List of Silicon Valley episodes

Silicon Valley is an American television sitcom created by Mike Judge, John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky. The series focuses on six young men who found a startup company in Silicon Valley.^[1][2] The series premiered on April 6, 2014, on HBO.^[3]

As of June 26, 2016, 28 episodes of Silicon Valley have aired, concluding the third season. On April 21, 2016, HBO renewed the series for a fourth season to air in 2017.^[4]

Series overview

Season		Episodes		Originally aired
				First aired	Last aired
	1	8		April 6, 2014	June 1, 2014
	2	10		April 12, 2015	June 14, 2015
	3	10		April 24, 2016	June 26, 2016

Episodes

Season 1 (2014)

No. overall	No. in season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original air date	U.S. viewers (millions)
1	1	"Minimum Viable Product"	Mike Judge	Mike Judge & John Altschuler & Dave Krinsky	April 6, 2014	1.98[5]
Richard Hendricks is a low-level programmer with futuristic internet giant Hooli. He is often taunted by his more successful work colleagues, and his ideas are dismissed by egotistical entrepreneur Erlich Bachman, who owns the technology development incubator where Richard lives with fellow programmers Nelson "Big Head", Gilfoyle and Dinesh. However when Hooli stumbles upon the music copyright service that Richard is working on, entitled Pied Piper, they discover that hidden within the useless application is the best file compression algorithm in the world, and news spreads quickly. Eventually Richard is caught between a $10 million buyout by Hooli CEO Gavin Belson, and a $200,000 investment from eccentric billionaire Peter Gregory, and must decide whether to give up his program to the highest bidder or to take the investment and create a business out of it himself. After having a panic attack and vomiting on the street, Richard runs into Peter's assistant Monica, who tells him that she believes in him and his idea, and he decides to take the investment and run the business himself.
2	2	"The Cap Table"	Mike Judge	Carson Mell	April 13, 2014	1.69[6]
After rejecting Belson's offer and siding with Peter Gregory, Richard is overwhelmed by the amount of work that needs to be done in establishing the business to Gregory's satisfaction. Luckily, Belson's former PA, Jared Dunn, arrives at the incubator, begging Richard to hire him, as he sees huge potential in the Pied Piper idea, and is hired due to his business expertise. However, in evaluating the Pied Piper team, Jared discovers that while Gilfoyle and Dinesh are brilliant coders, Big Head is comparatively mediocre, and Richard is pressured by everyone to fire him as he brings nothing to the table. Richard refuses to do so, but Big Head decides to take a huge raise and promotion at Hooli instead, where work begins on reverse-engineering Pied Piper to create the same product, branded under a different name.
3	3	"Articles of Incorporation"	Tricia Brock	Matteo Borghese & Rob Turbovsky	April 20, 2014	1.62[7]
Richard and Jared discover that the Pied Piper business name is already in use by an irrigation enterprise in Gilroy, California. While Jared, Dinesh, Gilfoyle and Erlich begin brainstorming new names for the application, Richard attempts to prove that he is a good negotiator by convincing the irrigation company to give up the name Pied Piper. Meanwhile, Peter Gregory becomes obsessed with Burger King products, leaving his assistant Monica in a difficult position with some of their clients.
4	4	"Fiduciary Duties"	Maggie Carey	Ron Weiner	April 27, 2014	1.55[8]
Peter assigns an attorney, Ron, to the Pied Piper venture, who accidentally lets slip that Richard's project is one of eight file compression suites that Peter invests in. This impacts Richard, who suddenly panics that he has no sense of where the company should go and what it should be doing. Meanwhile, Big Head is removed from Hooli's copycat compression software project, named Nucleus, because of his complete lack of understanding of what Richard actually did to create Pied Piper, and is not reassigned to anything, and Erlich is mistakenly appointed to the Pied Piper board of directors when Richard gets drunk.
5	5	"Signaling Risk"	Alec Berg	Jessica Gao	May 4, 2014	1.82[9]
Erlich hires a convicted felon and graffiti artist, Chuy, to create a new logo for Pied Piper and to paint it on the incubator garage, but Chuy's creation depicts Dinesh having sexual intercourse with the Statue of Liberty because he believes Dinesh is of Latin descent. Pied Piper gains entry to the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield, a technology conference that pits unseeded startup companies against each other, with $50,000 as the grand prize - the only problem is, Pied Piper is not unseeded, and this angers Peter. Richard suggests withdrawing from the Battlefield, but Belson beats him to it and announces the release of Nucleus will take place at the Battlefield, and due to Peter's intense rivalry with Belson, he refuses to allow Pied Piper to withdraw and tells them to have a finished demo for the Battlefield in eight weeks.
6	6	"Third Party Insourcing"	Alec Berg	Dan O'Keefe	May 11, 2014	1.69[10]
Pied Piper is nearing completion, but Richard is having serious issues coding the cloud-based integration modules for the application, so much so that Jared, Gilfoyle, Erlich and Dinesh pressure him into hiring Kevin "The Carver", an Adderall-addicted teenaged programmer with a specialty in cloud integration. Gilfoyle's new satanistic girlfriend, Tara (Milana Vayntrub), visits the incubator, and Gilfoyle tells Dinesh that Tara wants to have sex with him, and that this prospect sexually arouses both Tara and Gilfoyle. Jared gets stranded on Peter's automated island due to a programming error, and The Carver inadvertently destroys all of the Pied Piper code, forcing the team to revise all of it.
7	7	"Proof of Concept"	Mike Judge	Clay Tarver	May 18, 2014	1.68[11]
The team arrives at the Battlefield, however Pied Piper still isn't finished, and Richard is having trouble concentrating due to the presence of an ex-girlfriend at the conference. Dinesh meets an attractive girl who appears to be proficient in Java, but when Gilfoyle tells him that the Java code was in fact written by him, Dinesh loses interest in the girl. Erlich panics when it transpires that one of the judges of the Battlefield is the man whose wife he had an affair with years earlier, and in an attempt to remedy the situation, Erlich ends up having sex with the judge's new wife, which results in the judge attacking Erlich on stage, preventing the Pied Piper Battlefield presentation.
8	8	"Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency"	Mike Judge	Alec Berg	June 1, 2014	1.74[12]
Desperate to avoid litigation after the brawl, TechCrunch offers Pied Piper a ticket straight through to the final Battlefield stage, but the team is despondent after watching the Nucleus presentation and learning that not only is Hooli's Weissman compression quality score 2.89, the exact same as theirs, but they also have a number of additional features which make Nucleus a much better application. The PP team retreats to their hotel room where they mock up a mathematical model for Erlich to give handjobs to every male in the Battlefield audience instead of doing their presentation, which has Richard retreating to his room away from their conversation. He stays up all night, deletes most of the Pied Piper features and leaves only one - the all-important compression engine, which, using Richard's brand new compression code, achieves a Weissman score of 5.2. Pied Piper wins the Battlefield, embarrassing Belson and Hooli. After learning from Monica, amidst some flirting between the two, that Pied Piper will be fielding business interests and that things will only get harder, Richard has another panic attack and vomits into a dumpster in the alley.

Season 2 (2015)

No. overall	No. in season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original air date	U.S. viewers (millions)
9	1	"Sand Hill Shuffle"	Mike Judge	Clay Tarver	April 12, 2015	2.13[13]
Pied Piper learns of Peter Gregory's death in the Serengeti, leading to questions about Raviga Capital's viability as an investor for their Series A funding. With this uncertainty, Bachman and Hendricks pitch Pied Piper to numerous venture capitalists who are trying to woo them. They find that being rude leads to better reception, to Bachman's surprise. Meanwhile, Raviga's partners select Laurie Bream as their new managing partner, whose eccentricity resembles Peter Gregory's. Monica learns that Pied Piper is the firm's only hope for survival. The firms deliver their term sheets and just as Bachman selects a firm, Bream and Monica arrive to deliver Raviga's term sheet – $20 million at a $100 million valuation, the highest. They are about to accept it when Monica sneaks by after hours to warn Hendricks against taking a high amount, saying that if the company cannot increase their valuation, they will not be able to secure further funding. At Peter Gregory's funeral, Bream approaches Hendricks and asks if he has made a decision. Hendricks says that he will choose Raviga if they lower their term sheet to $10 million at a $50 million valuation, a move Bream is surprised by but accepts. The funeral is attended by many, including the founders of Snapchat and Gavin Belson. As Belson speaks about his relationship with Gregory, Hendricks receives a message informing him that Hooli is suing Pied Piper for intellectual property theft.
10	2	"Runaway Devaluation"	Mike Judge	Ron Weiner	April 19, 2015	1.73[14]
After learning of Hooli's lawsuit, Laurie Bream decides that Pied Piper is too big of a risk and decides to drop the company from Raviga Capital's portfolio. Bachman and Hendricks meet with the other venture capitalists and are informed that due to the lawsuit, along with their behavior at the previous meetings, they are no longer interested in Pied Piper. Meanwhile, Dinesh meets with his cousin Wajeed who is crowdfunding an app called Bro, which is similar to Yo but instead sends the word "bro". After hosting a crowdfunding party and a $500 donation from Gilfoyle meant to irritate Dinesh, Wajeed meets his goal of $50,000. Jared finds a venture capitalist on the Bro app, but when they meet it turns out to be a "brain rape" scam to steal their algorithm, causing Bachman and Jared to quickly end the presentation. With no options left but to hire a "cheap" lawyer for $2.5 million, Gavin Belson calls Hendricks and asks to meet him privately. At a bar, Belson proposes Hooli acquiring Pied Piper and bringing Hendricks back into the Hooli team. Belson says that on the path he is on right now, Hendricks is forming the exact type of "soulless" corporation he despises. As Hendricks begins to respond, a mariachi band interrupts them, and the episode ends.
11	3	"Bad Money"	Alec Berg	Alec Berg	April 26, 2015	1.94[15]
Though his colleagues disapprove, Richard Hendricks reluctantly agrees to take Monica's advice and let Hooli acquire Pied Piper. On the way to meeting with Gavin Belson, he is stopped by Russ Hanneman, a flashy billionaire who made his money by putting radio on the internet (a parody of Mark Cuban). Hanneman takes Richard to an expensive restaurant and offers him $5 million for equity in Pied Piper and two seats on its board. Monica tells Richard that Hooli is by far the safer option and that Hanneman is a terrible person, but Richard ignores her. Monica informs Bream of his decision, and Bream expresses disgust at the idea of being associated with Hanneman. With the knowledge that they are funded, Pied Piper begins creating a budget for the next 18 months, and negotiating how many new people they will hire. During the budget meeting, Hanneman visits Pied Piper and disrupts it by talking loudly on the phone and hanging out with his friend Cory. Erlich tries to befriend Hanneman but fails. Hanneman tells Pied Piper that revenue is a bad thing, explains that the check he gave them is just a "show check", and buys several Pied Piper billboards without asking. Meanwhile, Belson compares the treatment of billionaires to the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust during an interview, manages the backlash, and gets his lawyers to figure out how to improve his case for suing Pied Piper.
12	4	"The Lady"	Alec Berg	Carson Mell	May 3, 2015	1.75[16]
Pied Piper begins interviewing new people to hire. The two most notable candidates are Jared Patakian, an eccentric man who labels himself as a cyborg, and Carla Walton, a friend of Dinesh and Gilfoyle. With the introduction of Jared Patakian, Jared Dunn is renamed "Other Jared", which is often shortened to "OJ". Other Jared hires Carla, awkwardly tries to explain that it's better to hire her because she's a woman, and tries to enforce company human resources policies. Erlich discourages Richard from hiring Jared Patakian because he chose a different job just as Erlich was about to hire him at Aviato, and Carla tortures Gilfoyle and Dinesh by making them think she makes way more money than them. Additionally, Pied Piper has a meeting of the Board of Directors at Hanneman's house. Hanneman gives his girlfriend a seat on the board, and Erlich turns against Richard to vote to order $30,000 worth of merchandise. Later, Richard decides to hire Jared despite Erlich's disapproval, but quickly finds out that Patakian has done the exact same thing to him as Patakian did to Erlich. Simultaneously, Belson promotes Big Head to be Co-head Dreamer on the Hooli XYZ project with the intention of making him seem like the primary force behind Pied Piper, and thus evidence for his lawsuit. Big Head is given a massive office and an assistant, but suspiciously no responsibilities, while Davis Bannercheck, a pioneer of robotics, is named the other Co-head Dreamer and leads operations at the lab.
13	5	"Server Space"	Mike Judge	Sony Lee	May 10, 2015	1.53[17]
Richard is suffering from night sweats, and is told by his doctor if his stress level remains high he will begin bedwetting. Richard begins searching for office space, thus separating work and life and accommodating for growth. The team tours an office neighboring a modeling agency, leading Dinesh to suggest leasing it. Meanwhile, Gavin Belson is more concerned with grudges than innovation at Hooli XYZ, blatantly ignoring Bannercheck's concerns about Big Head's progress. Bannercheck resigns and Big Head becomes the sole Head Dreamer of Hooli XYZ. Richards asks the team to begin setting up servers, and they learn all of the major hosting providers have blacklisted Pied Piper due to Hooli threatening to cease business with them. Gilfoyle mentions that the providers would eventually be unable to meet their needs and suggests building the servers himself. The parts can be purchased if the team does not lease the office, so team agrees to stay in the house. The delivery truck for the parts draws suspicions from their neighbor Noah, who is adamant about the neighborhood only being for families and pets and threatens to turn them in to the City Inspector - especially after a mistake by Dinesh temporarily cuts power to the neighborhood. He is forced to back down after Erlich and Richard discover he is keeping ferrets illegally in his backyard and also lease his guest house to Jared, who has been sleeping on a cot in Richard's room and speaking German in his sleep.
14	6	"Homicide"	Mike Judge	Carrie Kemper	May 17, 2015	1.54[18]
Hooli launches Nucleus by using it to broadcast a major mixed martial arts (UFC) event. The demo fails miserably. Pied Piper sees this as an opportunity to show off their technology by partnering with "Homicide" energy drink, owned by a former classmate of Erlich's, and broadcasting a publicity stunt. Dinesh and Gilfoyle notice that Blaine, the stunt driver, has miscalculated his ramp speed and will likely be killed attempting the stunt. Blaine arrogantly refuses to listen to their concerns. Gavin Belson, caught short by the Nucleus failure, worries that he has surrounded himself with sycophants who only tell him what he wants to hear. Gilfoyle and Dinesh debate the morality of letting Blaine kill himself performing the stunt. Later, Blaine comes in to apologize and sees the SWOT analysis they performed for it posted on the wall, becoming highly offended. Richard discovers that Homicide has omitted the Pied Piper logo from the broadcast and the partnership with Homicide falls apart, and Richard agrees to broadcast a live stream of a condor egg as a technology demo instead. At the end of the episode the Homicide stunt is broadcast along with End Frame's logo. The group remembers End Frame as the company that tricked them into revealing their algorithm in episode 2.
15	7	"Adult Content"	Alec Berg	Amy Aniobi	May 24, 2015	1.60[19]
The team from Pied Piper storms into the offices of End Frame to accuse them of stealing the Pied Piper algorithm. End Frame responds that since they have a finished platform and a sales team, that ultimately they will beat Pied Piper. Gavin Belson holds a board meeting to discuss the failure of the launch of their Nucleus product. He then meets with the engineers and begs them to come up with something new and radical. Russ Hanneman informs Richard and Erlich that due to bad investments he is no longer a billionaire and now Pied Piper must come up with a way to become profitable. Gilfoyle obtains the details of End Frame's service contract with Intersite, a porn company. Richard meets the CEO of Intersite at a conference and convinces her to consider Pied Piper for the contract. Big Head meets with Belson to explain some exciting new technology, but adds that it won't be available until their grandchildren's time. The episode ends with Pied Piper and End Frame being brought to Intersite offices for a "bake off" to determine who will get the contract.
16	8	"White Hat/Black Hat"	Alec Berg	Daniel Lyons	May 31, 2015	1.78[20]
Richard returns home and discovers Russ Hanneman waiting for him to celebrate Richard's victory over End Frame. Gavin Belson attends a board meeting where he tries to urge restraint on Nucleus publicity without admitting that Nucleus is in trouble. The meeting ends with Gavin realizing that he may need a scapegoat. In the next scene, he convinces Davis Bannercheck to return to Hooli to head up the Nucleus project. Richard learns that Seth Lee, the network security engineer for End Frame had been fired, presumably due to Gilfoyle's breaching of End Frame security in episode 7. Richard feels bad and reaches out to Seth. Richard tells Seth that the break-in had not been his fault. Seth becomes enraged and threatens to hack into Pied Piper and get revenge. Richard becomes very concerned about Seth's threats. Gilfoyle is unconcerned, assuring Richard that Pied Piper's security is solid. Dinesh stresses that Richard should not be admitting to anybody that Pied Piper had broken into End Frame, explaining that Richard is now a "black hat" and needs to be careful. Bannercheck interviews the Nucleus team to assess the state of the project. In the next scene, Gavin learns that Bannercheck has quit Hooli and left as fast as his car would take him. Gavin realizes that he has lost his scapegoat for the upcoming Nucleus fiasco. Richard's increasing paranoia about Seth annoys the Pied Piper team. Richard reaches out to Seth again and they mutually apologize. Richard tells Seth that Gilfoyle hadn't been worried at all and Seth feels insulted and issues fresh threats. Pied Piper begins transferring data from Intersite for the bake-off. Russ Hanneman arrives to celebrate and Richard becomes angry at the interruption and begins shouting at Hanneman. Suddenly Pied Piper receives a frantic phone call from the CTO of Intersite informing them that Pied Piper is deleting all of Intersite's data. In the ensuing panic, they conclude that Seth has made good on his threats and has hacked into their system although Gilfoyle can't figure out how. Eventually it is discovered that Hanneman had put a tequila bottle down on the "Delete" key of one of the laptops. The episode ends with Intersite angrily dismissing Pied Piper.
17	9	"Binding Arbitration"	Mike Judge	Dan O'Keefe	June 7, 2015	1.87[21]
Big Head finds a prototype Nucleus phone left behind at a bar by the "brogrammers" and, stunned at how bad Nucleus really is, provides it to Richard to use as leverage against Belson as thanks for helping him advance at Hooli. It is revealed that all of Pied Piper's new developers quit and Richard has low hopes for the company's survival. After negotiations, aided by their lawyers, Belson agrees to drop the lawsuit in favor of binding arbitration to prevent the press from finding out about the phone. Ron suggests disbarred lawyer Pete Monahan to represent them, who is willing to work on spec because he is no longer allowed to practice law in a real court due to suspected sex crimes. During discovery, Monahan discovers that Richard had used a Hooli computer to run a single test of Pied Piper while his personal laptop was being repaired, which is referred to as his "girlfriend". Per the terms of Richard's employment contract, that would mean that Hooli owns the rights to Pied Piper. At the arbitration, Hooli's lawyers don't appear to have a real case, and instead try to build up Big Head as the modest genius who actually invented Pied Piper. However, an unintentional slip by Bachman leads Hooli to realize that the "girlfriend" that Richard said in his emails that he had "dropped off at the Apple store" was actually his laptop, meaning that he must've used a Hooli computer. Hooli calls Richard as a witness and, unwilling to lie under oath, Richard admits that he used a Hooli computer. Meanwhile, the museum providing the video of the condor egg decides to remove the camera due to low viewership numbers, but the technician taking it down falls and becomes trapped with the camera in a ravine. Suddenly, viewership of the feed spikes while the team awaits the results of the arbitration.
18	10	"Two Days of the Condor"	Alec Berg	Alec Berg	June 14, 2015	2.11[22]
Before the judge reveals his verdict, Gavin Belson reveals that he would've paid $250 million for Pied Piper before it became clear that Hooli would win the arbitration hearing. Meanwhile, the feed of the injured technician goes viral, forcing Gilfoyle, Dinesh, and Jared to scramble to keep their servers online. Despite numerous setbacks, including a server catching on fire, they are able to keep the feed online until the technician is rescued. Erlich starts to question the value of the incubator and considers selling the house, but changes his mind when he finds out that it would be torn down. Erlich codes for the first time in the series, helping the team with emergency improvements while Richard is away. At the binding arbitration, the judge rules that per Richard's employment contract Hooli would own Pied Piper's intellectual property, and Richard sends a text to the team to delete all of the Pied Piper code before Hooli can seize it. However, the judge continues that Hooli's claim is actually nullified by an illegal non-compete clause and Richard, whose phone runs out of battery, has to sprint back to the incubator to stop Pied Piper from being deleted. Richard arrives just after the deletion program is run but the program crashes before any damage is done. Word spreads at Hooli of the verdict, which renders over half of their employees' contracts invalid. Word also spreads of Big Head's series of promotions, leading Dempak to begin mentoring him. Belson is called to meet with Hooli's Board of Directors; his fate is left uncertain. Meanwhile, Raviga decides to buy out Russ Hanneman's stake in Pied Piper, securing 3 of Pied Piper's 5 board seats and making Hanneman a billionaire again. As Pied Piper celebrates their arbitration victory, Hendricks is notified that the now Raviga-run board has removed him from the CEO position.

Season 3 (2016)

No. overall	No. in season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original air date	U.S. viewers (millions)
19	1	"Founder Friendly"	Mike Judge	Dan O'Keefe	April 24, 2016	1.86[23]
After failing to convince the board of directors to keep him on as Pied Piper CEO instead of demoting him to Chief Technology Officer, Richard threatens to quit and sue to regain his intellectual property. Richard meets with a company called Flutterbeam that wants to hire him as CTO. However, disappointed at how banal the project assigned to him would be, he rejects the offer and decides to stay with Pied Piper. Afterwards, Richard meets with Jack Barker, Raviga's choice for the CEO of Pied Piper. Meanwhile, at Hooli, Belson discovers that the now invalid employment contracts would allow him to fire affected employees without severance and take back unvested stock options. Belson fires the entire Nucleus team, and uses the profits from the reclaimed stock options to offer Big Head a $20 million severance package in exchange for non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements.
20	2	"Two in the Box"	Mike Judge	Ron Weiner	May 1, 2016	1.72[24]
Richard meets with the sales team at Pied Piper. During the meeting, Richard finds out the plans for platform are business-facing, instead of consumer-facing. Referring to his experience of the Dot-com bubble, Jack explains to Richard that they need to make profit fast, and promises that he would never compromise the product, explaining later that by "product" he means in fact the company's stock value. Richard tells the sales team what he wants the platform to be, but they want to remove every feature that Richard wants, so it's easier to sell it to businesses. Later, the sales team show Richard a commercial for the product, and it's exactly what Richard does not want it to be. Meanwhile, Jared plans to move back into his condo, but the tenant refuses to leave or pay rent; as Erlich explains how difficult it is to evict a tenant, Jian-Yang decides not to accept the end of his own lease. At Hooli, Gavin suggests to the engineers to alter the company's search algorithm so it doesn't display any more negative Nucleus stories about him or his company. The Nucleus team crack the middle-out compression shortly before their contracts expire, and decide to take this knowledge with them.
21	3	"Meinertzhagen's Haversack"	Charlie McDowell	Adam Countee	May 8, 2016	1.69[25]
The team visit the data center where Pied Piper box would be stored, along with one engineer on site for 24/7 support. Further appalled by this prospect, Richard continues to push his idea of Piper Piper as a platform versus the box appliance, but Jack refuses. Upon learning this, Gilfoyle quits and begins to receive several job offers and gifts from recruiters. In an attempt to have Jack's decision reverted, Richard meets with Laurie who turns out to agree with Richard's vision that Piper Piper should be a platform. However, Laurie's influence is limited as firing a recently appointed senior CEO would make the company look bad. In one of his job interviews Gilfoyle finds himself at Endframe, now employing two of the coders from Hooli, and Gilfoyle learns that they have cracked Richard's middle-out algorithm. Gilfoyle reports back to his old team at Pied Piper and they decide on what they call a Skunkworks project: to secretly pursue the original vision for Pied Piper alongside working on the box appliance, seemingly complying with Jack's order. Jared refers to Meinertzhagen's Haversack, cautioning everyone to act inconspicuously, and to destroy all traces of their conspiracy. However, upon entering their office space the next morning, Richard trips, and incriminating documents which he had meant to shred are spread all over the floor and brought to Jack's attention.
22	4	"Maleant Data Systems Solutions"	Charlie McDowell	Donick Cary	May 15, 2016	1.89[26]
After he caught the team red-handed trying to develop the platform in secret, Jack threatens to fire them. Richard fires back, stating that without him and his team he won't be able to deliver a working prototype of the box to Maleant before the planned deadline. The team agrees with Jack to create a basic functioning box to meet the requirements of the deal, after which they are free to create the platform. However, due to the team's inability to deliver a lesser product on purpose, the final box ends up being far better than anything else available in the market. Meanwhile, Erlich keeps trying to rent rooms in his incubator. After a prospective tenant rejects his house in favor of another one, Erlich finds out that he moved to a 9 bedroom mansion which belongs to Big Head, who is hosting tenants for free in return of a share of their startups. Initially, he confronts him and leaves in a rage, but when his car doesn't start, he turns back and proposes a partnership, to which an oblivious Big Head agrees. In a board meeting at Pied Piper to vote for Maleant's box deal, Monica notices that the sales agreement includes exclusive rights to use Pied Piper's algorithm for 5 years, which would effectively prevent Richard from creating the platform during that period. Jack admits he never specified a time frame when he made a deal with Richard. He also adds that neither he nor Laurie can do anything about it. Even though Laurie notices Jack's low blow, she stands with him as she doesn't have proof that Richard's platform can be more valuable than the box deal. Monica ends up voting against it, alongside Richard and Erlich, effectively denying the motion, even if it means her job and board seat. Later that night, Gavin Belson phones Richard, triumphantly informing him that he just acquired Endframe's middle out compression platform for $250 million. Unbeknownst to him, by doing this he also set a price point on Pied Piper's platform, valuing it way above (and thus terminating) the box deal, rendering a new vote useless and saving Monica's position. When the team returns to the office the next day, they find out Laurie fired Jack for undermining her at the meeting. She leaves the CEO position open, and gives them permission to start working on the platform.
23	5	"The Empty Chair"	Eric Appel	Megan Amram	May 22, 2016	1.71[27]
The team finds out Pied Piper is running out of money, as Raviga is funding them in installments and will only continue to do so when they deliver the finished product, which is now the platform. They take drastic measures and decide to get rid of the office, its equipment and all employees, returning to Erlich's incubator. Meanwhile, Erlich drafts a manipulative partnership agreement with Big Head which gives Erlich complete control over Big Head's assets, even if his Pied Piper shares aren't included in it. Richard confronts Laurie about an article on a tech blog called Code/Rag which mocks Pied Piper's absence of a CEO and Richard himself. Laurie agrees that he should meet with its author, C. J. Cantwell, in order to restore their reputation, but demands that he speaks with their head of PR first. When Richard gets to Raviga to do so, he enters the wrong room and ends up ranting about Laurie's actions in front of Cantwell, mistaking her for the head of PR. At the same time, Laurie confides to Monica that she was wrong to remove Richard as CEO in the first place, but that he shouldn't be perceived as the first choice but rather the correct one, thus her search for lesser prospective candidates (including Big Head). Laurie planned to award Richard the position at the next board meeting, as long as he remained professional. When Richard realizes he's been talking to Cantwell all along, he tries to prevent her from publishing the story. She tells him she will only back away if he feeds her something better. Erlich and Big Head meet at the incubator to sign their partnership deal, as Erlich announces its name: "Bachmanity". Upon hearing of Richard's predicament, Big Head lets slip that Gavin Belson secretly ordered his employees to scrub all negative publicity about Hooli from the internet. Richard immediately seeks Cantwell to publish this story instead of his and ends up finally being repromoted to CEO. Meanwhile, the team reveals that they hired an engineering team composed of outsourced coders working remotely from various places around the globe, at a fraction of the cost of hiring them in Palo Alto.
24	6	"Bachmanity Insanity"	Eric Appel	Carson Mell	May 29, 2016	1.62[28]
Gavin Belson faces public backlash from the story published by Cantwell. He ends up threatening her with legal action if she doesn't reveal her source. Meanwhile, Erlich sets up an expensive Hawaiian-themed party at Alcatraz to launch Bachmanity while Big Head warns him that he can lose all his severance money if Belson finds out he shared the story with Cantwell, which constitutes a breach of his NDA agreement. Erlich dismisses him and says he'll fix it. Richard starts dating Winnie, a coder for Facebook, and eventually brings her home. The following morning, Gilfoyle and Dinesh notice that Winnie uses spaces instead of tabs for coding, a technique which, they tell her, Richard despises. When she reveals this to him, Richard tries to deny it as an issue, but the relationship eventually goes sour because of his inability to deal with it. Meanwhile, Big Head's business manager, Arthur Clayman, warns him that he has to control spending or risk going bankrupt. At the same time, Erlich phones Big Head, announcing that he acquired Code/Rag, Cantwell's blog, for $500,000, thus buying her into not revealing her source, to Clayman's shock. Dinesh flirts via video chat with Elizabet, one of Pied Piper's outsourced coders who lives in Estonia, but when he finally reveals himself she mentions her "boyfriend", while Gilfoyle mocks him. During the party, which Erlich dubbed "Bachmanity Insanity", Sasha, the party manager, tells Bachman that the supplier's checks have bounced. Right before the big speech, Clayman informs him that Bachmanity has gone broke.
25	7	"To Build a Better Beta"	Jamie Babbit	John Levenstein	June 5, 2016	1.70[29]
Erlich and Big Head's venture firm, Bachmanity is unable to pay its debtors following its million dollar luau. While bankruptcy looms over their partnership, Pied Piper anticipates an early launch following good rapport from their selective beta launch. One of the selected early users of the beta is revealed to be a Hooli spy after Gilfoyle reveals adding a God view to the beta app allowing them access to users IP to their pinpoint geographic location. Erlich and Big Head discover that Big Head's former business manager has misappropriated $6 million which is needed to pay the million-dollar Alcatraz party bills. Erlich and Big Head threaten legal action via consultation with a district attorney, but Bachmanity's cause is a low priority for the justice department. Erlich ultimately is able to pay the Alcatraz party bills by selling some of his Pied Piper shares to Laurie. At Hooli, Gavin gets paranoid after learning Pied Piper has discovered the illegally downloaded beta app and shuts down the power to Hooli. The principal (recently re-hired) developers of Nucleus resign, leaving the Hooli rebuild of Nucleus in a hiatus state. Erlich has a private meeting with Laurie about his shares in Pied Piper. Gilfoyle decommissions "Anton" his server while getting flak from Dinesh about his best friend being a piece of hardware. Erlich gets a call about his debts being erased while Richard and team count the seconds down to the official public launch of the Pied Piper platform.
26	8	"Bachman's Earning's Over-Ride"	Jamie Babbit	Carrie Kemper	June 12, 2016	1.64[30]
Pied Piper is a success, hitting 100,000 downloads in just 10 days, receiving significant media coverage and being hailed as the next unicorn of the tech world. During an interview for Bloomberg, Erlich almost lets slip that he no longer owns any Pied Piper shares. When Richard learns about this during an interview with a prospective head of PR he threatens Erlich with the release of a press statement to minimize the negative effect on the company, at the expense of Erlich's reputation in the Valley, stating that he will sever all links with him and remove the team from his incubator. At Hooli, the board of directors inform Gavin Belson that they are discharging him from his position due to the failure of the investment Endframe, confirming at the same time that they are allowing the Pied Piper app to enter the Hooli App Store. When C.J. Cantwell contacts Erlich about a rumor spreading about Pied Piper, he decides to tell her all about his shares, taking the blame and saving Pied Piper from bad reputation. When Laurie tells Richard that by selling his shares, Erlich only managed to cover his debts without any profit, he understands that Erlich is broke, and offers him a position as Pied Piper's head of PR.
27	9	"Daily Active Users"	Alec Berg	Clay Tarver	June 19, 2016	1.63[31]
Laurie hosts a cocktail party at her place to celebrate the five hundred thousandth download of Pied Piper's platform. Richard calls Monica aside and reveals to her that the number of daily active users is actually very poor, something that only he and Jared know. Realizing that the beta version of the platform was only a success because they only showed it to fellow engineers and tech-savvy users, Richard proposes introducing a series of seminars and tutorials about how to use the platform, which, ironically, is too advanced for regular users. Confronted with this, all of Pied Piper's recently employed staff quits, including Douglas, a customer service rep, who heads for an interview at Hooli. Sensing an opportunity, Gavin Belson interviews him personally and learns about Pied Piper's low number of DAU's. Later, he summons the board to announce that his intention was never to develop a platform, introducing Hooli Endframe's new director, Jack Barker, and their new product: a box just like the one Barker had planned for Pied Piper. The board gets Belson reinstated as CEO. Facing Pied Piper's apparent downfall, Richard tells Jared that he will dissolve the company. The following morning, however, the number of daily active users has risen sharply, which unbeknownst to the whole team (including Richard) is only so because Jared has paid for a click farm in Bangladesh to provide daily active users to the platform.
28	10	"The Uptick"	Alec Berg	Alec Berg	June 26, 2016	2.04[32]
An elephant that Gavin Belson used to make a point at a board meeting dies at Hooli Campus. When his assistant Patrice opposes Belson for getting rid of the 9-ton corpse in secret, she gets fired. Patrice contacts C.J. Cantwell to publish the story on Code/Rag. Richard finds out about Jared's clickfarm operation with Dinesh and Gilfoyle telling him they know about it as well and producing software to make clickfarm operation undetectable, thus backing it up. Oblivious to all of this, Erlich reveals that he managed to gather buzz over Pied Piper throughout the valley and attract a significant investment from Coleman Blair Partners, a venture capital firm. Jared encourages Richard not to sign the deal, as he will be effectively legitimizing fraud. When pressed to sign, Richard reveals the truth to Erlich and the Coleman Blair board, terminating the deal. Erlich gets furious, as the whole valley will now know that Pied Piper has faked its numbers, stripping it of all interest to investors. Laurie pulls away and puts the platform up for sale to the highest bidder. Anxious to get revenge on Richard, Gavin Belson offers $1 million to buy it and effectively extinguish the company. He also buys Code/Rag for $2 million in order to prevent the elephant story from spreading to the public. Monica, having been fired from Raviga for opposing Laurie, joins the team, which ultimately realizes that their video chat app, a side project by Dinesh, is considerably better than Hooli's. Big Head and Erlich, who owned half of Code/Rag through their partnership firm Bachmanity, use the money they earned to beat Gavin Belson's offer by one dollar, thus becoming the new owners of Pied Piper.

References

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External links

• Official website
• List of Silicon Valley episodes at the Internet Movie Database