- "I'm just gonna say it. This guy fucks. Am I right? 'Cause I'm looking at the rest of you guys, and this is the guy in the house doing all the fucking. Am I right? You know I'm right. This guy fucks."
- ―Russ referring to Jared Dunn
Russ Hanneman is a secondary character in HBO's Silicon Valley. He is a billionaire proud to tell people that he's a member of the "Three Comma Club," an exclusive club for billionaires, though it is never stated if it is a real club or something he invented.
He is flashy with his wealth, buys and drives around in neon colored sports cars, has rather tacky fashion sense (wearing designer jeans decorated with studs), and generally possesses no class.
Biography[]
Russ Hanneman is a billionaire who made his fortune through his company which he states "put radio on the Internet" during the internet's early years. He resides in Silicon Valley, investing in tech startups. Whilst he sees himself as a hotshot innovator, the rest of the VCs see him as a joke who is simply coasting on his one good investment.
He first appears in season two when Pied Piper is looking for investors after their success at TechCrunch. He funds Pied Piper, but proves to do way more harm than good. In one episode he comes to the Hacker Hostel and accidentally deletes massive amounts of data from their servers, costing them a deal to store data for a porn company.
While he has caused problems for Richard and Pied Piper, he has helped the company occasionally. When Gavin sues Pied Piper in order to scare off all the other VCs in Silicon Valley, it is Russ that steps in and invests when no one else will. It is also Russ that pushes Richard to think about what project he really wants to work on, which pushes him to work on the New Internet idea. In addition, PiperNet's success at RussFest secures Pied Piper's deal with AT&T to build the New Internet.