Silicon Valley Episode 3.07 To Build a Better Beta

Richard grows frustrated with the in-development Pied Piper platform as it remains buggy. Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani) and Jared suggest they release a beta version to help uncover bugs and fix them at a faster rate, but Richard worries that doing so would only subject the company to more bad-mouthing. Richard's resolve weakens when he discovers Gilfoyle (Martin Starr) gave the beta to his girlfriend, Tara, who thinks the platform is awesome.

Erlich (T.J. Miller) meets with Arthur who explains Erlich's partnership with Big Head means he's also facing financial ruin -- even bankruptcy won't absolve him of his debts.Richard gives himself, Dinesh, Jared and Gilfoyle 10 links each of the beta to share out with people they trust. Gilfoyle says he doesn't trust anyone and gives his links to Jared and Dinesh. Dinesh secretly struggles to find anyone to share his with.

Jared looks over Erlich's finances, and informs him someone earmarked almost 70 percent of Big Head's settlement money for taxes. They both suspect Arthur is to blame for the missing sum. At Hooli, Gavin (Matt Ross) illegally scans through employee email and learns that Pied Piper released a beta. He tasks his head of security with getting him access.

Erlich and Big Head confront Arthur, who ultimately admits to stealing Big Head's money. Unfortunately, he can't return it, as he's been funneling the money into his other clients' accounts (whose money he's been losing for years).

Feedback on the Pied Piper beta is overwhelmingly positive, though Monica (Amanda Crew) finds herself in the minority. Faced with Richard's delight at all the positive feedback, as well as his desire to move up the initial launch, Monica keeps her reservations to herself.

Erlich and Big Head meet with the D.A., who tells them there's no realistic way to get their money back from Arthur. She suggests Erlich sell his shares of Pied Piper, though he's reluctant to sell knowing they could someday be worth billions. The D.A. remains unsympathetic to their plight, calling them out as entitled white men who would have squandered the money, and promises to prosecute if Erlich doesn't pay his vendors what he owes them.

Richard, using the God-View user tracking Gilfoyle set up, discovers that someone on the Hooli campus is using the beta platform. The guys launch a zip bomb on Gavin's personal laptop and phone, killing his access and destroying both devices. Making matters worse for Gavin, Eric and Naveen, Hooli's key engineers, quit when he demands they do a ground-up rebuild of their compression platform to match Pied Piper's.

Again using the God-View, Richard tracks down Monica at a hookah bar and gets her to admit she doesn't like the beta. All the same, she encourages him to proceed with the launch and sets up a meeting with Laurie to get things under way. After the meeting, Erlich approaches Laurie to discuss selling his shares of the company.

At the Hacker Hostel, the guys count down the final seconds to the official launch of the Pied Piper platform.