Tag Archives: Movie

HBO’s Silicon Valley – episode 11: should you sell or should you die – or neither?

I have to admit episode 10 was full of s…- I have never seen a VC stealing ideas neither a major corporation suing a start-up. Whatever SV is fun. So when you have the choice between sell or die, should you choose?
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or maybe do neither.
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– “You should pursue your dream, not for profit, not for valuation or material wealth but for the good of humanity”.
– “Easy to say when you are a billionaire”
– “Billionaires are people too.”
Here SV uses the strange real episode from Tom Perkins.
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“Do not do what you should do. Do what you want!”
(But our hero is not very gifted with Japanese food, or is he stressed?).
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Let us listen (in fact read here!) Monica: “Every successful company can look back at a defining moment early on where they would have died, had it not been for the courage and the tenacity and maybe the insanity of one visionary person who put it all on the line, even though it seemed like a huge mistake at the time, a moment where all the metrics and the numbers did not mean anything; it was all about the emotion, it was about belief, rational or irrational and I think, I hope, that I was just like that.”
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War is preparing though!
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HBO’s Silicon Valley – episode 10: don’t spend the money when you do not have it (yet)

There is something well-known and little known at the same time in the start-up world: a deal is never guaranteed until the money is on your bank account. Our heroes will learn it the hard way. Now they are less arrogrant with the VCs…

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but then what about being stolen ideas during due diligence…

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and what about the cost of IP litigation. I will let you discover it…

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HBO’s Silicon Valley – episode 9: The Term Sheet

Time to see our old friends

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and the team fighting to be “Chiefs”

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Of course Silicon Valley is what it is… just have a look

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or read this: “I don’t want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do.“

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But reality is taking money can be dangerous: “You take money from the wrong dudes, you’ll get smoked as bad as I did.” But also never think you have the money until you have it in your bank account…

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America’s movie industry have always adapted the story when an actor disappears… then the fun begins. Negotiating with VCs can be hard. “There is a linear correlation between how intolerable I was and a higher valuation…”

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But then listen to Monica’s advice… A high valuation can be a very bad deal. Believe her…

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And the final minute is great…

HBO’s Silicon Valley: the End. Or is it?

HBO had its final (eighth) episode of Silicon Valley. Apparently it was succesful enough for the channel to decide about a second season. I laughed again even if I would not claim the series is great. However extreme, the anecdotes in the series look realistic enough though.

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The team looks first extatic and after the presentation by their competitor, less so… “Look at me, look at me , look at me. We’ve got a great name, we’ve got a great team, we’ve got a great logo and we’ve got… a great name. Now we just need an idea. Let’s pivot, let’s pivot.”
Will this be sufficient? Not sure when you listen to what happens next:
“Look at them, all full of hope. They just got $20M in series A at a $280M valuation.” It might be time to join them…
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…except if brainstorming is not too late. I will not tell you how new ideas came, but it was geeky, nerdy…
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…but apparently successful. Everyone looks happy. And this is America. In fact this is one of the first images showing the Bay Area. Nothing else did really prove it was shot in SV.
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A conclusion to the series. A sad one as I learnt from a video I posted in an earlier article…
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PS: in addition to my posts about the series (tag: HBO), you may be interested in:
– the HBO web pages: Silicon Valley
– the Wikipedia link: Silicon Valley (TV series)

HBO’s Silicon Valley – Episode 6: of Humans and Machines

You will discover about the genius of people
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and machines
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and then might have to decide if you prefer the autism of machines
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or the craziness of people
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Clearly the authors of HBO’s Silicon Valley do not have a great fascination for any of them, as you may discover through the TechCrunch interview they participated in…

HBO’s Silicon Valley – Episode 5: after Banksy, Chuy

I could not imagine I would make a link between my posts on Street Art and the ones about Silicon Valley. But here is the missing link: in episode 5, you will know more about Chuy
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and how our heroes decide to use a street artist for their logo. The result I cannot really show full size but here are extracts of the first attempts.
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Here is the final logo.
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And you can enlarge by clicking for the x-rated attempts. Not difficult to find who might pay $500k for the work. Not their best friends….
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click here or on picture to enlarge – xrated

All this comes from the fact that when pp was thought of as a logo for PiedPiper, Erlich explodes:
“Lower case. Are you serious?
Twitter, lower case t
Google, lower case g
Facebook, lower case f
every f… company in the Valley has lower case.
Why? because it’s safe.
We are not going to do that…”

Now of course, there are also serious people in the series, talking about burn rate…
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and process…
HBO5-Process

HBO’s Silicon Valley – Episode 4

I think SV is funnier and funnier and I disagree with people who wrote that the best jokes were in episode 1. Well, I am probably not the same age as they are… 🙁 Whatever, you see s… people dropping names like here:
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click to enlarge

Do you recognize the signatures? And then you see our founder struggling with his vision…
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… to beautiful Monica. He is really a great actor. I think! 🙁
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I knew in my previous life about consultants who go on the beach. Here are developers who go on the roof, the “Unassigned.”
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But everything seems to be the best in the best of possible worlds.
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HBO’s Silicon Valley – Articles of Incorporation (Episode 3)

When a name can be an issue… Is PiedPiper a good name for a company? Well. Not if there is another company with the same name.

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Whatever, PiedPiper has its garage too!

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So when you need a name, either you brainstorm in different ways…
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… or you learn about negotiation
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Apparently HBO likes Silicon Valley enough: they already agreed to produce season 2!