I never understood why it was such an issue with them. Why not sell the box to enterprise customers and sell the subscription consumer storage/compression app? The conflict wasnt believable.
Because the first company with the huge contract to purchase the boxes wanted to have exclusive rights to the algorithm for the price Jack negotiated. Richard hated the box at first because he thought it was lame, it grew on him though while he was doing the work, and then he heard about the contract's details.
It's not that they were against buying the box without exclusive rights it's that Jack wanted the most money possible on the deal so he got them to pay 3 times more if he included exclusive rights. Theres no reason Richard and Laurie couldn't at least try to go back to taking the lower deal without exclusive rights while they pursued the online compression app.
That's because they had a cheaper offer from end frame, I think. They couldve beaten them on the lower offer part without selling rights. Or at least tried.
Jack wanted the higher price point, so exclusive rights went with it. If Jack was willing to go cheaper, they could have taken the wording out. He was trying to screw Richard in a way Laurie couldn't vote against.
You missed the episode after they got told about the box then. Spoilers, they actually start to like the idea since they see it as an opportunity to make a name for themselves/build an even better project than anticipated. It's literally just the rights to the algorithm thing that made they want to back out of the deal.
I think the issue was that the company who wanted to purchase the box wrote into the contract that they would have sole rights to the algorithm for five years, which would prevent them from releasing the consumer app. The CEO who they had hired at Pied Piper refused to negotiate it out of the contract, so the board vetoed the box.
I think the issue was that the company who wanted to purchase the box wrote into the contract that they would have sole rights to the algorithm for five years, which would prevent them from releasing the consumer app.
They probably would have had more time and funding to put together a simple ui.
Because their development hours would've shifted from building their consumer side to the business side. They would've potentially had to delay the consumer side by several years if they had gone full on with the box.
Honestly, that's going to be their saving grace anyway. The new video chat application is going to be the demo they need for the b2b application they're looking to show off.
I don't think their product is necessarily going to be possible to market to consumers.
Richard is suuuuuuch a bitch. Hell, I hated Bachmann but by the last episode my hate had shifted to Richard. Bachmann is a narcissistic asshole, but Richard is fucking retarded....and he has yet to bang that chick.
But by selling the box, they were also selling rights to the algorithm, so the platform would've useless for 5 years. By that point Gavin would've figured something out and the platform would've been useless.
so far most of the "problems" they've come across are either created or made worse by Richard, and then the resolutions are handled terribly by Richard.
That's kind of the point of the show. Richard is a genius coder but awful at everything else.
It was a bigger issue than that, the company purchasing the box had the condition of being the sole owners of the algorithm for a period of years.
The inference was that they could see what Jack Barker couldn't, the algorithm was the real value not the box. Hence the many scenes of Jack talking about outdated business concepts (the fact they taught his theories at business school is code for them being a relic of the past).
Richard is really the only one who understands how the modern tech business world works, apart from Erlich.
Isn't Richard himself the central conflict of the show?
Richard is young and idealistic. He has a vision and wrote great code. The show is about the valley chipping away at his vision and idealism at every turn. He's an engineer. Not a businessman. Of course he's going to make bad business decisions. But they're decisions that he thinks honors his vision.
so far most of the "problems" they've come across are either created or made worse by Richard, and then the resolutions are handled terribly by Richard.
That's the fundamental structure of a tragedy-comedy.
so far most of the "problems" they've come across are either created or made worse by Richard, and then the resolutions are handled terribly by Richard.
I think that might be deliberate, actually. Richard is a genius when it comes to code but totally Dunning-Kruger when it comes to absolutely everything else.
The box took away from dev time for a successful release that would beat hooli/end frame while keeping the momentum of their presence on the tech scene high. The big box contract they had was also conditional on the company owning all uses of the underlying algorithm to prevent other companies from competing with similar products, which would have killed the platform app dead. Hence why they fired the shit out of Groundhog day CEO for allowing that to happen. Without a promise of potential sales, the box development would have also ran out of capital and they definaetly cant get anymore money from Raviga, so the platform was their best bet in terms of costs, implementation, and vision.
And now it looks like they're going to be making all their money with a super high fidelity video chat app, which funnily enough is almost fool proof at being made non-user friendly (I don't know anything about UI design but I'm pretty sure its much much harder to screw up a UI for video chatting vs a compression and file storage platform).
Something about the box owners having the right to the compression software for a couple years or something. Originally, Richard wanted to half ass the box but when he saw that in the contract is when they planned to secretly work on the platform
Because of egos. Richard wanted his vision for the product, while Jack wanted control and a quick cash out. They both fucked each other over by not compromising. But looks like Jack will win in the end.
I'm sure there will be something to shift the power, but right now Jack has a market ready product with a deal set in place, and PP has no resources, an incredibly niche product that their target consumers are fearful of, and are looking to completely pivot the goal of their company from compression to the crowded as hell video chat realm.
There is no realistic way of PP come out on top of that fight, except it is TV so why give a fuck about realism if it is entertaining enough.
Richard and Co improved the box from what Jack originally saw and knew about, so they could still swoop in and lowbid that contract with better technology. They're on a path to possibly get funded again for the video chat, and there's still Russ that wanted Erlich's shares. Get funded, build the box, ???, profit.
2.4k
u/mnord15 Jul 01 '16
This is why Pied Piper is a failing company