Silicon Valley

Oh, no, I'll get my car tomorrow. I had too many.

Got an Uber coming, thank you.

That was fast.

- Hello. For Jim? Yup.

Oh, uh... Would you care for a water?

Why are your fingers orange?

It's iodine. I've been biting my nails.

So, I put this on there to stop me from doing it.

Looks like Cheetos, tastes like asshole. (CHUCKLES)

So, uh, what do you do?

Venture capital over at Wood Opal.

Wow.

Wow. Good.

- Mmm-hmm. - (PHONE RINGING)

Uh, can I take this?

Sure.

All right.

Hello. Hi.

My goodness. This video chat app is light-years ahead

of anything else out there on the market.

I agree. Yes.

And you can add multiple concurrent users

with no loss in picture quality.

Even on conventional 3G.

Let's see what happens when we add more friends.

Hi, friends. What's up?

Hello, "friend."

Hey. Should we add another friend?

Yeah, we should.

How many friends can we conference at the same time?

Well, uh, thanks to the amazing new.

TURN server, as many as you like.

But what if someone is in an area with poor cellular reception?

I doubt it would even work.

And if it did, the lag, the video quality, that would be horrible.

Well, let's find out.

Could you keep your eyes on the road, please?

Yep, yep. Got it. I'm on it.

Hey, friends. Wow, look at that. The image is so clear.

We all look amazing, don't we?

- Yeah, we really do. - Yeah.

Is that really just on a cell signal?

Yes, this is the amazing new company, PiperChat.

Wait a minute.

I saw you at TechCrunch.

You're Richard Hendricks.

The very same, yeah.

You're the fucking guy that tried to walk into

Coleman Blair with fraudulent numbers.

No.

That was actually my fault. - Yes, but, no.

I mean, that's the old thing. This is the new thing.

And I can assure you, it's very, very real.

You're not even my driver. This says Sandeep in an Escalade.

Shit. - Look. Look.

No one will even talk to us, which is crazy.

We just surpassed 120,000 daily active users,

and we're growing at a rate of 18% organically week over week.

Richard, that's Facebook level growth.

- Pull over now. That is great.

Richard, do not pull over.

You will never see him again if he gets out of that car.

- I am not involved! Richard, can you hear me?

Okay, for real, Richard, you have to pull over.

Richard, do not... Richard...

Richard, do not pull over, you'll never see him again.

- Are you on the shitter? - Pull the fuck over.

Pull over.

Richard! - Okay.

What the fuck? Are you seriously trying to kidnap me right now?

No, it's the locks. I don't know. This is not my car.

Child locks are on.

I was babysitting my friend Gloria's great granddaughter.

Richard, do not pull over!

- God damn it! - Got it.

Look, look, look. Look. Come on.

Listen to me. We are desperate. We need funding.

- You need funding? - Yes.

Hit a million daily active users

while sustaining the same kind of growth.

Then everybody in town will be trying to kidnap you.

Problem solved.

Yeah, easy for you to say.

Can you imagine how much these servers are costing me?

- Just to keep the ship afloat? - Right.

And every new user increases our server cost.

Really? I'm sorry.

Is it hard to become a billionaire?

Welcome to the Valley, assholes.

- Fuck. What a dick.

Well, assuming we don't get arrested,

looks like we have to work our asses off to reduce our hosting bill.

- Hi. - Hi.

If you actually get to a million users,

call me, my cell's on the back.

Okay.

Did you finish?

Yeah, I just pushed my code.

Took me two fucking days, but I broke up

our entire code base into parallel services.

You know, this whole job would have been a lot easier

if you hadn't designed sloppy services in the first place.

Oh, silly me.

I guess when I hacked together the video chat as an in-house tool,

I didn't foresee that hundreds of thousands of people

would shit themselves over how fucking awesome it was.

I'll never underestimate my talents again.

Don't worry. I'll continue to do it for you.

Less talk, more work, boys.

I'm not paying you to coffee klatch

like a bunch of fucking yentas.

You're not paying us at all.

I'm not paying you

because you're not the one getting fucked

face first by your credit card company

because of massive AWS hosting fees.

Well, you should bear 100% of the company's cost,

seeing as you do own 100% of the company.

What's taking you so long to give us our fucking shares?

Recapping a company is complex.

But I assure you Big Head and I are on the case.

You better be. We're not gonna work for free forever.

Hey, the Karachi Kid and I finished.

Did you push your code?

Uh...

Actually, no.

Well, Your Highness, could you please push your code?

Well, I couldn't push that code

because I didn't write that code.

What? We stayed up for two fucking days.

Why didn't you write your code?

Well, because I was working on something much better.

So, I started to optimize our code to handle higher...

You're supposed to follow me.

I started to optimize our code to handle higher traffic.

Then it occurred to me, why rewrite our old code

when I can build a new encoder

that doesn't strip away a ton of channels and metadata?

So, I extended my compression algorithm to support, get this,

12-bit color.

Okay, so our users will be able to experience

a 10% increase in image quality

with absolutely no increase in server load whatsoever.

Just watch this.

Before.

After. Before. After.

Richard, I'm trying very hard not to completely lose my shit right now.

I get it. I get it.

After every VC in town turned us down,

we decided

that the best way to stay alive

until we got to a million users

was to cut server usage.

Remember that?

The whole reason that Gilfoyle and |

stayed up for 48 fucking straight hours

was to decrease server load,

not keep it the same.

Technically, the reason why we stayed up for two days

was to maximize our ability to get a million users,

and I just did that.

Because who doesn't want 10% better image quality?

Who doesn't want it? Everyone.

Everyone doesn't want it!

We already have the best video chat.

People are using this on their cell phones.

They're not going to be able to tell the fucking difference.

Guys, this is a better product.

And I'm the CEO, and I'm gonna say this is where we go.

- You fucking prick. - Whoa.

Guys, please be civil.

You hate the video chat.

I don't hate the video chat, Dinesh.

You've always hated the video chat because it's my thing,

and you want to rewrite it to make it all about you.

You're fucking jealous.

Jealous?

- Jealous? Yeah.

You built the video chat. I'll give you that. Okay. You did.

But you did it using my algorithm.

Right, like when Picasso painted a masterpiece,

the guy who made the brushes and the paint

deserved all the credit, right?

So you're Picasso now?

I think I need to leave.

But I love you guys.

Dinesh, I'm sorry, but I think

we should be doing a little bit more with

this revolutionary compression algorithm

than passable video chat.

But we already did more, Richard.

It was called the platform.

And it was exactly what you wanted to make, and it fucking failed, okay?

I'm sorry, but it's bad enough that we can't

get any funding because of you.

You're killing us out there.

Don't also sabotage us in here, too.

Pied Piper is a video chat company. Get your head around that.

I'm quite certain I've never said this before.

I agree with Dinesh.