

This is a common problem in Silicon Valley, where people get so involved in their own creations they can’t understand how someone else might struggle with it. “You're trying to sell the platform to regular people but you never actually put it in the hands of regular people,” says Monica. And engineers aren't the target audience here.

Then he realizes that apart from Monica (the only dissenting reviewer) everyone he sent it to was an engineer. He’s confused - everyone he sent it to loved it. Richard watches in agony through the one-way mirror, and snaps when the users fail to get it. On average, people expect around a 20% return of visitors- in Richard’s case, it’s about 3.8% - which is bad all round.Ĭue a round of focus group testing, where an instructor tasks a group of ordinary people to give feedback on using Pied Piper.

Richard counters this with the confession that she might not be too off base despite a large number of downloads the number of active users - people who return to use the software again- are embarrassingly low. Monica takes this opportunity to apologize to Richard for her lack of enthusiasm about the service, “It’s embarrassing to be so f**king wrong,” she says. This is the creation of Erlich, is his new role as outreach officer.Įrlich’s showcasing it at the Pied Piper launch, where the teams supporters gather to watch their number of downloads hit the 500,000 mark. (Side note: the ad shows more diversity in thirty seconds than the show has in three seasons). Let’s not forget the girl running through a cornfield, wind blowing in her hair. “Any person can sit at a table,” goes the ad, as it flashes through every trope known to the ad business playing chess on a rooftop, holding toy airplanes, native dancing, and a lizard bursting out of a shell. It's not "should we?" but "what happens when we do?" And it's perhaps a timelier question than the showrunners intended given some of the high-profile verdicts being handed down recently.The episode opens with a strange advertising spot about tables.
