.
In that spirit Gavin is prepared to give you a very substantial raise And a promotion to go with it.
I own 10 percent.
He created it while living in my Incubator.
Erlich Bachman.
This is Big Head.
I don't know what any of that means, but I'll give you six hundred thousand dollars for it.
We have the reach and the resources to take what you have done and push it to the global level.
That is a generous offer.
Shit, sorry.
Hello.
Really? No shit, that's Uh, yeah, yeah.
No here.
It's Peter Gregory.
Not sure how he got my number? Uh, this is Richard.
I'll give you three million dollars for it right now! Ah, Gavin Belson just offered me three million dollars for Pied Piper.
I'm prepared to give you three hundred thousand dollars.
Peter Gregory just offered me 300, um Did you say thousand dollars? For ten percent of your company.
Ok, four million.
- For five percent.
- Huh? You just went down.
No, you're still valued at four million dollars.
But you own ninety-five percent of a potential billion-dollar company.
And not just that, I will help you build this company.
I will introduce you to the people you need to know and provide the counsel that you need.
I will take a small piece, but the company will belong to you.
Not Gavin Belson.
You have until tomorrow to decide.
Ah, ok.
- Um, you know.
- Pull your head out of your ass, Richard.
I'm offering you four million dollars right now.
I'm That is a lot of money.
You know, I actually have to I've got to go to the bathroom.
I've got to pee.
It's desperate.
I'm bursting.
I'll be right back, but right now Ok, 10 million.
No.
Maybe.
I didn't mean to snap at you.
I'll talk in a bit.
Won't be long.
Little more about me.
I am the founder of Aviato.
And I own a very small percentage of Grindr.
It's a men to men dating site where you can find other men within 10 miles of you.
Interested in having sexual intercourse in a public restroom.
In the homosexual community there's sometimes anonymous I know what Grindr is.
I have gay friends.
So you will survive.
It's just a garden variety panic attack.
Welcome to Silicon Valley.
We see people like you all the time.
- Really? - Yes.
It's just I have to make this decision by tomorrow.
Yeah.
You know, a while back, we had a guy in here in almost the exact same situation, "take the money or keep the company.
" What happened? Well, a couple months later he was brought into the ER with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
I guess he really regretted not taking that money.
He shot himself because he turned down the money? Yeah.
Or no, he took the money.
Or no.
No, he did not.
I don't You know what? I don't remember.
But whatever it was, he regretted it so much that he ended up shooting himself.
- And now he's blind.
- He's blind? Yeah, just fyi, if you're ever gonna shoot yourself, don't hold the gun up to your temple, ok? Because that just basically just took out both of his optic nerves and then, you know, half of his face.
And then his wife left him, because, you know.
- Yikes.
- Right.
He may have been a genius programmer but not so much in human anatomy.
Or decision making, for that matter.
Now he's got to live with all that and whatever terrible decision he made about the money.
Uh.
And what do I do if I feel another panic attack coming on.
Would you be interested in a device that links up to your smartphone and it keeps track of your vitals and it tells you, even before it's happening, whether you're having a panic attack or an actual heart attack? Yeah, that sounds great.
You would, right? Ok, that's great news.
Because it's still in prototype phase right now, but my start-up partners and I are looking for investors.
Like today.
So will you please let me know I'm going to give you my number.
If you do end up taking that 10 million dollars because we could really make the world a better place.
Whoa! Oh, jeez! Richard.
Hi, Monica.
I work with Peter Gregory.
- We met outside the TED - Yeah, I remember you.
What how'd you know I was here? Peter Gregory is invested in a company that uses GPS in phones to track people.
That's creepy.
You don't know the half of it.
And neither does congress.
- Are you ok? - Look, I don't want to waste your time.
I think I gotta take the money from Gavin Belson.
At least this way when I blow my eyeballs out I'll have some money left for my family.
Jesus.
Sorry.
That is a terrible doctor in there.
Richard, buried in that clunky UI of yours is a compression algorithm that blew our engineering team away.
And what do you think Hooli is going to do with it? I don't know.
That's their business.
This is your baby.
Do you even realize the impact that a compression this good could have on the world? Getting any file on your mobile phone in an instant.
Navigation data for self-driving cars, mobile medical imagery, all transmitting with no quality loss.
This is game-changing.
Don't you want to be in the driver's seat when that happens? You really want to just turn it all over to Hooli and walk away? Well, you are not making this easier for me.
I'm not trying to.
I mean you're actually making it worse.
My hands are tingling.
I have this metal taste in my mouth.
Actually, I can't go back in there, so I'm going to go home.
- Let me give you a ride home.
- Good to see you again.
Uh, ok.
Thanks.
Dude, where have you been? Why won't you answer your phone? Man, this has grown way beyond angellist.
Andreesen, elevation and like a bunch of other seed funds are piling onto this thing.
I mean, they've been calling Erlich.
He's out of control.
Yeah.
What if we took Peter Gregory's 200k and built our own company? I'm sorry.
You said we.
Who's that in reference to exactly? You, me, Dinesh, Big Head, us.
I mean, right now Pied Piper just does audio, but I'm thinking of ways to compress images, video I mean, maybe Peter Gregory's right.
Maybe this could be huge.
Look, guys, for thousands of years guys like us have gotten the shit kicked out of us.
But now, for the first time, we are living in an era where we can be in charge and build empires.
We could be the vikings of our day.
- Vikings? - How are you feeling? You look super fucked up to be honest.
Who ate my fucking quinoa again? So you're really about to go tell Erlich that he's not going to get his one million dollars? Yeah, I don't want to be there when you do that.
I would like to be there when you do that.
No, just stay here, please.
Hey.
Um, so, I've been thinking about this whole Peter Gregory, Gavin Belson thing.
And, um, I think I'm going to go with Peter Gregory.
- Uh, which I know means - Richard.
I know that you look at me, and see a guy who has it all figured out.
And for the most part, you're right, I do.
When I sold Aviato, it gave me a house, money, fancy clothes, the universal respect of all the ladies.
But there's always been a hole in my heart.
Not a literal hole like you would find in some babies with congenital diseases, but a metaphorical hole.
I guess that hole is the "what if".
What if I didn't sell? I'll never know.
And so I guess what I'm saying to you now is, you're like me, Richard.
You want to build something and see it through.
So, just to be clear.
You're all right with me saying no to a deal that will net you a million dollars outright? No, Richard.
I'm not all right with it.
I'm excited about it.
Let's see how high this rocket can fly, partner.
Ok.
Great.
That's great.
Not partners, exactly.
But everything else is great.
Call it what you want.
Always blue, always blue, always blue, always blue, always blue, always blue, always blue, always Oh! That was a yellow.
What was that, 17? - Pretty good.
- Hey, guys Guys, can I just kind of say something real quick? I know it's stupid but, um I just want to say, uh, I'd like for this company to be different than Hooli and Goolybib and all the rest, you know? Like, let's like not turn this into a corporate cult with bike meetings and voluntary retreats that are actually mandatory.
And claiming to make the world a better place all the time.
Let's, uh, let's just think different.
Don't think different.
That's Apple.
Uh, umm Let's just Let's just do it.
- That's Nike, man.
- I know that's nike.
- Yeah.
- Uh Fuck it.
I don't know.
Let's just make it Let's just make it happen.
Yeah, agreed.
To his beneficence.
Peter Gregory? - The Dark Lord.
- Of course, The Dark Lord.
Big Head.
God, he's worse high.
Always blue, always blue, always blue, always blue