radishcake March 25, 2015 Share March 25, 2015 Season 2 begins with the Pied Piper guys being wined and dined by every venture capitalist under the sun, while Monica adjusts to a new managing partner at Raviga as the company faces major changes. Link to comment
chocolatine April 9, 2015 Share April 9, 2015 $10 says the one that Erlich thinks is Cameron is actually Tyler. Link to comment
Primetimer April 10, 2015 Share April 10, 2015 Will Season 2 of Silicon Valley deliver optimal tip-to-tip efficiency? Read the story Link to comment
BeatLA24 April 10, 2015 Share April 10, 2015 The picture in the story is at AT&T park in San Francisco. I noticed that in the trailer. I wonder what that scene is going to be about. * Sorry. Just a big time Giants fan. Link to comment
kieyra April 13, 2015 Share April 13, 2015 Excellent episode, coming out strong. And they handed Peter's death very well. I like the new slightly higher profile for the female cast members. Guilfoyle and Dinesh will never not be comedy gold. 2 Link to comment
opus April 13, 2015 Share April 13, 2015 I could have used a "previously on...." Took me a bit to get back up to speed. Link to comment
gpgurl50 April 13, 2015 Share April 13, 2015 I was so sad about the loss of Christopher Evan Welch. That said, the description of Peter Gregory's death was hilarious. 6 Link to comment
chocolatine April 13, 2015 Share April 13, 2015 That negging montage was hilarious. Unrealistic, but hilarious. Not that there aren't plenty of assholes in Silicon Valley, but you usually have to be more established than Richard and Erlich to get away with it. Monica was a smart cookie to tell Richard about the runaway valuation, but I'm disappointed that Laurie Bream was ready to set Richard up for failure just so she could beat out the other financing offers. Peter would not only not have gone for that, he would have explained the reason in the same genius way he did the sesame seed futures last season. From what we've seen so far, Laurie seems to be just like all the other venture capitalists in the Valley. Of course in Gavin Belson's mind it makes perfect sense to talk about forgiveness and release white doves while throwing a lawsuit at Pied Piper. 1 Link to comment
Jellowslr April 13, 2015 Share April 13, 2015 Love this show! I'm so glad it's back. I want to know what Erlich's binary tshirt says. I guess I can rewind and figure it out.....My husband has one that says "You Are Dumb" in binary. It makes me giggle when people ask him what it says. Link to comment
lucindabelle April 13, 2015 Share April 13, 2015 I laughed so hard at Richards attempt to be rude. It was just baffling not neg. he. He hs definitely been herded up, his eyes seem more buggy and he's more socially awkward. Too bad, I preferred him as just rather meek but sweet. Link to comment
hincandenza April 13, 2015 Share April 13, 2015 Decent opener, some good laughs. I still struggle with the idea that PP should have any financial issues (other than the lawsuit, which seems open and shut; there's a mountain of evidence that Hooli stole the original tech), although now I'm wondering what they would have done as a plotline if Christopher Evan Welch hadn't passed; Peter Gregory would have been more involved and there'd be no real conflict. Speaking of Welch/Gregory, it was kind of surreal watching those scenes, but I'm sure they took pains to be sensitive to his family; he was well-liked by the cast and crew. Totally throwaway observation, but during the round of VC meetings, just before the one wherr Richard tried negging, one of the VC guys looked exactly like a clone of Richard Hendricks, but older. Did anyone else notice that? He could have been Middleditch's father. Link to comment
Traveller519 April 13, 2015 Share April 13, 2015 I don't know a lot about real-life Silicon Valley legal matters, but I can see the objective of Gavin's lawsuit. He doesn't need to win the lawsuit, he just needs to keep Pied Piper, a tiny outfit, occupied with with litigation while his team can get Nucleus to market. I think there's enough to merit the lawsuit (i.e. not have it thrown out due to frivolity). Richard developed Pied Piper while working at Hooli, and his breakthrough came after Gavin premiered Nucleus. While the truth should be easy enough to demonstrate, in a court's eyes I could see there being merit to believing the questions warrant being answered. 3 Link to comment
Skyfall April 13, 2015 Share April 13, 2015 Love this show! I'm so glad it's back. I want to know what Erlich's binary tshirt says. I guess I can rewind and figure it out.....My husband has one that says "You Are Dumb" in binary. It makes me giggle when people ask him what it says. Bitcoin! 1 Link to comment
Flannery Tanner April 18, 2015 Share April 18, 2015 Can anyone provide or recommend a "Venture Capital for Dummies" explanation? I am totally lost with all this talk of funding rounds, etc. Link to comment
chocolatine April 18, 2015 Share April 18, 2015 (edited) Can anyone provide or recommend a "Venture Capital for Dummies" explanation? I am totally lost with all this talk of funding rounds, etc. I'm not an expert, but here's what I know having worked for a VC-funded (and later acquired) startup: VCs invest money into companies and get equity in return. To establish the percentage of equity a VC will get for their investment, they do a valuation, i.e. an estimate of how much the company is worth. That involves a process called "due diligence" where they look into the books, the code base, interview employees, etc. So for example, if they conclude that a company is worth $100 million, and they invest $20 million, they own 20% of the company, and accordingly get input into how the company is run. At that point, the company is only worth $100 million on paper, since it's not being publicly traded and nobody is acquiring it. The goal of the VC is to get a high return on their investment, which means the company has to exit at a higher valuation than it started. "Exit" means selling either the entire company to another company (mergers & acquisitions) or selling shares of the company on the stock exchange (IPO). For most startups, even successful ones, it takes more than one funding round to get there, hence the letter names for the rounds (A, B, C, etc.) Let's say our $100 million company spent their $20 million A round hiring employees, leasing office space, and renting servers in a data center. They're still not profitable, but if they've advanced their product development, they are valued higher than before, let's say $300 million. So they get a B funding round of $30 million, which is more than they got before, but at this point, the VC only gets 10% of the company (the shares of the previous owners get diluted accordingly). However, if the company runs out of money and seeks another round but their valuation has stayed the same or decreased, that's called a "down round" because the VC gets a higher share of the company with a smaller investment. So if our $100 million company has frittered away their A round without increasing their valuation, and they come back for $30 million, they'd have to give away another 30% of the company. That way the VC would have large enough share of the company to be able to outvote the founder(s) on crucial matters and even fire them. What happened to Richard's friend in this episode was, his company got overvalued in the A round; it didn't live up to that valuation and faced a down round in the B round; after the B round the VC had enough votes to force an acquisition that Richard's friend didn't want; and, since acquisition money usually vests over several years if the founder stays with the company, and Richard's friend was fired immediately after the acquisition, he got almost no money out of the deal. The same thing could/would happen to Richard if Monica hadn't warned him. One more thing about rounds: there can also be a "seed" or "angel" round when a company is just starting out and doesn't have a fully baked product yet, which is much smaller than an A round. That's what the $200k from Peter Gregory for 5% of the company was last season. The risk of losing that kind of investment is even higher than with letter rounds, but the return if the company succeeds is much higher too. That was a long explanation. The tl;dr version is that a VC's interests don't always align with the founder's interests, and if the founder isn't careful and lets a VC have too much control, s/he can be left with nothing. Edited April 18, 2015 by chocolatine 9 Link to comment
Pallas April 19, 2015 Share April 19, 2015 Wow, chocolatine. That was as elegant an explanation of...anything, that I've read in some time. May I please invest in your compression algorithm? 4 Link to comment
chocolatine April 19, 2015 Share April 19, 2015 Wow, chocolatine. That was as elegant an explanation of...anything, that I've read in some time. May I please invest in your compression algorithm? Aw, thank you! You may invest as long as you don't overvalue my algorithm just to beat out the other PTV posters. ;) 1 Link to comment
Flannery Tanner April 20, 2015 Share April 20, 2015 Thank you for the explanation I don't think I'd be ready to ace (or even pass) an Econ final, but I feel prepared enough to understand this show. 1 Link to comment
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