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The Cap Table

The Cap Table
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Director: Mike JudgeWriters: Carson MellAired: April 13, 2014 —Season: One — Number: Two
Summary: After a celebratory party at the Hacker Hostel, Richard and Erlich learn that Peter Gregory won't pay up until they deliver a viable business plan--one that includes a slimmed-downed staff. A desperate Richard hires former Belson underling Jared, and they set about trying to trim the fat. While Gilfoyle and Dinesh prove themselves essential, Big Head's place in the company is less certain.


Plot[]

“
Hey! Sorry if I scared you, I know I have somewhat ghost-like features. My uncle used to say, "You look like someone starved a virgin to death."
”
Jared Dunn

Jared shows up at the Hacker Hostel bearing a bottle of champagne and congratulations for Richard -- he’s inspired by Richard’s ability to say “no” to the $10 million his boss Gavin Belson offered for Pied Piper. Richard wants to give Jared a chance, but Erlich kicks him out just before introducing a stripper, Mochachino, in celebration of their new business. Mochachino spends most of her time with Big Head, who seems uncomfortable with the situation. Richard gets stuck paying Mochachino.

Richard and Erlich meet with Peter Gregory, who expects the guys to present their business plan. He asks for the cap table, investment deck, business plan, and other relevant paperwork, but Richard is empty-handed. Richard assumed he was just picking up a $200,000 check, but Peter tells him to come back in 48 hours with an air-tight business plan, strategy, and three-year P&L. Afterward, Erlich tells Richard he needs to learn to be a “complete asshole” in order to figure out the company’s direction.

At the Hacker Hostel, Richard calls Jared for help with the business plan -- a move that doesn’t please Erlich at all. Jared conducts interviews with Gilfoyle, Dinesh, and Big Head about their roles in the company. Gilfoyle does system architecture, networking and security; Dinesh writes code, especially in Java; and Big Head agrees with Jared that he’s a master of nothing specific, sort of a jack of all trades. Gilfoyle keeps going on about the pointlessness of Big Head, who overhears what he says a couple of times.

Big Head goes missing, and Richard finds him in San Jose with Mochachino. Big Head says he’s leaving the Valley because there’s nothing for him to do on Pied Piper. Richard decides, however, that Big Head can stay, but only just after it’s too late: Gavin Belson offered Big Head a promotion and more money, in retaliation because Richard took Jared. Big Head warns Richard of Hooli’s plan to use the Pied Piper prototype to build a competitor algorithm call Nucleus. Richard finishes his Peter Gregory presentation and arrives at the bank with his $200,000 check, but he can’t deposit it because, as it turns out, Pied Piper isn’t a registered corporation.

End music[]

The end music used is Ah Man (feat. Cali Martyr) by Thurz.

Trivia[]

  • Referring to the episode title, a Cap Table (Capitalization Table) is a table that provides an analysis of the founders' and investors' percentage of ownership, equity dilution, and value of equity in each round of investment.

Quotes[]

"Richard, I just wanna say, I really respect what you're doing here, and if you could ever use someone with my business development skill set, I would love to be a part of this."
Jared
"The fuck you will be! We'll call you when we want pleated khakis."
Erlich
"'[to Erlich] You kind of have a like a king-ish feeling to you. You're like a Norse god from Valhalla."
―Jared
"Richard, if you're not an asshole, it creates this kind of asshole vacuum, and that void is filled by other assholes, like Jared. I mean, you almost gave him shares. You need to completely change who you are, Richard. A complete teutonic shift has to happen."
―Erlich
"Tectonic."
Richard
"What?"
―Erlich
"A "tectonic" shift is the earth's crust moving around. "Teutonic", which is what you just said, is an ancient Germanic tribe that fought the Romans. They were originally from Scandinavia..."
―Richard
"Stop it! Stop it. You're being a complete tool right now. I need you to be a complete asshole."
―Erlich
"Dinesh, change the lighting to something erotic because it is about to get pretty fucking erotic in here."
―Erlich
"That was nice, guys. He heard everything."
―Richard
"That doesn't make it not true."
Dinesh
"I mean, come on, Richard. As far as Pied Piper is concerned, he's as pointless as Mass Effect 3's multiple endings. I mean, he's a completely useless appendage and we all know it."
Gilfoyle
"Peter Gregory demanded a lean, ruthless business plan. And I don't think that the CEO of Microsoft has a paid best friend."
―Jared
"'[laughs] Sergey Brin does. Larry doesn't do shit."
Big Head
"Did you just take a sip from an empty cup?"
Peter
"Yes."
―Richard
"Why did you do that?"
―Peter
"Just something to do."
―Richard
"What do I do? System architecture. Networking and security. No one in this house can touch me on that."
―Gilfoyle
"OK, that's good to know."
―Jared
"But does anyone appreciate that? While you were busy minoring in gender studies and singing a capella at Sarah Lawrence, I was gaining root access to NSA servers. I was one click away from starting a second Iranian Revolution."
―Gilfoyle
"I actually went to Vassar."
―Jared
"I prevent cross-site scripting, I monitor for DDoS attacks, emergency database rollbacks, and faulty transaction handlings. The Internet heard of it? Transfers half a petabyte of data every minute. Do you have any idea how that happens? All those YouPorn ones and zeroes streaming directly to your shitty, little smart phone day after day? Every dipshit who shits his pants if he can't get the new dubstep Skrillex remix in under 12 seconds? It's not magic, it's talent and sweat. People like me, ensuring your packets get delivered, un-sniffed. So what do I do? I make sure that one bad config on one key component doesn't bankrupt the entire fucking company. That's what the fuck I do."
―Gilfoyle
"...That's basically what I told him."
―Jared
"Listen, wherever we end up here I just wanna say that I think I should get more equity than Dinesh."
―Gilfoyle
"I know that Gilfoyle probably came in here and puked out a bunch of tech specs, three-fourths of which are total horseshit. Did he bring up the Iranian Revolution thing? Yeah, those words mean nothing. But here's a fact: I am the only one of these clowns who can code in Java, and I write sleek performant low-overhead scala code with higher order functions that will run on anything. Period. End of sentence. So basically, I think whatever equity I get, it should reflect that I contribute more than Gilfoyle."
―Dinesh
"Audious, play John Lennon's Imagine."
―Gavin
"Queueing John Wayne in a mansion. [pause] Not found."
Audious
"Fuck!"
―Gavin
"Invalid command."
―Audious
"Fuck!"
―Gavin
Season One Episodes

1. "Minimum Viable Product"
2. "The Cap Table"
3. "Articles of Incorporation"
4. "Fiduciary Duties"
5. "Signaling Risk"
6. "Third Party Insourcing"
7. "Proof of Concept"
8. "Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency"

HBO-Silicon-Valley-DVD

Season OneSeason TwoSeason ThreeSeason FourSeason FiveSeason Six
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