re: Silicon Valley Season 2 thread (spoilerific)

Richard: "Yes, Erlich put his balls on the table."

Erlich: "Guys, apparently there...is a line. And I crossed it....somewhere between 12 and 15 million dollars!"

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Interesting. I thought it was average/below average for this show. It was funny, but the finale last year was much better.

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Exactly. Nothing special last night, but it was a great start to the season.

I don't really care for the new chick. Agree 100% with whoever said it was basically this chick doing a shitty Peter Gregory impersonation the whole time. Maybe it's an homage to him, but it felt really cheap and I didn't like it at all.

It's cool that they went hard on the "Peter is dead" angle, but a lot of it felt overly forced, like they were trying too hard to make light of a serious situation to show that things will be okay.

Loved PG's funeral though. That was great.

Loved Erlich and Richard being dicks to all of the investment companies. That was greatness as well.

Still hate the guy who plays Richard...he's so awful. But I know that's kinda the point though.

Would've liked some more Gilfoyle/Dinesh banter.

One thing sort of stands out to me though...unless I am misreading what those offers mean, why is PP so seemingly undervalued? I know what Monica told Richard about why they need to take a lower investment and all that, but last season made what they did seem like basically the "next big thing" in technology, and Gavin's schpiel to his company about the data shortage makes PP's compression thing all the more important. So why are they only being valued at/offered like 5 and 10 million dollars (with 20 and 100 million total)? Seems like something that great would be worth WAY more than that.

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One thing sort of stands out to me though...unless I am misreading what those offers mean, why is PP so seemingly undervalued? I know what Monica told Richard about why they need to take a lower investment and all that, but last season made what they did seem like basically the "next big thing" in technology, and Gavin's schpiel to his company about the data shortage makes PP's compression thing all the more important. So why are they only being valued at/offered like 5 and 10 million dollars (with 20 and 100 million total)? Seems like something that great would be worth WAY more than that.

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No because they have competitors and venture capital firms are all about investment. They have no tangible product. They have possible applications for their product but no current deployment or proof of concept in the market. In your first round of investment you're looking for preferred investors that will allow you to grow the company at a natural rate. Besides, the VC firms are all about getting the biggest piece for the lowest price. Think Shark Tank.

When you take such a high valuation out the gate, this raises expectations and makes your revenue projections harder to meet in the first 12-18 months. What happens is, you run through that spend faster than expected in many cases, especially if still in development and deployment. You need to find that balance between investment to get you to the next steps, without allowing the market to dictate your expected returns.

What happens is if you don't meet the projections and burn through your runway, you need to take more investors or go out of business. This is called a "down round" and it essentially dilutes your series A investors investments, driving them out, and possibly selling their shares for pennies on the dollar. It's very hard at that point to take on new investment and you could find yourself never being able to meet that original valuation again in the market.

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Still hate the guy who plays Richard...he's so awful. But I know that's kinda the point though.

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but yea he's supposed to come across as incredibly awkward and socially inept

id say he's nailing the part

he's not like that in real life

he can be awkward funny, but its part of his schtick

The funeral was the funniest part of the episode. How do you measure a man's impact? And then proceeded to answer that rhetorical question in three parts. Good nerd joke, guys!

Not enough Dinesh and Gilfoyle. Of course, I would make the show almost 50-75% Dinesh and Gilfoyle.

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No because they have competitors and venture capital firms are all about investment. They have no tangible product. They have possible applications for their product but no current deployment or proof of concept in the market. In your first round of investment you're looking for preferred investors that will allow you to grow the company at a natural rate. Besides, the VC firms are all about getting the biggest piece for the lowest price. Think Shark Tank.

When you take such a high valuation out the gate, this raises expectations and makes your revenue projections harder to meet in the first 12-18 months. What happens is, you run through that spend faster than expected in many cases, especially if still in development and deployment. You need to find that balance between investment to get you to the next steps, without allowing the market to dictate your expected returns.

What happens is if you don't meet the projections and burn through your runway, you need to take more investors or go out of business. This is called a "down round" and it essentially dilutes your series A investors investments, driving them out, and possibly selling their shares for pennies on the dollar. It's very hard at that point to take on new investment and you could find yourself never being able to meet that original valuation again in the market.

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I get all that, but my point is that what PP did/has will revolutionize data across the board. That's a pretty big deal. I guess what I mean is that their highest offer seemed like it should've been one of the lower ones in reality. While I completely understand the whole "hitting your projections" angle, I feel like they could easily be hitting much higher projections than their offers.

Who knows, maybe I'm just off on the whole tech industry and am overevaluating what they've done...but the show damn sure made it seem like what they accomplished was something fricking HUGE.

And I disagree that they don't have a tangible product. Or at least that they won't have one soon. Clearly their logorithms and ideas work, and work better than anybody else's in tech history (evidenced by their Weismann score).

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Not to mention that the largest tech company in the world has a similar product with far greater multi-platform functionality and design in Nucleus. PP only has the Weismann score to top Nucleus at this point. So while they are ahead in terms of compression, most VCs would look at it as David vs. Goliath, and in the tech industy, Goliath almost always wins.

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But they don't have anything close to a similar product, or at least not the capability of it. You say they "only have the Weismann score," but that's sort of the whole point though, right? Their score was largely better than any other score in history, and they were compressing HD videos into miniscule endpoints and saving all kinds of storage issues. As of right now, they have Nucleus slammed in that category, and with VC headed their way, they are only looking up.

ETA:

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Looks like I hit a nerve with some...I wasn't expecting that.

I will again express my extreme dislike for the new girl. She's just awful

Typical VC numbers cruncher with no social skills. The unintended comedy of Peter Gregory is lost and it is a huge hole in the show

Looks like they are bringing in a new character to offset the loss of PG. The billionaire internet cool guy

Anyone speak Spanish? I wonder if the mariachi band gave away his answer