- Have you ever had a lack of sleep for several months and your body felt like an uncle?
- Have you ever faced setbacks again and again, as if the whole world was against you?
- Have you ever watched the balance on your account plummet to the brink of desperation?
- Have you ever had a sudden euphoria and an accidental chance come back to life?
These are all the recent popular American drama "Silicon Valley" to show us - a Silicon Valley entrepreneurial story. To write and shoot the show, the main creative team consulted with hundreds of people in Silicon Valley, and also hired industry bigwigs as screenwriter consultants, all of which made the plot convincing enough.
The plot is roughly like this. The protagonist Richard developed a tool called "Magic Piper", which was found by angel investors to have a powerful compression algorithm engine, so it was favored by investors. Richard left a big company to start a business, but he encountered all kinds of experiences like being trapped by the boss of a big company, by investors, by competitors, and even by his own people.
Richard and his friends are typical code farmers. They started from only writing code, and gradually matured during the roller coaster process of starting a business (the screenwriter compressed all the problems encountered in starting a business into 30 minutes per episode). Rescue danger in the most dangerous time. While dramatic, there is no shortage of some deep revelations.
The product can't be monetized
The Pied Piper started out as a platform for composers to spot piracy, but the audience was too small to care. After being discovered that its powerful file compression ability, the protagonist began to focus on the development of algorithms; in order to obtain cash flow, he even almost helped pornographic websites to be players; under the requirement of the company's new CEO to quickly realize cash, he almost turned to hardware business. 's enterprise.
Although the frequency of product transformation in the play is a bit exaggerated, it is undeniable that directional changes in products are very common in the early stage of entrepreneurship. In particular, the basic technology such as compression engine, what kind of product is made is a core issue. This requires a sharp collision between engineer thinking and market thinking, and it is also accompanied by a strong interest drive.
quarrel with investors
After the Pied Piper absorbed the A round of financing, the investor hired a "more experienced" CEO to manage the company, but this guy just wanted to quickly increase sales and turn the product into an enterprise-oriented business. It is completely contrary to the user-oriented platform direction of the founding team.
The founder has higher and loftier dreams for the product, professional managers care about the current performance, and investors focus on the price at the time of starting and selling. The three parties check and balance each other. Although start-up teams generally lack experience in managing large teams, it is rare in our country for investors to directly appoint CEOs, but it is more common in the United States.
The team that was sued by the big company
The Pied Piper originally worked in the big company (called "Hooli" in the film), and then ran away with the core technology. Hooli did the same thing, but couldn't keep up with the Pied Piper because of the inefficiency of the big company. So the Pied Piper was brought to court in the name of intellectual property infringement.
Of course, this situation rarely happens in China. Usually, everyone is looking forward to being injected by a giant like BAT as soon as possible. The current domestic entrepreneurship rarely involves breakthroughs in core technologies, and the important reason is that the legal system is not perfect for intellectual property protection.
After the official launch of the fake user data
Pied Piper as a cloud platform for file sharing, the number of user installations is quite good, exceeding 500,000, but the daily activity is insufficient, only less than 20,000. The reason is that Richard and his team are from technical backgrounds. The products made by engineers are too complicated and the user experience is not good. So much so that he secretly asked the water army company to help hype user data.
It is a normal situation in China to recruit the army to wash user data, and no one will be as foolish as to confess this behavior to investors as in the play, just quietly watching who will be the "taker".
The mantra of Richard and his friends is "We are done", "It's over", "We are fucked"... always walking on the edge of failure. As Elon Musk said: "The so-called entrepreneurship is to chew on glass and stare into the abyss. I believe that everyone who has had entrepreneurial experience can find the shadow of their own story in this drama.
Of course, this is by no means a movie . A dull inspirational drama, in addition to being informative, it is also very interesting.
This drama is quite funny, and there are some memes, I am afraid that audiences without technical background can not get it, for example: the protagonist thinks of a new algorithm from the discussion of his partners on how to give a group of people a flick; Tab" programmers despise the use of "Space"...
This is also a soap opera of black Silicon Valley bosses. The important characters in the play can basically find real-life comparisons, such as Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Larry Ellison, Mary Meeker, Steve Ballmer and so on. For example: the angel investor character in season 1 is a remake of Peter Thiel. The producer HBO does not shy away from this, and even released the following pictures for each important person on the official website.
A thousand people have a thousand Hamlets in their hearts, so when looking at "Silicon Valley", everyone will have their own perspective, and there are more slots to be discovered.
Spoiler so far, I wish you a happy viewing.
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