Silicon Valley

Tables.

Tables are made so a person can sit down and do something.

Or nothing.

Any person can sit at a table,

and if the table is large enough, many people.

To make jokes, eat a meal, tell stories.

Tables are for people to be together and share.

And that is why tables are like Pied Piper.

Grapefruits, postcards, hugs.

These are things people share to connect, to come closer.

To open up about ideas and things that make us feel alive,

like air, ballet, amazing haircuts, weird countries,

three-alarm chili, mountains, continents, the Earth, life.

Life is beautiful and sad and hopeful and dangerous.

So maybe the reason we share so much

is because we understand that without sharing,

we can't survive.

And sharing is tables.

Pied Piper.

Yes. Tables. I see. It's a metaphor.

- It's a wonderful ad spot. - Yeah. We're all just tables.

I love what you've done with the place.

It's a really nicely done place.

Say, is that your dog?

It's a dog.

You and I have never really had much of a rapport, have we?

It's... wanting.

Oh, look.

Well, we're almost there. Prepare to gather, everyone.

No, I didn't say to gather. I simply said prepare to gather.

- Monica, hey. - Oh, hey. How's it going?

- You holding up okay? - Not really.

- I know. - Her parties are always deeply weird.

Hey... I guess this is as good a time as any to say it,

but... I'm really sorry for not getting Pied Piper.

And to be honest, it's really embarrassing to be so fucking wrong.

Well, here's the thing, you... you might not be.

What? What are you talking about?

Okay.

So, well, Pied Piper launches and everything's great,

and we spent a fucking bazillion dollars, on the Tables ad

and now we are almost at 500,000 installs, right?

- Yeah. What's the problem? - Well, as you know,

installs isn't really the metric that matters.

We need daily active users, people who come back to the platform.

Okay, so how many daily users do you actually have?

Okay, what would... what would be a number

that would make you say, "Ugh, oh, that's bad."

I don't know, like, 100,000?

Are you less?

How much less?

- 19,000. - 19... 19,000 less than a hu...

- 81,000? - No. No, just 19,000.

- That's the only number. - What?

- That's... that's terrible. - Yeah. I'm aware.

Well, yeah, that's art, not a chair.

Richard! Oh, my... well, you haven't told Laurie yet, have you?

- No. - Okay. Well, who else knows?

- Dinesh and Gilfoyle? - No.

Erlich?

No.

Well, apparently Jared knows.

Yeah, Pied Piper's sort of what I'm known for,

but I'm into a lot of cool stuff.

Like, a lot.

You seem surprised.

I'll give you an example. A few months ago,

I'm at my computer, freestyling,

just kind of jammin' out, you know,

before I knew it I had thrown together

the greatest video-chat app the world has ever seen.

So you invented Skype a few months ago?

Great ideas just sort of flow through me.

The platform, you know, it's sort of a group project,

but... the video-chat app, that's my solo album.

- Oh, Robert. - I'm Dinesh.

What the fuck is going on with you?

Could you be more specific?

You're hiding something.

What? No, I'm not.

Everything's fine. You know, everything's fine.

That's a lie.

I can tell because you subscribe

to traditional Judeo-Christian mores of right and wrong.

You're made uncomfortable by untruth.

My commitment to LaVeyan Satanism

grants me certain freedoms.

There is no good and evil, there's only self.

- Would you like a beverage? - Yes, I would.

Lie. You just want me to go to the bar and leave you alone.

Gil... you crack me up.

Lie.

I terrify you, as I should.

Get out of here.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, so, I just spoke with my friend who runs a market research firm,

she's gonna set up a focus group for the platform,

put it in the hands of some real users,

and hopefully it'll be super obvious what's going wrong.

- Okay, great. - Clink, clink, clink. Gather.

Faster, please. Gather faster. We're close.

We need to see the numbers change.

499,995,

499,996...

499,996

499,997

499,997...

It's going great. They've been engaging

with the platform for about an hour now.

- They're just starting the Q and A. - Great.

Thank you, everyone, for sharing your feelings

on the revolutionary new Pied Piper platform.

Now, Bernice, you say here that you were...

totally freaked out by the platform.

What specifically totally freaked you out?

Everything. Just every single thing about it.

Just, like, how it worked.

Now, who else found themselves

totally freaked out by this platform?

Barry, Warren, Natalie, Martina,

Gwen, Amy, Walker, and Clay.

You were all totally freaked out.

Was anyone not totally freaked out?

Clark? Good. What was your reaction?

It just made me feel stupid.

This file sync thing is confusing.

When I put videos into my main folder, it says it uploaded them,

but then I didn't see where they went.

It said stuff was on my phone and my iPad,

but when I looked at the memory, it said, zero K used,

so stuff wasn't on there.

That's the platform. He's describing the platform

and what's great about it. Well, clearly he doesn't get it.

clearly none of these people get it. Maybe this is a bad group.

This is the fifth one today and it's the least hostile reaction we've seen.

Okay, well, everyone that I showed the beta to loved it. Loved.

- Oh, shit. - What?

Who did you give the beta to?

- Your friends. Engineers. - Well, yeah, Monica.

I wanted to give it to people who would understand

what I'm trying to do, so I could get useful feedback.

And with all due respect, I gave it to you, the one person without a computing background,

and you said it felt engineered.

- Oh, shit. - Yeah.

You're trying to sell the platform to regular people,

but you never actually put it in the hands of regular people.

Like them.

Shouldn't there be a download button?

Did they honestly forget to add a download button?

You know what, Richard, why don't we just go...

I mean, who designed this thing?

I did. I designed it.

Excuse me? Who are you?

My name is Richard Hendricks, I'm the CEO of Pied Piper.

Oh, my God.

Oh, you're the one who forgot the download button.

Yes.

But no. No, actually,

there is no download button because... well,

you don't need a download button. We're past that.

I mean, that's the old thing. This guy, actually,

he should have told you that.

I'm a moderator, not an advocate.

Okay, well, with Pied Piper,

you don't need to download anything or send anything at all,

anywhere, because the second you take a photo or a video or compose a text message,

it's on all of your devices instantly.

- So it's all on my phone? - Yes.

Wrong! It says zero K used," so it's not on there.

Yes, well, that's the best part about the platform right there.

Yes... because you're right, it's not actually on the phone.

But you don't need it to be on the phone

if you can see it on the phone,

even though there's nothing there at all.

But... where the hell is it?

Everywhere.

And nowhere, sort of.

Okay, let me... let me just take a step back here

and explain it in a simpler way.

- Sorry, what was your name? - Bernice.

Bernice. What did you have for breakfast today?

- Scrambled eggs. - Scrambled eggs.

And what's in the eggs?

Electrons. Right?

And we all know how electrons exist in orbitals.

Multivalent states? No?

No one knows this? Okay.

Okay, that's fine. Bad example. That's on me.

I'll... I'm going to use the whiteboard here.

You're gonna... you're gonna love this. Okay.

Then, once we hit a critical mass of users,

the volume of data moving through the system

will enable the neural net to start optimizing the platform.

It will actually get smarter and faster all on its own.

Is that like when I'm texting and my phone starts guessing what I'm going to say?

This goes way beyond autocomplete.

Actually, all of your devices will begin helping each other

in ways that we can't even design or predict.

Okay, but see, the problem is... Terminator.

What? No. No, no. No, no, no. No.