Shit. I swear I deleted a picture,
but when I clicked back to the album, the icon reappeared, it undeleted itself.
But I can't get it to happen again, so...
Hey, Richard, totally out of the blue,
do you know how we might be able to find that bug?
No, Dinesh. We are not releasing the beta.
We integrated the neural net a week ago. The platform is full of bugs.
But that is what a beta is for.
You give it to people in the real world, they use it, and that is how we find the bugs.
Richard, Reid Hoffman says
if you're not mortally embarrassed by the quality of your initial release,
you've released too late.
Okay. We already are mortally embarrassed.
Okay? We move in and, subsequently, out of our offices,
mainly because it was too expensive.
We fired two CEOs, we've pivoted to a box, and then pivoted back.
Any more bad word-of-mouth and we will be royally fucked.
Where's Gilfoyle?
Hey, Gilfoyle, the deletion issue is ducking me again, and, um...
I'm sorry.
Well, hey, Richard.
Hi, Tara.
I need to borrow your fella here for a second.
All right, babe, I gotta go.
Hey, when you check out the settings view,
can you let me know if there's something weird
that happens with the submit button?
It was a little weird when I was doing QA.
Yeah, okay.
- Sorry, the settings view for... - The beta.
- The beta for... - Pied Piper.
It's a promising compression company that doesn't pay very well.
- You sent her the beta? - I did.
Are you fucking insane? It's not ready. It's riddled with bugs.
Really? Cause I've been test-driving it all day, and it's pretty fucking awesome.
Really? You think so?
Yeah. For real.
Congratulations, Richard. It's so fucking cool.
And when the neural net kicks in, it's gonna be rad.
But, you know, I did have one problem, though.
I tried to restore an old file and it asked me to confirm twice.
Yeah, well, that was a bad merge.
It's been there for months. I fixed it in 10 seconds.
Richard...
Maybe.
Yeah, maybe beta.
- Hi, Dinesh. Java.
Wait, that can't be right.
How can Bachmanity still be so far in the hole?
Look at all this shit that Big Head is selling.
He was renting virtually everything in the house.
He rented that cannon?
It was for display purposes only. So you forfeit your deposit.
It's a cannon. What's he supposed to do, not fire it?
That was the provision.
So that's it then, I guess.
Big Head's really broke.
You know what? He's young. He'll get past it.
Nelson is not the only one who should be worried.
- You were partners. - Fair point.
But shuttering a company in the tech world is almost a rite of passage,
like herpes simplex one.
At first, it's ugly and embarrassing and you're disgusted by your own dick.
But after a while,
in the larger scheme of things, you realize it's really...
Mr. Bachman, you structured Bachmanity as a general partnership.
Then, with no money in the bank, you threw a million-dollar luau on Alcatraz.
You're on the hook for that.
And even declaring bankruptcy isn't going to absolve you of these debts.
Bankruptcy?
it's none of my business. Good luck.
Wait, where are you going? We need you. You're our business manager.
There's no business remaining to manage.
Good day, Mr. Bachman.
Hey, good news.
They said we can each keep one of the cannonballs,
so not a total loss, right?
All right, so I've set up a sign-up page for the beta.
Now, we're gonna keep it small and secure,
so that means we're limited to 10 invite codes each to send out.
I've already got my list.
It's people that I know personally,
and people that I know I can trust.
Hmm, we only get 10 each. This could be prickly.
Well, I'm out. I don't trust anyone.
It's a huge part of my belief system.
You sent the beta to Tara.
Yeah, there was a transactional nature to that exchange,
- which I'll get into if you want. - Pass.
But it doesn't mean that I trust her, and I certainly don't trust anyone else.
Oh, in other words, you have no friends.
On principle.
I could make what rises to your low standards of a friend any time I want.
Sure you could.
Gilfoyle, if you're not gonna use your 10 invites, could Dinesh and I have them?
Sure. Knock yourselves out.
Loser. He's got no friends.
Okay.
Miriam, Sylvia...
Oh, Samantha! I almost forgot her.
You know, Jared, you can have all 10 of Gilfoyle's invites.
- Much appreciated. - Yeah.
Monica, hello.
Um, did you honestly think that you could send me an email
telling me that you were launching the beta without sending me the beta?
Come on. I'm dying to see it.
Well, I think the whole point, Monica, is to get the beta
into the hands of unbiased people
so they can give us an honest feedback, you know.
Besides, I just gave out my 10 invites.
Oh, if Monica wants an invite, I could, like, squeeze her on my list.
- Are you sure? - Yeah, no problem.
Okay, Monica, well, you're in luck.
Dinesh has decided to give you one of his codes, so...
Great. I promise I'll find something terrible to say.
Okay, so I did a rough accounting
of your assets and liabilities.
Jared, don't look at me like that. Just give it to me straight.
All right. Your house has appreciated in value since you bought it,
but if you sold it now for what Zillow and Redfin think it's worth...
I'd still be half a million in the hole.
Now, that's the bad news.
- Is there good news? - Well, it's unclear.
I went back through your records.
Uh, at first, I'll admit, a bit voyeuristically, uh, to see where all of the money went,
and apart from the party expenses, which were staggering...
Yeah. Fuck, yeah.
But one number jumped out at me.
Now, whoever did your accounting
earmarked almost 70% of Big Head's settlement money for taxes.
70%?
Even in Taxo-Alto, which I coined, it would be half that.
Where did that money go?
Well, that is the $6-million question.
I may have the answer.
I'm sorry. You're accusing me of impropriety?
You, the man who spent $20,000
renting giant fiberglass tiki heads,
and $40,000 more
when one of them was misplaced on the way back to the rental house?
I told you it wasn't misplaced. I know exactly where it is.
It's at the bottom of the bay.
I called you a thief because you, sir, have stolen from us.
Nelson, come on. You can't possibly believe this.
- Sorry. - Don't apologize to him.
- Oh, right. Sorry. - Thank you.
Arthur, you listen to me, and you listen good.
I have people calling me 40 times a day asking for their money.
I even considered selling my house to pay them.
So you are going to go in your little fucking piggy bank right now
and pay back every fucking kopeck
that you stole from Big Head.
And if you don't, we're gonna take our little show on the road,
perhaps perform it for a man named the DA.
Ridiculous.
Very well.
Game on.
Let's go, Big Head.
Wait.
I may have moved around some of your money
in a way that wasn't exactly conventional.
- Give me back Big Head's fucking money! - Yeah!
- Sorry. Sorry. - No, you did good.
I can't, because I don't have it.
Hey, Marc, we may have a problem.
What's up?
Well, a buddy of mine at Datatrode
sits next to a guy who just got invited to Pied Piper's beta.
Shit. They're already in beta?
Should I tell Gavin?
Fuck, no. We're still two or three months out.
Yeah, if he hears Pied Piper's already in beta, trust me, he'll lose his shit.
Fine. But if it ever comes up, I didn't hear about this.
- And this came in when? - Forty-three minutes ago.
And deleted six minutes after that.
Fortunately, the filters, which I had installed, sir,
caught the relevant keywords.
I decided to walk it to you personally.
An employee's withholding critical information about a competitor.
This is a fireable offense.
You want me to bring this guy in?
No.
Acting on this would expose the fact that we're reading employees' private emails,
destroying the spirit of trust and freedom to innovate
that I've worked so hard to build here at Hooli.
You know, it makes you wonder if the word "Hooli"
has any meaning for these people whatsoever.
Is there anything I can do?
Yeah.
Get me a look at that Pied Piper beta.
I will figure out a way, sir.
Finally. Where the fuck have you...
- Hey, thanks for the lift, Kevin. - Yeah, no worries.
Oh, Kevin, this is Dinesh, one of my coworkers.
- Dinesh, this is Kevin. We met at Philz Coffee. - Hey.
- We're friends now. Isn't that right, Kevin? - Yeah.
All right, my friend. I should get to work, so thanks for the lift.
- Yeah. - Thanks for the coffees.
Oh...
Catch you later, my friend.
That was my friend, Kevin.
Congratulations. You now have one friend.
He also said there was a bug on the landing page.
- Well, how severe is it? - Not bad.
Compared to the rest of what he said, it's nothing.
Guys, uh, you might as well hear this from me.
Uh, I just had a long talk about the beta with my friend, Todd Chambers.
- The Dropbox guy? - Yeah, he was employee number 11.
Why did you send it to him? He hates everything.
Well, because I thought he would be honest with me,
and, um, he was, quite honest. Uh...
He said that in the 15 years he's been working in the Valley,
our beta was the best beta he's ever seen.
- By far. - What? Really?
I don't want to count our chickens before they hatch.
I mean, 3% of hatchlings are born mutated or dead,
but we may have a healthy brood on our hands.
I'm getting the same reaction.
I mean, a few bugs here and there, but overall, they love it.
We might be holding pocket aces here.
Awesome.
Hey, guys.
- How you holding up? - Good, yeah.
I mean, just trying to make sense of all the feedback.
Well, you know, I guess you just can't let it get in your head.
- Did you mean "go to my head"? - What did I say?
You said "get in your head," like it's a bad thing, but it's not.
- It's great. People love it. - Really?
Yeah. Yeah. I can't believe it myself.
They're flipping out.
That's awesome. That...
And that's for the beta that you sent me?
No, Monica. It's for the other beta that we've got kicking around here.
I mean, I have an inbox full of raves here for the upload performance, the mobile, the...
What about the interface?
Did people have any issues with that?
No, not at all. Why?
Do you have any issues with the interface?
I haven't actually had a chance to look at it yet.
Are you serious? You've been sitting on the beta for a day
after busting my balls about not getting an invite?
Pretty fuckin' lame.
Yeah. Sorry.
Yeah. Lame.
I just got an email from my friend, Max Karnow.
And he says, "I heard the beta's awesome. Can I get a look?"
Guys, I think we're starting to get some buzz.
You know, maybe we should talk to Laurie about moving up the official launch?
- You want to move it up? - Yeah, I think we're ready.
I mean, do you think you could set the meeting?
Yeah.
Yeah, I'll go tell Laurie right now.
Okay.
What was that about?
She's fucking weird.
Hey, Richard, um,
if your friend Max Karnow needs an invite,
you know, I could probably squeeze him on my list.
- Are you sure? - Yeah.
I'll have to freeze out one of my boys, but they'll get it.
Just shoot me his email.
The perpetrator has been losing money for other clients for years,
was lying to us and funneling our money to said other clients,
therein, fucking us.
You know, I'm sorry to say this is not an uncommon occurrence.
Wait, it's not an uncommon... So then it...
Okay, got it.
So if it makes any difference,
I'd like to vie for a lesser sentence,
if after he makes full restitution,
he would write a very convincing public apology, preferably...
Mr. Bachman,
an action like this is very expensive and time-consuming,
and as you've already pointed out, even if you do prevail,
the money is gone, unless you win a court order
allowing you to raid other innocent people's bank accounts,
and that's a tough sell,
even for a plaintiff who's more, uh, sympathetic.
Are you calling us unsympathetic?
You just threw a million-dollar party.
A tasteful Polynesian affair, culturally accurate,
which I'm sure you would appreciate,
and one that we can no longer pay for because this criminal has left us flat broke.
Also not true.
You have a large stake in a company called Pied Piper.
Yes, but I can't sell my shares at Pied Piper. Not now.
Wouldn't it cover your outstanding debts?
Of course. But they could potentially be worth billions.
Yes, and how do you see that playing to people
who are being priced out of their homes by rich tech people?
Have either of you been on a jury?
No, of course not. I always get out of it. The fines are very reasonable.
You don't just throw those things away?
Gentlemen, let me tell you what I see.
I see two able-bodied, entitled young white men
who lucked into more money than most people see in five lifetimes,
and who, if they hadn't had their millions stolen,
would have promptly squandered them
on more things like relocated swimming pools and lost tiki heads.
It's not lost.
I know exactly where it is. It's in the bay.
And if your Coast Guard would be a little more helpful,
we probably could have dragged it out of there by now.
Mr. Bachman,
you pay those caterers and bartenders you owe money to,
or I assure you that I will prosecute.
Mr. Chugtai,
I am gonna need all the phone numbers of the people on your list.
Why?
I'm just calling everybody that was on the beta
and saying hi and a quick thank you and then just a couple of follow-up questions.
Yeah. I don't think so.
What do you mean?
Well, I mean, put yourself in their shoes.
They're, like, snowboarding in Tahoe or, like, banging some smokin' chick,
and then this fuckin' nerd calls and he wants to talk about his app.
Buzz-kill.
Wait. Your boys are where?
Well, those are just hypotheticals.
I mean, my boys could be anywhere. I don't keep track of my boys.
Actually, we can.
We have the IP address and GPS coordinates for every active user,
so we can figure out just where your boys are at.
Um, you added a god-view? When did you do that?
Right before I gave it to Tara. I told you, trust no one.
Oh, that is very cool. Nice work, Gilfoyle.
And we can isolate each of our users.
Dinesh's, for example...
Before we invade people's privacy, there is a conversation about ethics.
Why is it that five of your users show up at this address?
Oh, it's buggy.
Should we beta-test the god-view?
I'm happy to drag this out as long as you want to.
Fine.
I was having trouble filling up my list, so I made up a few people.
Well, people do create imaginary friends to meet their emotional needs.
When I was little, I used to pretend that I shared a room with Harriet Tubman
and we were always planning our big escape.
Wait.
Who is this, and why are they at the Hooli campus?
What?
Did you give the beta to someone at fucking Hooli?
Who's Max Karnow?
Oh! That's not one of my friends. I have no friends. Got him from Richard.
No. No, that can't be right.
I went to Hendricks' Facebook page.
I found a friend of his that lived near Palo Alto,
searched his name and found that he was in the tech business.
I then came up with a great idea to dummy up an email account in his name,
sent a beta request to Hendricks, and then voila'.
- That's incredible. - Yes, well, it is my craft.
You see, I think security detail is like creating great jazz where we...
What are you talk... I'm talking about the beta. Will you shut the fuck up?
Fuck, this is good.
Their sign-up flow, their mobile app, it's just seamless.
How are they doing this?
I can put a team on that, sir. If you want to know how they...
What? Why are you so high-maintenance?
- Do you want me to answer that, sir? - No! God damn it!
You're so needy!
Okay, I just talked to the real Max Karnow, and he had no idea about the beta.
Wow, um, clearly, we're dealing with a Hooli spy here.
So what do we do?
I mean, shut down his account, obviously.
Yeah. On it. Sorry, Dinesh.
You will now have one less fake friend.
Wait, Gilfoyle.
Is shutting down this guy's account really the worst thing we can think of to do to him?
Oh, my God. Where the fuck is my head?
Stand by.
Look at their compression ratios.
The more files uploaded, the better they get?
Are we doing that?
No. Not really.
That's gotta be some kind of machine learning optimization.
- Maybe a neural net? - Well, then I want that.
You need to put that into our platform. Now.
I'm not even sure we have the resources here to engineer something like that.
And even if we did, our platform isn't designed to accommodate it.
You're talking about a ground-up rebuild.
Great. So do that. And beat them to market.
That's impossible.
You're at Hooli now, Marc.
And in case you didn't know, here at Hooli, we make the impossible possible.
So if I say I need...
- What the fuck is happening? - Oh, shit!
It looks like a zip bomb. They must know it's us.
- That hard drive is fucked. - This is my personal laptop.
You opened a stolen beta on your personal computer?
Yes. And I installed it on my phone.
Shit. It could fry the entire system.
- Cut the power to the building! - No, Gavin.
It's isolated to your user account, so it's just your laptop and your phone.
It has no impact on the rest of the network.
You don't know that. You don't know shit. None of you do!
You don't even know what Hendricks is capable of.
Cut the power to the building! Cut the power to the building!
And that's that.
- And now, delete user. - Nice.
Wait, is that Monica? She finally opened it.
Oh, yeah. Well, that's odd.
It says here that she started using it yesterday.
Wait, so she lied?
Why would she lie about using the beta?
Yeah, why would Dinesh lie about having friends?
Why would Tara lie to me about fucking other guys
when we have a totally open and hedonistic relationship that allows for behavior like that?
Because people like to lie, Richard.
It's a war of all against all.
The history of humanity is a book written in blood.
We're all just animals in a pit.
- I feel very sad. - Fucking Gilfoyle.
No, no. What are you doing? Get back to work.
On what? You powered down all the computers.
Use a notepad. Code on your phone. We have a deadline here.
No, Gavin, you have a deadline.
We quit, like we should have done the first time.
What first time? What are you talking about?
We both worked at Nucleus right here in this room.
Yeah, before you fired us and rehired us
to do the exact same thing without ever noticing.
I invited you to my wedding, Gavin.
Why?
We just lost our key engineers. What the hell do we do now?
No one leaves this room until we figure it out.
Thanks for the lift.
Steve's place is pretty far away from everything,
but he's letting me stay on his couch for free, so...
And you were supposed to be my meal ticket.
Yeah.
Hold on. C.J. called.
Hey, uh, just wanted to let you know about a great new story I'm chasing.
It's a cautionary tale of two young entrepreneurs who flew too close to the sun.
I mean, apparently, in the midst of losing millions,
they threw a huge party they couldn't afford.
I talked to two bartenders and a caterer who worked your party the other night.
None of them have been paid. Call me.
Well, it appears we've spent our last dime
acquiring a tech blog whose chief focus is chronicling our demise.
Jian-Yang.
Erlich Bachman, is your refrigerator running?
This is Mike Hunt.
Oh, here, here it is on the right.
Thanks, man.
Hey, are you sure you're cool with me taking both cannonballs?
- I'm sure. - Thanks, partner.
I got it.
I know you lied.
- Sorry. - What the fuck?
- Are you okay? - Yeah, I'm fine.
How the hell did you know that I was here?
Well, we have god-view on the beta,
and I saw you leave your office and come here.
So you're stalking me?
Look, Monica, I know you're lying about not using the beta,
so why haven't I heard from you?
- Richard... - No, it's okay.
If you don't like it, you can say it.
Everybody loves it, so I think I can handle one negative review.
Fine. I don't like it.
Really? Are you serious? Everybody else loves it.
I've never wanted to like something more in my life, Richard.
- I just... I don't. - Okay.
What specifically do you not like about it?
Specifically?
All of it.
I mean, it's not, it's not the UX or the design or anything that you can tweak.
It's just, the whole thing feels engineered.
Okay. Well, that might make sense because, um, I'm an engineer.
Look, you've gotten overwhelmingly positive feedback.
The build is incredibly stable, and you're out of money.
So if you think it's ready, you should launch and unlock the next $3 million.
Look, Monica, I value your opinion,
and you're the one that doesn't like it, so I don't know.
Richard, look.
I passed on Slack.
Really?
I never told Laurie. She'd probably fire me if she knew,
but I had a chance to buy 20% of Slack for nothing, and I passed.
I didn't get it. I still don't.
I mean, what is it? Is it email? Is it a chat room?
Turns out, the answer is, it's a $3-billion company.
But that's the fucked-up thing about what we do.
Sometimes our opinion is wrong.
And no matter how good something is,
there's always gonna be someone who doesn't get it.
And unfortunately, with Pied Piper, it's me.
Um...
A week ago, I was worried about releasing a beta no one would like.
I'm just bummed that you're the one that doesn't like it.
Which is why you can't listen to anyone else.
If you believe in something,
don't let anyone talk you out of it, including me.
Peter Gregory always said, "Don't invest in products, invest in people."
I invested in you,
and if you think it's ready to go,
I will go to Laurie and fight like hell for it.
So, what do you want to do?
Congratulations, everyone.
Yeah, I can't believe it.
We're actually finally launching.
Yes. Tuesday, 9:00 a.m.
Pats on the back. Pats on the back.
Gentlemen, I just realized I've forgotten to take a shit.
So, uh, I'll see you back at the old homestead.
Okay.
Laurie.
I have a business proposition I'd like to discuss with you.
It's about my shares in Pied Piper.
Okay, T minus five minutes.
Dinesh, are you still seriously squashing bugs?
Not really. I'm so fucking tired, I'm creating more than I'm fixing.
Where the fuck is Gilfoyle?
This isn't easy for me to do.
You served me well, old friend.
But we're transferring to AWS now,
and I'm afraid you can't come.
Oh, I'm pathetic?
I'd rather have a bunch of fake friends than be best friends with a fucking metal box.
Can't you two see?
You're each other's best friends.
Fuck you, Jared.
Yeah. Jinx.
You owe each other a friendship.
One minute. Holy shit.
Holy shit.
Excuse me. I gotta...
- Hello? - Hey, it's C.J.
Uh, I just heard from the folks that worked your party.
- And? - And it turns out they were paid in full.
So apparently I owe you an apology, and I feel bad.
Not as bad as I feel, I can assure you.
Yeah, I'm getting another call.
Hello?
Erlich Bachman, this is your mom,
and you are not my baby.
Not now, Jian-Yang! Not now! Go back into your room!
- Sorry. - It's okay.
Here we are, Erlich.
Jobs and Woz, Woz and Jobs.
I mean, we did it. You and me, man, forever.
All right.
Richard, never been more excited to be proven wrong.
Yeah, well, get ready for your lives to change forever.
Five, four, three, two, one...