Silicon Valley (2014–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Minimum Viable Product - full transcript

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.

Okay, 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.

Uh, 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!

- All right!
- Whoo!

Yeah!

But seriously,

you know, a few days ago, when we
were sitting down with Barack Obama,

I turned to these guys and said,

"Okay, 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.
- Mmm-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 songwriter or a band...

Okay, first of all, nobody gives a shit
about stealing other people's music, okay?

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.
- Mmm.

I can't have dead weight
at my incubator, okay?

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.

Um...

Jobs or Wozniak?

Uh, 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.

Just 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 100K

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.

- Should we 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, 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.

Okay, yeah...

I mean it's always good
to have more eyes on it.

Look, it's sending... Sent it.

Oh. You're making fun of me.

- Dude, no.
- No, you are.

- No, 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?
- Eh.

The usual riffs on Twitter and lnstagram.

Nothing I'd fund.

Hi, excuse me, Mr. Gregory? Um...

I have an idea I'd love to pitch you,
if you have time.

Ooh.

Uh...

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 seatbelt in my car.

Thank you so much. Uh...

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 songwriter, okay?

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. It's... I made an algorithm.

Look, why don't you send me a link to
your project and we'll take a look.

Okay, 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?

Oh. Look at me, I traveled back to 2009.

Wait a sec.

What is this file size?

1.2 megabytes? No way.

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.

2.89.

Hey, where have you two been?

We're playing the multi-channel router team
in five minutes.

Okay, 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, Gilfoyle, 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?

Okay, 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!

Okay? 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.

Hmm.

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 on 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?
- Okay.

- Sure.
- Okay, we'll be here.

Yes. Good-bye.

Uh...

I have a meeting with Gavin Belson.

He likes Pied Piper.

- Holy shit.
- I own 10% 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?
- Uh, see ya.

Well, it's like Gavin always says,
"it takes change to make change."

Uh, 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.

Oh.

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 10 minutes a month.

Yeah, 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."

Oh, Gavin...

This is Richard.

It's Peter Gregory.

Uh...

No.

Come on, Big Head.

Yeah, I'm coming. Slow...

Why are you going that fast?

'Cause 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 a second?

So, Richard Hendricks is here!

- There you are, Richard.
- Hi.

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 600
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. I, um...

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 $3 million for it
right now!

Uh...

Gavin Belson just offered me
$3 million for Pied Piper.

I'm prepared to give you $300,000.

Peter Gregory just offered me 300...

Did you say thousand dollars?

For 10% of your company.

Okay, 4 million.

200,000.

- For 5%.
- Huh?

You just went down.

No, you're still valued
at four million dollars.

But you own 95%
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.

Uh...

Okay.

- Um, you know...
- Pull your head out of your ass, Richard.

I'm offering you
$4 million right now.

Mmm...

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...

Okay, 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, okay?

Because that just basically 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?

Mmm. 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? Okay, 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 okay?
- 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.

And 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, okay. Thanks.

Dude, where have you been?

Why won't you answer your phone?

Man, this has grown
way beyond AngelList, man.

Andreesen, Elevation and like a bunch of
other seed firms 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 thing 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 $1 million?

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.

Uh, 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.

Okay. Great.

That's great. Uh...

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?

- It's pretty good.
- Hey, guys...

Guys, can I just kind of say
something real quick?

I know it's stupid but...

I just want to say, uh,

I'd like for this company
to just 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.

Uh, don't think different. That's Apple.

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 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, always blue...

Always blue, always...