Silicon Valley
Adrian Scheuermann
Table of Contents
Key Scene................................................................................................................................................. 2
Key words ................................................................................................................................................ 3
Sociogram ................................................................................................................................................ 5
Review ..................................................................................................................................................... 7
1
Key Scene
One of the key scenes of these 6 episodes is right at the start. The main character is Richard
Hendricks, who works on his startup along with also having a 9-5 job at a big tech company
called Hooli. The startup he is working on is called Pied Piper and it allows users to find out
whether the music they’ve used is copyrighted or not. At work, he isn’t taken very seriously
by his colleagues and they often make fun of him. When they jokingly asked him to send
over the website he built, he misunderstood them and actually sent it, which led to this key
scene:
Richard receives a call by a number he does not know. Richard thinks it’s one of the
colleagues, which is why he answers the phone with “Hi, Richard Hendrix, I’m a total fucking
retard”. Unexpectedly it turns out that the calling him is the Jared Dunn, a VP at Hooli and he
wants to arrange a meeting between Richard and the CEO. He also tells him, that the CEO,
Gavin Belson, is very excited about the startup, but not about the current functionality of the
website. What impressed him was the compression algorithm the website uses. Richard
immediately heads to the office, into a room where a VP and a few other higher ups of the
company were waiting for the CEO who is late because he is still talking to his spiritual
advisor. A couple minutes later Gavin Belson arrives and offers Richard $ 600 000 for the
company. But at the same time Richard receives a call, coming from another billionaire,
Peter Gregory, who discovered his startup through emails which Richard sent out to get
someone to fund him. As soon as Gavin noticed that Jack was receiving a call, he raises his
bid to $ 3 million for the company. The other Peter Gregory offers $300 000, but for 10% of
the company. They try to outbid each other, and the final offers are $10 million from Gavin
Belson for the whole company or $ 200 000 from Peter Gregory for 5% of it. Jack is
overwhelmed and leaves the room quickly due to a panic attack. Now he has one day to
decide for one of the offers.
If I was in his place, I’d take the risk and go with Peter Gregory’s offer. The $10 million are
surely the safer option, but I’d probably be full of regret if I saw the company reach much
higher valuations. Considering the enormous breakthrough this algorithm is in the field of
file compression, this company might be very well worth more than $ 10 million, potentially
even billions. But not only financially it makes a lot of sense, I’d personally prefer it a lot to
disrupt the industry with a revolutionary product and build a great company, then to sell it
and forever wonder what if I had followed my dreams and tried to make my vision come
true.
2
Key Words
Incubator
A startup incubator is a program designed to help new start-ups, by providing workspace,
funding, mentoring and training. Usually they are non-profit organisation, often run by
universities or business schools. However some incubators are also run by governments or
entrepreneurs. In this series Erlich Bachmann uses his house as an incubator and
entrepreneurs who are working on their start-ups can live in his house. In exchange he
receives a 10% stake in their company.
Startup
This is one of the key words since the whole series is about start-ups and everything
surrounding them. It starts with a genius programmer who invents a compression algorithm
and abandons his safe corporate job for his startup and ever since then the whole story
revolves around this startup, Pied Piper.
Venture Capital
Venture Capital is another central aspect of the series. Venture capital companies provide
capital to risky and innovative businesses, which have great potential. Venture capital
companies play a major role in the story because they provide the funding which the startups require to grow. The most important venture capital company for Pied Piper is Raviga
Capital because they hold a 5% stake.
Compression Algorithm
Compression algorithm is a key word because it is what allowed Pied Piper to become so
valuable this quickly. The compression algorithm invented by Richard is the most efficient
one ever and is a breakthrough in the field of data compression. Since lots of data is being
collected, efficient compression could save a lot of storage space.
Reverse Engineering
Reverse engineering starts to become important when Hooli tries to copy Pied Piper’s
Middle Out compression algorithm. Reverse engineering is trying to understand how a
device works by deductive reasoning. For example to find out how the algorithm works, the
Hooli engineers use the algorithm and by observing the results they try to determine how
it’s programmed. In the series Hooli successfully copies the algorithm of Pied Piper and
markets it under a new name: “Nucleus”. But Pied Piper manages to make other
revolutionary improvements to their algorithm and performs better than Nucleus by Hooli.
Techcrunch Disrupt
Techcrunch Disrupt is an especially important event in the series. It’s a competition for tech
startups looking for funding and exposure. The prize is $50k, but more importantly it’s about
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the press. Pied Piper’s existence relies on winning this competition, because the competitor
Nucleus is also hoping to get the prize and after the competition everyone will know which
of them has the better tech and the better product. Losing
Weissman Score
The Weissman score is what makes the compression algorithm so great. It is a fictional
efficiency metric for lossless compression. It compares the required time and the
compression ratio of an application with those of a standard compressor. The high
Weissman score is what impressed the Hooli engineers and therefore paved the way
towards Pied Piper’s success.
Cloud
The cloud is another key word, because it is a vital part of the Pied Piper system. The
compression algorithm is what makes Pied Piper stand out, but the Cloud is the actual
product. The algorithm itself is not valuable to the customer, but the products, like the Pied
Piper cloud, are what they can actually buy and benefit from.
4
Sociogram
5
This sociogram shows the relations of the side characters to the main character, Richard
Hendricks.
Firstly there is Gavin Belson, who is the CEO of Hooli, the big tech company Richard used to
work at. He is the main antagonist of Richard throughout the series, and he is a cutthroat
businessman who is not concerned by ethics.
Erlich Bachmann is another key character in the series. Even though his incubator doesn’t
offer much except for a place to live and to work, he has a claim to 10% of Pied Piper, the
company Richard founded. At the start he isn’t very useful to the company since he can’t
program anymore because he has carpal tunnel syndrome, but soon it turns out that he
complements Richard very well, since Erlich is a charismatic speaker and can easily
communicate the company’s vision, while Richard is a great programmer but fails at public
speaking.
Nelson Bighetti, who is mostly called Big Head due to his similar sounding last name, is
generally talentless, but lucky. He also lives in Erlich’s Incubator, until Pied Piper starts
becoming relevant and they realise they can’t keep him employed, since they don’t have
much money and he doesn’t contribute much. Since Hooli is Pied Piper’s competitor, Gavin
Belson hires Big Head to get secret information about the compression algorithm and cause
conflicts between Richard and Big Head. But since Big Head doesn’t know anything about the
algorithm, he is of little use to Gavin and the friendship between Big Head and Richard
doesn’t deteriorate because Big Head is enjoying his job at Hooli where he does nothing and
gets paid 500k a year, which is much more than anyone at Pied Piper earns and it was only
possible due to Richard founding a startup which competes with Hooli. This theme of Big
Head being lucky but having no skills or knowledge continues throughout the series.
Jared Dunn is the CFO of Pied Piper and therefore manages the finances and all
organisational tasks. He originally was a VP at Hooli, but when he heard of Richards
revolutionary algorithm, he offered to work for him. He provides the business skills which
the rest of the team lacks and introduces strategies to streamline the production, like the
scrum system which organises the workflow of the company and therefore makes the
development of new software more efficient.
Peter Gregory is a billionaire and CEO of his venture capital company, Raviga Capital. His first
encounter with Richard is at a talk that Peter Gregory is hosting, where he tells people to
drop out and start companies. After this talk Richard walks up to him and tries to pitch his
idea, but Peter is completely uninterested and doesn’t want to listen to him and tells him to
just send an email to his assistant. A few days later, when Richard is talking to Gavin Belson
about selling his company, Peter Gregory offers 200k for a 5% stake in it. Ultimately Richard
decides to keep the company and take Peter Gregory’s investment and ever since then
they’ve been working together. After this Peter Gregory takes on the role of a mentor for
Richard.
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Gilfoyle and Dinesh are working with Richard on Pied Piper from the very start and know
each other through Erlich Bachmann. Gilfoyle works as a system administrator and is an
expert on online security. Dinesh is a programmer that specialises in Java.
Review
I can clearly recommend this series. For a long time I’ve not seen a show which has such an
interesting plot yet still is so funny.
Firstly, the story is full of thrilling turning points and there are new challenges and problems
which are posed to the startup in every episode. From the first episode Richard Hendricks,
the main character and founder of the startup, is faced with the difficult decision of whether
to sell his company for millions of dollars or keep a bigger stake with it and take the risk of
failing. And this constant risk of failure, with the chance of enormous success is what makes
one want to watch episode after episode.
Secondly, the other aspect that makes this show so outstanding is its great humour. The
characters are perfectly written to portray the stereotypical startup: the socially awkward
founder who is good with tech, the self-absorbed presenter who conveys the vision of the
company, the boring project management guy and two programmers who constantly try to
prove that they are better than the other one. Together these characters synergise very well
and lots of interactions which are somewhere between funny and awkward are bound to
happen.
What defines this show is its great mix of an interesting story, great characters who are
thought out and work well together and jokes which have made me laugh more than any
show ever has. In conclusion I recommend watching this show.
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