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We’re recapping each new episode of “Silicon Valley,” HBO’s surprisingly not-terrible comedy-drama that follows a group of young Palo Alto developers as they deal with the absurdity and stress of building a company. We’re adopting the “Alan Sepinwall” style of television recaps so you’ve been warned: Here, there be spoilers. Read our synopses of Episodes 1 and 2 here and here. Tonight’s episode of “Silicon Valley” is all about the fuzzy line between brilliance and bullshit. When tech founders use jargon like “cloud-based data solutions” and “world-beating compression algorithms,” to outsiders it may sound pretty revolutionary. In turn, truly revolutionary ideas often sound completely insane when first introduced. Few believed Steve Jobs in 1983 when he said, “In a few years people will be spending more time interacting with personal computers than with cars.” Biz Stone admitted that in the early days even some of his engineers thought Twitter was “stupid. The truth is, for all the time founders spend explaining their ideas to raise funding or attract customers, these words are meaningful only in hindsight. Early on in the episode, titled “Articles of Incorporation,” we see a promo spot for “Nucleus,” the compression technology that tech giant Hooli stole last week from the show’s protagonist, Richard (Thomas Middleditch). Hooli CEO Gavin Belson (“Big Love”‘s Matt Ross) promises, “If we can make your audio and video files smaller, we can make cancer smaller. And hunger. And AIDS.” It’s a perfect illustration of how entrepreneurs like to believe they’re changing the world, when they’re really just changing how many songs you can fit on your phone. Meanwhile, back at the headquarters of Richard’s startup Pied Piper, the founder gets more bad news: There’s already an entity in California named Pied Piper, a sprinkler company in a small town in Santa Clara County. At first, his team is thrilled. By any measure, Pied Piper is a terrible name, made worse by the sexually-suggestive logo Richard designs. Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani, who has quickly become the show’s funniest actor) says it looks like “a guy sucking a dick, and he’s got another dick tucked behind his ear for later… like a snack dick.” The show’s logic hinges on the fact that Pied Piper’s technology is extremely powerful, yet the company will never succeed with a name and logo like that. Again, perception trumps reality. In a move that underscores how the company’s nice sweet founder is becoming a megalomaniac control-freak (an arc the show would be wise to continue exploring a la “Breaking Bad”), Richard insists on keeping the name and drives out to visit the owner of the sprinkler company, a salt-of-the-earth old-timer named Arnold. The sprinkler man decides to give Richard the name for a modest price of $1,000 because he reminds him of his son who has Asperger’s (this initiates some running jokes that hew a bit too closely to the “Big Bang Theory”‘s tired “What’s the deal with nerds?” brand of humor). Everything seems to be back-on-track until the show’s biggest bullshitter, Erlich (TJ Miller), launches a big PR push, convincing Techcrunch, Re/Code, and — yes — PandoDaily about Pied Piper. In a scene drawing attention to tech journalism’s tendency to focus on money over substance, Erlich brags to Re/Code’s Kara Swisher, “When you combine our portfolios, Peter Gregory (Pied Piper’s sole investor) and I account for billions of dollars in assets.” Pied Piper may only have $200,000 in funding and no product on the market, but the mere mention of the word “billions” is enough to generate hype around the company. Of course hype has a negative side to it: The Re/Code story enrages Arnold, who was alerted to Pied Piper’s press by his son, and now sees Richard as some “young billionaire” who just took him for a ride, even though Richard can’t even afford to buy lunch. Arnold ups the asking price to $250,000, forcing the startup to come up with a new name. In an attempt to peg the company’s name to the fact that it makes files smaller, the team tosses out ideas like “SMLR,” “Small Come Back Now Ya Here,” and “Dwarfism 2.o. Erlich takes a different approach: He drives out to the desert and chows down a Ben-and-Jerry’s pint full of psychedelic mushrooms. In perhaps the show’s funniest sequence yet, Erlich sits legs-crossed and goes off on a free association rant as computer-animated tech company logos spiral around his head. If you’ve ever spent a large part of your day reading tech PR pitches, it’s truly the stuff of nightmares: “Sysbit… Digital Solutions… Integrating Open Data Spaces… Yeah… Tech Bit Data Solution Systems… Creating Unique Cross-Platform Technologies… Technologies…. Technolo-Jesus… oh fuck. As the Pied Piper team wades through meaningless tech-speak, there’s a parallel storyline that explores the inverse of this concept. The founders of another company that raised capital from Peter Gregory (Christopher Evan Welch) are in crisis mode, pleading the investor for a bridge-loan so they don’t have to lay off a huge chunk of their staff. Gregory’s employee Monica (Amanda Crew) insists he can handle it, but instead of talking through the problem he asks the founders to go to Burger King and pick him up one of every item. Presented with a sea of sandwiches, Gregory makes cryptic statements about sesame seeds and cicadas with only hours to go before the company has to start purging its staff. I hated this subplot at first. It felt like every overdone “eccentric billionaire” trope: “Oh, look the rich guy is so out-of-touch he thinks Burger King is some new shocking innovation!” Then at the last moment, the writers flip the script: Gregory concludes that most Burger King sandwiches have sesame seeds. Brazil and Myanmar, which supply much of the world’s sesame seeds, are about to face their worst cicada infestations in two centuries. But Indonesia also grows sesame seeds but has no cicada population. So Gregory buys up a bunch of Indonesian sesame seed futures and gives the founders the loan they need out of the projected profits of this purchase. Gregory may not sound like he knows what’s he’s talking about, and he may not pepper his speeches with tech-damaged aphorisms designed to impress, but that’s because he doesn’t have to — he’s two steps ahead of everybody else already (of course being really filthy rich helps too). But back to the episode’s main storyline: Arnold drives out to Pied Piper’s incubator house to “kick Richard’s ass” but discovers that the startup is hardly the billion dollar operation he expected. Reminded of his own humble beginnings as an entrepreneur, Arnold agrees to sell for the original $1,000, but only after some tough negotiation from Richard. Building off the conclusion to last week’s episode, the young founder continues to find a capacity for ruthlessness. Moreover, he’s beginning to like it. As I wrote last week, Richard’s transformation from unassuming geek to cold-blooded CEO is where “Silicon Valley”‘s greatest potential lies. That arc may not be as jarring or disturbing as, say, a high school chemistry teacher’s mutation into a murderous drug kingpin. But it would be a far truer reflection of reality, especially in Silicon Valley where young kids with a talent for code are suddenly tasked with running companies that could be worth millions or even billions in a few short years. Three episodes in, “Silicon Valley” is a good series, but not a great one. The show’s “female problem” is still on display, with Monica being the only woman regularly on the show. I get that the series’ focus on young males helps underscore the insular nature of their geek-boy culture, in the same way “The Sopranos” rarely gave much screen-time to non-Italian Americans. Furthermore, while the naming scenes contain some of show’s funniest jokes yet, a lot of the gags in “Articles of Incorporation” fall flat and come at the expense of people with Asperger’s. Or Canadians. (When was the last time you laughed at a Canadian joke? Middle school?) And the episode’s final scene is absurd in all the wrong ways, coming off like something out of “The Hangover” and clashing with the show’s tone, which is satirical but always grounded in reality. Nevertheless, as a dramatic and entertaining exploration into what it means to build a company in 2014, “Silicon Valley” is unlike any other show on television. It just needs to finds the right balance between truthful satire and low-brow humor. And with the guy behind “Office Space” and “Idiocracy” at the helm, I think it can. David Holmes is Pando's East Coast Editor. He is also the co-founder of Explainer Music, a production company specializing in journalistic music videos. His work has appeared at FastCompany.com, ProPublica, the Guardian, the Daily Dot, NewYorker.com, and Grist. Believers in the mythical creature known as the Loch Ness Monster think Apple Maps may contain a piece of evidence. When looking at satellite images with the Apple Maps application, there appears to be an unidentified figure in the waters of Loch Ness. This image, however, does not show up in Google Maps. By Tim Worstall April 18, 2014 REVEALED: Recipient of New Jersey pension deal housed charity run by Gov. TechCrunch reports that Airbnb has closed a $500 million funding round that valued the company at $10 billion. The round, which was led by the TPG private equity firm, brings Airbnb’s total funding to $826 million. By Michael Carney April 18, 2014 Why this group of investors is still trying to save Mt. Google has updated its Trends service to offer email notifications. This means that users who subscribe to any topic can receive updates sent to their inbox. Yesterday Barnes & Noble chairman Leonard Riggio sold a large portion of his company shares, but that doesn’t mean he has given up fighting for his business. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal he discussed potential future avenues for the ailing book retail giant, including saying that “it’s possible” Barnes & Noble could open up smaller retail stores. According to new data from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, Android nabbed the most smartphone activations this Q1 with 53 percent. Apple’s iOS came in second with 42 percent, and poor Windows Phone and Blackberry only racked up 1 percent each. April 18, 2014 Zuckerberg’s FWD. Apache Software Foundation has announced that its free MS Office alternative Apache OpenOffice has been downloaded more than 100 million times. Currently the software suite offers more than 750 extensions and over 2,800 templates. April 18, 2014 “I love Netflix. The new interface is great, I just love the company. We’re all dying to see what happens with Apple. More and more I’m convinced that the idea of tablets, phones, computers all being projectors is ultimately the right model. And by projectors I don’t mean optical projectors but IP projectors. By Adam L. LinkedIn has announced that it has reached over 300 million registered users worldwide. According to the professional social network, more than half of these users come from outside the US. April 18, 2014 Fake it ’til you make it: Episode 3 of HBO’s Silicon Valley, reviewed By David Holmes April 20, 2014 How Corporations Can Innovate Like Startups By Trevor Owens and Obie Fernandez, Guest Contributors April 19, 2014 An economics prize tells us something very worrying about the news business, and ourselves By Tim Worstall April 18, 2014 Indiegogo moves on from Healbe PR disaster by locking a woman out of her account when she asked for a refund By James Robinson April 18, 2014 New shocking research proves that rich people control American politics By Tim Worstall April 18, 2014 REVEALED: Recipient of New Jersey pension deal housed charity run by Gov. Christie’s wife By David Sirota April 18, 2014 Measuring the value Marissa Mayer’s destroying at Yahoo! By Tim Worstall April 18, 2014 Report: Heartbleed was used to attack “a large corporation” less than 24 hours after the bug was discovered By Nathaniel Mott April 18, 2014 Jasper Wireless became a $1 billion company by being into the Internet of Things way before you were By James Robinson April 18, 2014 This little-known Arkansas founder raised $93 million and he’s speaking at Southland By Sarah Lacy April 18, 2014 Chris Christie’s $300m pension proposal broke state anti-corruption laws (And now the intended recipient threatens to sue Pando) By David Sirota April 18, 2014 Samsung to bring ads to Milk Music, the streaming service with no reason to exist By Nathaniel Mott April 18, 2014 CrowdCurity shines a security spotlight to the bitcoin industry with crowdsourced bug bounties By Michael Carney April 18, 2014 Why this group of investors is still trying to save Mt. Gox By Nathaniel Mott April 18, 2014 Can love be hacked into a successful public company? By Carmel DeAmicis April 18, 2014 Zuckerberg’s FWD.us launches attack ad against immigration troll Steve King By David Holmes April 18, 2014 Dancing Giants: Why large companies should embrace the minimum viable product By Adam L. Frontback almost never happened. Nail meet coffin: Mt. REVEALED: Gov. LevelUp exploits smart bundling to drop credit card interchange fees to 1. As Healbe’s $1. Rep. We’re launching Pando Memberships in beta. Revealed: Gov. Enplug drags digital signage into the social era, raising $2. REVEALED: Recipient of New Jersey pension deal housed charity run by Gov. Why this group of investors is still trying to save Mt. Zuckerberg’s FWD. ©2014 - PandoDaily | Contact | Facebook | Twitter | Powered by WordPress. 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