Daily Active Users
TV-MA | 29 MIN
Written by Clay Tarver
Directed by Alec Berg
Pied Piper debuts a new high-quality advertisement featuring "tables" as a metaphor for the platform, and Erlich and Laurie Bream make awkward small talk at a party at her house to celebrate 500,000 installs of Pied Piper.
At the party, Richard tells Monica that while the app has a lot of installs, the number of daily active users is appallingly low, proving that Monica's concern should not have been ignored. Dinesh, Erlich, and Gilfoyle enjoy the celebration, but Jared, who is aware of the numbers, nervously flits around.
Monica sets up a focus group to get feedback for the platform and the focus group reveals that everyone was "totally freaked out." Richard and Monica realize since they never gave the beta to "regular people," they never got feedback on what "regular people" thought of it until now. Richard, who can't stand the negative feedback, storms into the room to explain the intricacies of the platform. In full-on professor mode, Richard spends his afternoon with the participants until each person understands the function of the platform.
Richard returns to the hacker hostel and explains to the guys why the platform is tanking. When Dinesh suggests changing the platform, Richard replies, "If you build an airplane, and people are afraid of anything that flies, you can't just take the wings off of it, because at that point, all you're left with is a really slow, super-expensive, shitty bus." Richard proposes spending the rest of the funding on educating the public about how to use Pied Piper. Erlich attempts to rally the group to support Richard, even if his plan is a suicide mission. All of the newly hired employees quit.
Recently banished, Gavin has lunch with Denpok and tries to figure out his next move. Hoover, Hooli's Head of Security, alerts him that a former Pied Piper employee is interviewing on the Hooli campus. Gavin now has a shot at redeeming himself with the Hooli board.
After meeting with the employee, Gavin brings his discovery about Pied Piper's daily active users to the disinterested Hooli board. He pretends that he lied about wanting to create a platform, and that his efforts were a charade because he knew any compression platform was destined to fail. The board is skeptical, but they give him another chance when he brings in Jack Barker, the new Head of Hooli-Endframe Product, to reveal what Belson has supposedly in fact been working toward: The Box.
As Richard continues his quest to explain the platform, Pied Piper's money dwindles and the daily active user number stagnates. Richard returns to the ad agency, where he asks them to create something to clarify the platform for little money. They show him "Pipey" an animated character that lives on the site and troubleshoots user issues. Richard accepts defeat, "Face it, Jared. Being too early is the same as being wrong."
After he closes the deal with Maleant Data Systems to store "The Box," Gavin's full status as CEO is restored. He leads the board out to the Hooli courtyard where they find an elephant, because an elephant "never forgets," and neither does Gavin. As Richard prepares to dissolve the company, the guys learn that the number of daily active users have gone up. While they celebrate, Jared takes a call and orders more users from a click farm in Bangladesh.
