One offers lucrative term sheets, one fires Richard. One frees us from the yoke of Jack Barker, one ruthlessly strips Erlich of his Astroport shares on the secondary market at below-market value. Which Laurie shall we meet next? This complex woman contains within her (as do we all, to a degree) both Arthur AND Mordred, Goofus AND Gallant.
Even the best of friends sometimes turn the worst of enemies: Mailer and Roth, Richards and Jagger, Christ and Judas. In each of these examples—besides my perhaps unfortunate choice of the last one—bygones were allowed to be bygones, water flowed under bridges, and harmony was restored. And so it comes to pass that despite their recent contretemps, our doughty CEO Richard Hendricks has brought a new (old?) Piper on board as our new Head of PR.
And who better to manage the public image of our company, to play the tech press like a Gypsy violin, than our charismatic Barnum, our Rasputin, our David Koresh (in a good way) of the Hacker Hostel, Erlich Casimir Bachman!
Yes, recent unfortunate financial reversals may have cost Erlich his 10 percent ownership stake in Astroport. Yet, it is clear Astroport continues to hold 100 percent ownership of his large, warm heart.**
(**This is not meant to imply that Erlich in any way suffers from an enlarged heart, or in fact any cardiac disorder, but rather that his loyalty to PP is not in doubt.)
Richard and Dinesh look on as the fruit of our mighty labors, Astroport’s compression platform, is launched! We await the judgment of history!****
(**** and the subsequent launch of subscription-based Astroport premium services for business!)
Through the ministrations of Gilfoyle and his girlfriend Tara—both acolytes of the Prince of Lies—Richard was finally convinced to allow beta-testing of our platform!
With apologies to NASA…the Piper has landed!
That’s right, readers! This is a momentous day: After a somewhat abbreviated beta testing phase, we have officially launched our initial “freemium” model! That’s right, Astroport’s robust compression-based platform is now commercially available and can be downloaded gratis from our website, the Apple Store, the HooliStore, and so on, in the hopes of selling premium services to businesses on top of that, at a somewhat later date. Huzzah!
I must say, it has been a rollercoaster ride up this point. Astroport has been menaced by lawsuits, city zoning inspectors, bad press, short-sighted “professional” CEOs, money problems, the incompetence of prepubescent cloud experts, fire and so on. I personally have been threatened in various ways by Gilfoyle, Erlich and anonymous voice messages from would-be assailants who in fact turned out to also be Gilfoyle and Erlich, having some fun at my expense.
And still we rise! Astroport’s future is so bright, one should avoid looking directly at it for prolonged periods, for fear of damaging the eyes! It is too soon to consider what I might do with my share of the billions we may soon be worth, but my blue button-down shirt is getting a bit worn at the elbows…and I have been thinking of going “non-iron”! Wheeeee!
On the outside, Richard and Dinesh yuk it up at Erlich’s gala of the young century. But internally, they stand graveside in the rain, at the double funeral of their romantic hopes.
The banality of evil: Even the monstrous Gavin Belson—when not plotting Astroport’s downfall—puts his FitBit on one strap at a time before heading to a Vinyasa Flow class, just like the rest of us.**
(**In fact, I have never seen nor used a FitBit, and am not at all sure how they come to be affixed to one’s wrist. Naturally emaciated, lucky me!)
Hello, friends. I am writing to you from my cozy corner of Erlich’s garage (although the photo above depicts otherwise). Which, thanks to a helpful and reasonably priced exterminator, is now almost primarily rat-free, judging by the decreased instance of both droppings and bites on my extremities as I sleep. I gave you an excellent Yelp review, Mr. Yaruslav!
Oh, I can hear those eyebrows raising; I know it doesn’t sound like much. But I’ll have you know none of my foster homes were remotely this luxurious, and my dorm room at Vassar was nearly as Spartan. Furthermore, Erlich is still not charging me rent, which could not be said of my college lodgings and the crushing debt I incurred there, nor of the attics and semi-enclosed porches of my childhood, which I paid for with endless, backbreaking chores and things no child should see. But I digress!
In any case. My topic today is “personal management.” Which is a fancy way of saying a concerted effort to maintain a healthy work-life balance. An example: Shortly after being rightfully reinstated as Astroport’s leader, my CEO Richard Hendricks embarked upon a liaison with a highly suitable senior Facebook engineer. Their relationship unfortunately ended after a disagreement over an arcane question of coding protocol. Engineers, am I correct?
Nonetheless, I took Richard’s dip into the dating pool as a cue to relaunch my brand in that arena, as it were. Because devoted as I have been to the company’s well-being, I’ve found if I fail to devote myself to to my personal well-being to some extent, I am doing the company a disservice. And since I started “getting out there” and meeting potential romantic partners, my productivity at work and my general well-being have both skyrocketed: I am getting more done, and the frequency of my night terrors has slightly decreased. As for Dinesh, who once told me in a very fresh manner, “Jared, if you ever actually got laid, I bet you’d ejaculate for six hours, and afterwards you’d be four feet tall and translucent.” Well, Dinesh…still just as tall, and no paler!
Someone prepare some lightly spiced chicken stock to boil the placenta in because we are looking at the birth of new venture capital titan Bachmanity!
Getting rid of the unnecessary luxuries acquired under “Action Jack.” Everything must go,we’re selling it all—except world-class compression technology, that is!**
(**=Actually, we of course do in fact intend to sell that as well as part of the Astroport platform, which we are at this moment hard at work on. Sorry for the confusion!)