All language subtitles for Valley of The Boom s01e04 Priority Inversion.eng

MARC: Did Microsoft
start bundling their browser with their PCs?

JIM: That would take a huge
bite out of our market share.

Did they just threaten us?

Maybe that's a good thing.

Maybe they just broke the law.

MARC: AOL's big deal with
Microsoft didn't miraculously lift their stock price

and now they're
crawling back to us.

Let them find
another lifeline.

WISKOWSKI: You can
stop selling, we're in. We'll be in touch.

MICHAEL: Alright.

GOODIN: This guy who has been
calling himself Michael Fenne is really David Kim Stanley,

fugitive of the law.

CUBAN: Why did Advance
Equities give Pixelon $10 million-plus?

Because they wanted to
take Pixelon public and pump it and dump it on

unsuspecting shareholders
and make a lot more money.

STEPHAN: We're
onto something here, guys, I can feel it.

Mike, Ed, I think
you guys feel it.

We're connecting
people to each other.

It's kinda powerful.

We're actually not based here.

Todd and I, we started
a little company based out of New York.

PATTY: Hmm.

STEPHAN: It's this
online community.

It's called TheGlobe.com.

PATTY: TheGlobe.com
that just got a $20 million in investments?

STEPHAN: You wanna
what an IPO feels like?

It feels like
you're about to die.

[traffic].

[heartbeat].

MAN: Jump already!

STEPHAN: You're standing
at heaven's gate,

your whole life is
flashing before your eyes,

and there's a judgment coming.

DARRIN: Hey, hey,
hey, stop, stop!

Um, look uh, before
you make a decision you cannot take back,

I need you to listen to me.

I know it doesn't feel
like it right now, but:

You. Matter.

Why don't you just
come on down, huh?

I'll make you
a chamomile tea,

and we can
chat this thing right on out, that sound good?

KRIZELMAN: It's a metaphor.

DARRIN: For real?

KRIZELMAN: We're
in a metaphor here.

STEPHAN: C'mon, man!

DARRIN: You know,
how about this!

Next time we're in metaphor,

you let me know,
okay, so I'm not out here

having a friggin'
heart attack?!

♪

REPORTER [over TV]:
If you thought the Internet bubble was about to burst,

think again.

While the Nasdaq,
points were up more than 70 points, a record high.

Internet darling,
Yahoo is closing in on a gain of 2,000%.

TARA: I think Wall Street
both built and ruined the web.

DAN: So there was just
the rush, the machine, that was investors getting IPOs,

getting the pop and
getting out.

We we're always told, "you
want the long-term investor,"

well, long-term
meant maybe 18 hours.

Felt like a money-making
scheme for everybody involved.

REPORTER [over TV]:
The usual roles for valuing a stock such as revenues and

earnings no longer apply.

GOODIN: Suddenly the major
requirements that had existed in the past for,

for being able to do
an IPO just went away.

Nobody knew really how to
measure this type of stuff.

REPORTER [over TV]:
eToys says heavy advertising

is necessary to
establish a brand name.

MAN: The most important
thing for these companies to do right now is to establish

their market position,
not to be profitable.

CUBAN: Companies
with only a website were going public and

making tens of
millions of dollars,

or hundreds of millions or
billions of dollars on paper.

DAN: All of a sudden you
were printing millionaires out of nowhere,

there was this
paper that suddenly you could sell because these

companies were going public.

REPORTER [over TV]:
GeoCities went public last August was up about 340%.

ED: Valuation prior to,
let's call this the Internet boom, wouldn't have mattered,

but because the media
paid such attention to the initial public offerings

at the time that if you
weren't worth a billion dollars and your competitor was,

it was almost like this
stain on your company.

HUFFINGTON:
The myth-making was part of the product making.

MICHAEL: Mmhm,
there you go, mmm.

[laughing].

SHEILA: Have a
wonderful, positive day.

[kiss].

MICHAEL: You know what I
see in every cubicle here?

A millionaire!

That means you.

And you. And you.

And, hey, don't think I
forgot about your niece, you have her come see me,

we'll fix her up with a job.

Hey buddy.

Highlights bring
out your eyes.

Never discount the
value of a makeover.

Hey people!

SOCOLOF: Oh, hey, I'm
glad you're here, we need to talk about something.

MICHAEL: Hey, you are on it.
Isn't he on it?

Hey, you all are on it.

The energy in here is
electric, I can feel it coursing through each and

every one of you.

I know you feel it
too, cause you all are making history in here.

This is the biggest,
star-studded musical event ever, 'kay?

A little bit country, a
lot rock and roll, and everything in between.

So keep moving forward
to get it done.

Get-It-Done.

Okay!

GARY: It's amazing what can
happen once money arrives.

BRIAN: And the idea was to
have this big crazy party with all this you know,

high-name talent I
think to you know to market the company,

to be able to say
hey, look, look at what we're doing.

MICHAEL: Remember,
we're announcing to the world,

Pixelon is number one
in Internet broadcasting.

"Coming to you live,
full motion, full screen, full speed.

Pitch-perfect."
Write that down.

Pitch-perfect.

Oh, hey, that ain't
nothing compared to the vision I had last night.

The heavens suddenly
parted and what was previously dark

was suddenly
illuminated and clear, so very, very clear.

The writing, right in
front of my eyes, big gold letters: iBash.

GARY: We eventually
settled on iBash, which was a suggestion that

I had made so I'm
actually the person who named iBash.

SOCOLOF: iBash.

It's not bad, man.

MICHAEL: It's absolutely good.

Right?

SOCOLOF: Oh hey,
we gotta' talk budget.

MICHAEL: Hey, no
limited thinking.

I made you a promise whatever
you need, you'd have.

GOODIN: iBash was
going to be a way that Pixelon could immediately

hit the market with
a huge amount of content.

MICHAEL: Hey, we
gotta get the Who.

You know what I mean?

THOMAS: With Internet
Explorer 3.0, we finally had something on Netscape,

we finally had something that
we were frankly proud of.

Uh, up to that point
in time the browsers that we shipped were kind of a joke and

it was the first
one in which we actually won competitive reviews.

JOY: That really was
their first browser where they took,

I don't know exactly
what the numbers were,

but they started
to take a big chunk of our market share.

JAMES: They bundled
Internet Explorer into their operating system with

Windows 95 or somewhere

in there for free in their
operating system which was 90% of the market.

That was a devastating blow.

MARC: How long?

JIM: Three, four
quarters before it blows up our bottom line.

CLARK: It's the
damn definition of predatory pricing!

Which last time I checked,
was anti-trust level illegal.

Am I wrong?

ROBERTA: There's definitely
an argument to be made, but...

CLARK: Nobody can
compete against free.

MARC: Plus it's still an
inferior piece of coding.

JIM: Roberta,
whadya got for us?

ROBERTA: Our focus needs
to be on the consent decree Microsoft signed

with the government.

It forbids the company from
using its operating system and

software dominance
to squash competition.

Which is exactly
what they're doing.

JIM: Is that right?
MARC: Doesn't surprise me.

CLARK: Okay, Microsoft is evil.
Got it.

Did you all hear
the part where Jim says we have three or four

quarters before we're dead?

JIM: You sure guys
don't want to sit down?

CLARK: We gotta staunch the
bleeding before everyone sees just how badly we've been hit.

JIM: We get out of the
water where the shark has the advantage and

back in the forest where
the bear has the advantage.

MARC: Sharks and bears, oh my.

JIM: I'm saying we make have
to build something that is undeniable so companies and

consumers have no choice
but to come back to us.

E-commerce,
business-to-business.

CLARK: What's gonna' stop
Microsoft from ripping that out from under us as well?

MARC: Oh, I don't know. Laws?

ROBERTA: Let me handle that.

We can't force the
DOJ to prosecute, but we can give them all the

ammunition they'll need.

JIM: Alright.
Thanks, Roberta.

Look, we're small and
agile, and they need to keep feeding the Window's beast.

So why don't we keep
our heads down, focus on what we can control.

Got it?

[whistling].

GROUP: Hello.
Blow us a kiss up here. Nice spoon.

SPOKESPERSON: TheGlobe.com.

Join a club, telekinetics.

GROUP: Hey baby!

Gettin' lonely up here.

Hey, hey, hey.

[crash].

GIRL: Who wants buffalo wings?

SPOKESPERSON:
From telekinetics to football fanatics,

you'll find thousands
of clubs to choose from.

GROUP: TheGlobe.com.

SPOKESPERSON: Build
a world around you.

STEPHAN: The Internet
market was simply heating up more and more.

GeoCities had just
filed to go public.

eBay and Yahoo and Netscape,
they were just really rocketing and we realized,

dammit, even with
Mike's 20 million, we can't stay private,

we're gonna actually
have to go public.

KRIZELMAN: We had this
huge amount of traffic, but we did not have that paired

with a working business model.

ED: We had to support what
used to be tens of thousands of paying members and now

millions of free members
and so we had to pay for more servers, server farms,

more electricity,
and more employees and more programmers.

Millions of dollars
were rapidly vanishing.

STEPHAN: These IPOs are
becoming this rite of passage

that legitimizes
these companies,

that distinguishes
the interesting Internet companies from the best

Internet companies.

We met with all
the major banks.

But there were two
banks in particular that were hungry for this and

they hadn't had yet a breakout
IPO in the tech sector.

I guess we made the
fateful decision of going with the Bear Stearns.

So...

We'd seen Lycos become a
multi-hundred-million-dollar company.

We'd seen Excite become a
multi-hundred-million-dollar company.

We'd seen Netscape become
a multi-hundred-million, or billion-dollar company.

And these other startups had
similar audience sizes to us and were maybe building

technologies that
were comparable.

[overlapping chatter]

-Listen, a little too much
like Geocities... -Nevermind Geocities...

STEPHAN: And so,
those comparables of traffic size and audience

started to equate,
get that higher valuation.

KRIZELMAN: Aren't those
numbers a little high?

STEPHAN: Maybe
not high enough?

So before we
went on the road show, uh, the bankers and Mike and Ed

wanted us to have a
particular professional look.

KRIZELMAN: We did not
know how to pitch.

We did not know how to dress.

We did not know any part
of the process really.

STEPHAN: They asked
us to also get a coach who could teach us how to

present properly and
the physicality of it,

because Todd and I each
had these little weird idiosyncratic behaviors

that needed to be addressed.

KRIZELMAN: Think of
online community like your offline community.

STEPHAN: Except much bigger.

In the next few years there's
going to be 100 million people on the Internet.

COACH: Do you have
to take a piss?

STEPHAN: Uh, no.

KRIZELMAN: We didn't understand
the communication style,

and this was incredibly
frustrating to Steph.

COACH: Are you defending
the goal on a free kick?

STEPHAN: No.

COACH: Then why are
you standing there with your hands in front of your balls?

[chuckles].

COACH: Huh?

KRIZELMAN: Now we're
totally vulnerable if they do kick a soccer ball at us.

COACH: Something you want
to share with the class?

STEPHAN: No.
KRIZELMAN: We're good.

STEPHAN: Todd and I had
always been dressing totally casually.

The bankers and Mike and Ed
were all in agreement this is a traditional road show,

we need to look like we're
professionals and we need to look as old as we can look.

♪ Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

♪ Put em up like
you don't care. ♪

♪ Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

♪ Put em up like
you don't care. ♪

♪ Shake your derrier,
shake your derrier, shake it ♪

♪ Shake your derrier,
shake your derrier, shake it ♪

♪ Shake your derrier,
shake your derrier, shake it ♪

♪ Shake your derrier,
shake your derrier, shake it ♪

♪ Shake your derrier
just like that. ♪♪

[pager beeping].

KRIZELMAN: Oh, crap.

Servers are down.

Uh, I'm sorry, I gotta go.

STEPHAN: I'll go.

KRIZELMAN: No, no,
you're definitely better dealing with the grownups.

STEPHAN: Am not.

KRIZELMAN: Nice try.

STEPHAN: How great will
it be when we can just get back to running our company?

KRIZELMAN: With 30 million
more in capital to play with.

STEPHAN: This is actually
happening, isn't it?

KRIZELMAN: This is
actually happening!

ROBERTA: We had
been complaining to the DOJ, loudly, and getting nowhere;

but the bundling
gave us our strongest argument for antitrust.

We wrote a
220 page white paper that compiled all Microsoft's

crimes and misdemeanors.

GATES [over TV]:
The reality of the

high-technology industry.

ROBERTA: And read
like a pot boiler.

GATES [over TV]:
Good for consumers.

JIM: Oh, hey Roberta.

Yeah, there was talk of
publishing it as a book, court of public opinion.

The title wasn't exactly sexy.

ROBERTA: Jim Barksdale
thought that releasing the white paper to the public

would make the
company look weak.

JIM: The main thing about
a smoking gun is it means someone's been shot.

ROBERTA: So it was decided
that the white paper would have an audience of one.

The DOJ said that if we
presented "credible evidence"

they'd jump on it
like a dog on a bone.

GATES [over TV]:
All of Microsoft's actions have been completely legal.

JIM: Of course the entire
DOJ team investigating at the time consisted of

two lawyers in a
San Francisco field office.

So things moved a helluva
lot slower than we had hoped.

BRIAN: From what I saw
Pixelon's goal was to...

You have to understand,
it was before YouTube,

so there wasn't any idea
of an online video portal,

and I think that's what
Pixelon was really going for,

was to be able to have
this destination where you could go watch a ton of video.

The idea was to get as
much content populated on the site as possible.

BARRY: You switch here,
change input, it gets run through the intake encoder.

WOMAN: Okay.

BARRY: Then I edit output
and upload to the server.

And now it's on our website.

WOMAN: Okay.

BRIAN: The technology
that we were utilizing at Pixelon was definitely new and

it was definitely
interesting and there wasn't a lot like it out there.

Full screen, TV style
video on the Internet.

There just weren't
a lot of people that were doing that kind of thing.

BARRY: So he told
you about the box?

WOMAN: Yeah,
what's up with that?

He said he spoke with
the CIA, that he's got it booby trapped?

BARRY: Yeah, I know.

It's weird.

Just don't look,
don't touch, don't ask.

WOMAN: Ok.

GARY: That black rack
mounted box was off limits for anybody to open.

It was explained to us that
each of them had been booby trapped to prevent reverse

engineers from opening
it up and stealing the technology out from under us.

GARY: So the booby
trap was a acid pill, it was explained to us that

as soon as the case was open,

an acid pill would break,
spilling acid into the computer

and destroying the
internal components of it.

BRIAN: I'm not really
sure if the protection inside there was supposed to harm the

individual going in there
or destroy the technology.

My sense of things
was it was supposed to destroy the technology.

That rumor came
down from the top.

BARRY: So, I was thinking.

MICHAEL: Uh-huh.

BARRY: With our broadcasting
the Iowa Straw Poll next week.

MICHAEL: Hey, did I tell
you that my good friend Ronnie Reagan called to

congratulate me on our deal?

Yeah, just yesterday.

He and Nancy are very
excited about what Pixelon's doing do for the GOP,

bringing 'em into
the Internet age.

BARRY: Exactly, it's
our biggest event so far, so I was thinking,

we should do a test run.

MICHAEL: Why would I do that?

BARRY: Well, to find out
if there are any kinks and,

if there are, iron them out.

MICHAEL: You think
there are kinks?

BARRY: No, no, no, I'm not
saying there are any kinks.

MICHAEL: I'm just
messing with you, Barry.

I appreciate your
diligence, but this is way above your pay grade.

Engineering and high-tech
stuff's best left to me and my programmer, okay?

Barry, you look exhausted.

Very pale.

Are you tired?

BARRY: Yeah, I've been
working 18-hour shifts.

MICHAEL: Ok.

Here's what I want you to do.

I want you to go home,

take the rest of the
day off, just get some sleep, okay?

BARRY: Thanks.

But if you do a test
run, if I could be there.

MICHAEL: "Even a fool,
when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise;

and he that shutteth
his lips is esteemed a man of understanding."

Proverbs 17:28.

The Lord fuels us to do his
work, but the body is weak.

[door closes].

MARC: Where the
hell is the DOJ?

JIM: Gathering their evidence.

The wheels of justice don't
turn on Netscape time.

MARC: How much more credible
does it have to get?

JIM: We can't mistake a clear
view for a short distance.

MARC: Things Marc Andreessen
doesn't like:

nostalgia, parties
and physical displays

of just touching.

Not necessarily in that order.

JIM: I never took
you for someone whose plan for the future

relies on white knights.

MARC: Yeah, well
screw you and the patience you're trying to teach me.

JIM: My pleasure.

You know, I learned
a while ago that if you make your mission real clear and

a lot of smart
people work on it, you'll figure it out.

We got a simple mission
and you know it's never really changed.

Keep the Internet open.

Keep creating
products that are important and relevant,

make a whole lot
of people's lives a whole lot better,

something we call
changing the world.

TEAM: Yeah!

JIM: So your job is
to keep running as fast as you can toward that cliff.

My job is to keep
moving the cliff.

STEPHAN: We were ready to
go on the actual road show.

We wanted to go as fast
as we could because our competitors,

they, they, you know,

GeoCities, they had
already gone public.

They were safely on the
other side, flush with cash, and we were sitting here

hurrying up trying to see
if we could make it before this IPO window closed.

To refresh your memory,
a road show's where you go and whore yourself out

to all the major
institutional investors

and big money managers
in the country to drum up

interest in your IPO.

You get five minutes to tell.

KRIZELMAN:
These stodgy, grey-haired guys what the Internet is,

and why they need to own
a piece of your company.

STEPHAN: All in 10
luxurious, fun-filled days.

Yay.

Remember the
Netscape road show?

JIM: Goodness.

Thank you uh for having
us and thank you for inviting the entire world.

[laughter].

KRIZELMAN: Yeah, ours
wasn't quite like that.

STEPHAN: So what
do you guys think?

KRIZELMAN:
Mm. Any questions?

We started
on our road show,

which is expensive
and time consuming.

And in that time the
NASDAQ really falls apart.

REPORTER [over TV]:
Wall Street is growing tired with the Internet itself.

The once red hot initial
public offering market has cooled recently.

Things were a bit in a flux,

investors were definitely
a little cautious here.

Nearly 80 new issues have
been yanked so far this year.

STEPHAN: I mean,
it was unbelievable.

I mean, you couldn't
script this thing.

Like we just filed to go
public and you're telling us the market just died?

STEPHAN: Thank God
only five more cities.

KRIZELMAN: Six.

STEPHAN: Did that guy
really say, "Well I guess all you young people

will have to go back to
working for a living now?"

KRIZELMAN: At least he
didn't keep leaving the room to check his stocks.

You know, according
to the bottle, you're actually supposed to wash

cold medicine down
with gin, not vodka.

STEPHAN: It's soothing.

170 other companies have
already pulled their IPOs.

KRIZELMAN: 174.

STEPHAN: Everyone's asking,
why are we out here?

KRIZELMAN: We're either
braver or dumber.

And more in need of money.

STEPHAN: Oh, thank you
for driving that point home,

that would have been
totally lost on me.

Want to go into how
if this doesn't happen we'll have to fire,

why don't you tell
me how many people, since you always go into it.

KRIZELMAN: Always?

You want to get
into always now?

-Alright, one more.

SEAN: Why don't you work?

This sucks!

C'mon, why don't you work?

No, no, no, no!

CODER: Oh, suck it, ah!

SEAN: No!

TARA: Damn it, Sean!
SEAN: What?

TARA: "What?"

SEAN: I think I broke it.

TARA: Yep, we're gonna have
to change the installer code.

Three engineers,
12 hour days, add on 3 more days, guys.

SEAN: I'm sorry.

CODER: No, not sorry.

Booze.

TARA: Tequila, please.

Top shelf, none of
that no label crap.

Bribery booze was a
glorious tradition where every time the build team

got completely hammered by
something the engineers did,

um, usually, inadvertently,

they would bring
us some booze.

And by version 4 of
the Navigator, actually we were kinda calculating how

successful the
development of the Navigator was going by how much

booze the build team had.

We'd drink it all too!

It was like, oh, God,
it's 10:00 at night, who wants a shot, right?

Totally unprofessional,
but it was awesome.

Who wants a shot?

[loud crash].

Okay.

SEAN: Ah, it's hideous.

TARA: You know,
Microsoft was in town, they had this big like

cardboard or plastic
board you know "e" logo,

and uh yeah they
bring it over and they plant it right in front

of Netscape headquarters.

TECH: Unbelievable.

TARA: "It's just not fair.

Good people should'nt
have to feel bad.

The IE team."

SEAN: That's their
idea of funny, what the hell does it even mean?

CODER: They talk trash as
lame as they write code.

ROSANNE: I do
remember that event.

[laughs].

You know, I just thought
it was a desperate act.

I remember thinking that
it made them look dumb.

You know, it's sort of like,
when you're a big giant and you have to go stomp on the

smaller competitor?

You give the smaller
competitor credibility.

TARA: Word spread
quickly and somebody got the brilliant idea,

like oh well
we've got Mozilla.

TODD: Mozilla, was this
dinosaur like creature which was our mascot for our company

and our browser and so
we put that on top of their brand and put a market share

number up there and said,
"We're still dominant."

TEAM: Yeah, whoo!

TARA: I can't believe they
gave us this opportunity to have this totally symbolic,

Mozilla's totally stomping
on Internet Explorer and uh, it was really glorious.

[Andreessen laughing].

CUBAN: What Pixelon
said was that they had a super whizzbang codec that

blew away everybody else.

And that was their big lie.

GARY: Pixelon had
never streamed anything live at this point.

We did stream the
Iowa Straw Pole.

TEAM: Yeah!

[clapping].

Whoo, congratulations!

GARY: When we streamed
the Iowa Straw Pole that was the first time it was

exposed that Pixelon
had no capability of doing anything live.

We tapped into I think
it was Iowa Public Television and we were actually

receiving that
signal via satellite from the satellite truck

that we'd just paid
100 grand for encoding

it, but not with
Pixelon's technology.

It wasn't possible.

BRIAN: The claim was
that the technology was proprietary,

it was all built
in house from the ground up by Pixelon.

GOODIN: Searches that I did
with the U.S. Patent office

didn't turn up a
single registered patent.

GARY: People did see
it on the Internet.

They didn't see it
full-screen, full motion.

MICHAEL: Plenty more,
this is just for the toast.

[toasting and cheering].

GARY: The technology
that's supposed to be delivering this over the

Internet is the thing
that we're supposed to be delivering.

When it came time for
us to actually demonstrate that, we failed.

Not only did we fail,
we didn't even try.

We used Windows
Media Encoder and the Windows Media Player to

actually facilitate that.

STEPHAN:
Bear Stearns told us all the institutions are spooked.

Everyone was saying it
looks like we're entering a recessionary period.

If we couldn't
go public, it was game over for going public.

HIPSTER: Hey, can I
still get into the IPO?

Too late for
friends and family?

STEPHAN: You are neither.

I think some degree of
panic was setting in.

You want to be confident
and project how great things are going, right?

'Cause all the other guys
are living it up and their careers are going great and

the money's rolling in.

And meanwhile in the
back of your mind you've got this problem that

your company might just die.

JENN: What?

What?

[laughs].

What?

What?

STEPHAN: I could take you
through the whole thing, but suffice it to say:

I'd never met anyone
like Jenn before.

KRIZELMAN: Guten morgen!

STEPHAN: Okay, I know
what I'm smiling about.

The question is, what
are you smiling about?

KRIZELMAN: We got the call!

Bear Stearns is getting
inbound calls from all the companies we met with,

they're interested.

STEPHAN: IPO, baby.

I-P-O, whoo!

Three days, we
only have until?

KRIZELMAN: Friday.

[phone rings].

Hello, it's Jerry
from Bear Stearns.

Jerry, I'm here
with Steph right now, we are so excited.

Bear Stearns called us
up and said, listen the markets very turbulent,

we strongly recommend you
just get out into the public,

that's what's most important,

take what you can and
just go and do it.

STEPHAN: Todd and I,
being as inexperienced as we were,

we didn't know how
hard we could push back.

If we're getting all this
unprecedented demand that Bear Stearns was telling about,

why can't we move the price?

Yesterday you told
us we have 45 million shares of demand for our

three-million share offering.

BANKER: And two days ago we
couldn't sell a single share.

EGAN: C'mon, we gotta
get it higher than $8.

BANKER: Pricing is
a delicate balance.

Ok, you've got to leave
enough meat on the bone so people will want to keep

coming back and feeding.

KRIZELMAN: Nearly twelve times
demand's "not a little meat."

ED: There has to
be a middle ground.

[Izzy sneezing].

Gesundheit.

KRIZELMAN: Hey, are you lost?

What's your name?

IZZY: I'm Izzy Young.

BANKER: Okay, well,
Izzy Young, you can't.

IZZY: And I'm pretty good
at math, so don't worry,

I can make this
simple for you.

When a company is trading,

the price of its stock
is made by something called supply and demand.

But in an IPO, the
bankers already figured that out and they come up

with an offering price.

It's kind of hard
to tell who makes the most money in IPOs,

so let's see the winnings
if they price it at $8

and it sells at $8.

This bigger pile is for
our guys and this smaller pile's for the old dudes.

But don't feel too
bad for the bankers.

Grape jelly, ugh.

Ok, now let's see
what happens when the stock is underpriced.

The stock shoots up like
a rocket on the first day of trading, blows up 100%!

Bankers, it turns out,
are really good to their BFFs and big clients,

Friends of Finance, they get
onto IPOs before anyone else!

Ok, now let's see what
happens when the price for all this triples!

The bank's big clients
can sells the stock right away for a huge profits.

And pass some
of that back to their bankers in commissions

and more business.

So yeah, they
get a ton of money,

but everyone else,
these other people who came onto the scene like

three months ago who
didn't create anything, get so much more.

It's totally not fair,

but once you
agree to an offering price, no matter what,

that's all you get.

And that is how
the game is played.

When I grow up, I want to
be an investment banker.

BARRY: So, the thing is,
I was looking at our encoded video for the Straw Poll and.

MICHAEL: And?

BARRY: It's
Windows Media Player.

A doctored version, but still.

MICHAEL: Lesser minds
cast aspersions, that's what lesser minds do.

Wrought by jealousy no doubt.

Think, for a minute just how
crazy you sound right now.

And, if, IF, you admit
that you made a mistake now, I'll forgive you,

there will be beneficence.

BARRY: There's no mistake.

The Microsoft branding
was scrubbed using a customization feature that's

actually in
Windows Media Player.

MICHAEL: That's quite a story.

And here I thought we'd
come to an understanding the other day,

about your limitations.

BARRY: Ok, well you know what?

Despite my limitations,
I was able to see that our whole company is built around

modifying an existing
program from the biggest company in the world!

It's completely
illegal and just wrong.

You know, I was
genuinely excited about being a part this,

something completely
new, but nothing here makes sense anymore.

Nothing.

MICHAEL: You know the
thing about a germ, Barry?

It's nothing, a small
thing really, can't even see it with the naked eye.

You can wipe it
away with your sleeve and not even know it.

But if you don't wipe
it out, it spreads.

It divides.

And soon it infects
not only one, but many.

It becomes
like water turned into blood, fiery hail,

it becomes the pestilence.

For the greater good of all,
I can't let that happen.

That's sad.

BARRY: I'm sorry, what are you?

MICHAEL: You're a germ.

You are a germ, Barry.

Now, get out!

Get out of my office!

Get out of my company!

You hear what I say?

You're fired,
I swear to God, get your ass out of here!

Good evening, beautiful.

SHEILIA: Well, good evening.

MICHAEL: I think it's
time for an upgrade.

What do you say we trade
this in and get you a Rolls?

SHEILA: A Rolls Royce?

MICHAEL: Now a lot
of folks like the silver,

but they do make a
Peacock Blue that's quite fetching.

Think on it.

SHEILA: Oh my gosh.

Okay.

You must have had
a good day at work.

MICHAEL: Things at
work just keeps getting better and better.

SHEILA: Really?

MICHAEL: Always.

[car starts].

CLARK: We went,
we made a trip to Washington and met

with the Department
of Justice and

kicked off the anti,
the antitrust law suit.

ROBERTA: Finally the
DOJ took on the contempt case and had it put before

a District Court Judge.

It was out of our
hands at that point.

All we could do
was keep waiting.

Until...

REPORTER [over TV]:
Surprising everyone,

federal judge
Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered Microsoft to

cease and desist its
practice of forcing PC makers

to carry its Internet
Explorer browser.

GATES [over TV]: What
the government's saying is that we shouldn't

put as many features
into our products.

It's like telling someone
that can't buy a car,

they've gotta
go buy the motor,

they've gotta go
out and buy the tires,

they've gotta go
out and buy the radio.

WALTERS [over TV]:
The government claims that Microsoft is trying to

use its overwhelming
dominance in computer operating systems to compete

unfairly in the browser market.

KLEIN: The Antitrust
Division at the Department of Justice believes that

no consumer
should be denied the browser of its choice.

ROBERTA: Yes!

JAMES: That was heartening,
by then it was too late, and didn't matter that much.

We weren't gonna
profit from it.

JIM: We're not gonna make
any sales before Christmas.

I'm afraid this
quarter's gonna line up with our projection.

MARC: An $80 million loss.

JIM: In all likelihood,
closer to 90 million.

The analysts are
already snuffling for it like pigs for truffles.

JAMES: We scrambled
as best we could finding markets for what we had and

building new products
for what we didn't have.

I just think we had
a whole new world we had to figure out.

JIM: Marc, we're gonna
have to lay off some folks in the New Year.

I'll work with HR, make
sure they have the best terms and packages.

You'll have to come
up with your list.

JAMES: That's very common
in the tech industry, and it's very unpleasant.

It was unpleasant for
me, you hate to do that.

JIM: We haven't had to do
this before, but I can tell you it is always painful.

TARA: It was really tough.

I cried so hard, I left
work and I went back to my apartment and hid,

and I was just blubbering.

I just felt awful.

I mean, when you're
so emotionally tied up with an experience and

with a community,
even if it's a work community.

That was just devastating
for me and for a lot of us.

BRIAN: You look at the
graphic for the word "Pixelon" and the "X" is a cross.

So Michael, purported
to be a religious man, I believe there were even

prayer meetings in his
office from time to time.

MICHAEL: "We have here only
five loaves and two fish," the disciples replied.

"Bring them to me,"
Jesus said.

And he directed the people
to sit in the grass.

EMPLOYEE: I thought
you were Jewish.

WOMAN: I am, but I didn't get
the sense this was optional.

GARY: It's odd when you're
in a circumstance like that because you sorta

take your cues about what
everybody else is doing.

And if everybody else takes
the same cue, everybody else behaves the same way.

MICHAEL: My grandmother,
bless her soul, was a woman who had the

great gift of making
all of her grandchildren,

and there were
8 of us, feel as if we were each her favorite.

As I look out
on y'all here,

I can honestly say that
I understand my grandmother.

I love each and every
one of you equally.

Please join hands in prayer.

Lord, we ask your blessing
as we walk the righteous path towards towards iBash,

serving your mission,
a mission that will nourish the multitudes and provide

abundance beyond our
wildest imagining.

For this, and all
things, we thank you.

Amen.

GROUP: Amen.

♪ Nearer, my God to thee ♪

GARY: It was the dot-com era.

Everybody there thought
that they were on the precipice of great wealth.

It's odd what
that does to people, it did it to me.

♪ Though it be a cross
that raiseth me ♪♪

STEPHAN: It's the IPO.

KRIZELMAN: We're super
excited, there's no question.

We don't know what
it means to be public,

we don't know what
it means to run a publicly

held company but we
understand this is some rite of passage we're

about to go through.

STEPHAN: I basically
had a sleepless night.

KRIZELMAN: You look
like a hundred bucks.

STEPHAN: Don't worry,
Bear Stearns will price me at a tenth of that.

The price that had been left,
that everybody had heard of was $8 a share,

which was what Bear Stearns
had floated to them.

And Egan got on the
phone with the chairman and convinced them at some point

to at least budge by a dollar,

so we got from 8
bucks back to 9 bucks.

That's the good news,
we're going public.

KRIZELMAN: The mechanics
for how an IPO actually happen are sort of cloaked in mystery.

But because of that,
sometimes they don't always go so smoothly,

and ours was no different.

You know I woke up this
morning and I realized that today is Friday the 13th.

STEPHAN: Why did
you tell me that?

KRIZELMAN: Cause
it's the date.

STEPHAN: Of course it is.

I really wish I
didn't know that.

KRIZELMAN: We're so screwed.

STEPHAN: This is the
first holding pen, where they're holding us until

our whole team is there.

We don't know what's going
on, we're just waiting there.

And waiting.

[door opens].

Are we going to price?

Is this thing going
through or what?

BANKER: Yes, yep we are.

Oh, and by the way,
word is it's gonna open between $20 and $30.

STEPHAN: $20?

We weren't so focused
on the fact that we had locked in at nine,

we were so incredibly
excited that the demand was so high that they're saying

it's going to open
around 20 bucks a share.

They take us down the
hallway, take us to this little bullpen area,

where there's a huge
trading floor, where there's a bunch of senior traders

sitting around their monitors.

Everyone in the
room all looked in our direction at Todd and I.

And I don't know
what to expect.

I've never seen this
before, I'd never watched a movie about this before,

I had no concept.

KRIZELMAN: Ace Greenberg
who's the CEO and sort of a famous CEO of Bear Stearns,

and he's doing card tricks.

That's the chairman.

He does this for every,

sort of every exec
team as they're, they're about to go public.

Gentlemen.

-Boys.

BANKER: So, the deal's
not going to open at $20.

It may hit $60!

STEPHAN: What the [bleep]?
KRIZELMAN: Are you kidding me?

STEPHAN: I mean, at this
point, it seems surreal, like what is going on?

When are you
guys going to tell us, like, it's a big joke,

or the thing's collapsing
and it's not happening?

That was the last
update we got.

ACE: Ace Greenberg.

KRIZELMAN: Todd Krizelman.
ACE: Good to meet you.

You too son.

So, you're the guys
making all this fuss, huh?

KRIZELMAN: I guess so.
STEPHAN: Yes.

[laughter].

ACE: Well,
CNBC just picked up on the discussion,

so fasten your seat belts.

EGAN: Okay, here we go.

ED: You guys
ready for your lives to change forever?

KRIZELMAN: Yes.
STEPHAN: Yes.

[laughter].

PIT BOSS: Ten, nine,
eight, seven, six, five...

STEPHAN: Four, three...

[heart beating].

PIT BOSS: 87!

BOTH: 87!

[cheering].

$87, $87!

STEPHAN: Two seconds later.

PIT BOSS: 97!

STEPHAN: I mean,
I was, I think there was like a ring in my ears.

[ringing].

It was in every
way life-altering, in one fell swoop it

completely validated
everything Todd and I had been telling everyone

about this thing
called the Internet.

It was euphoric.

[cheers].

KRIZELMAN: We're
on CNN right now!

REPORTER: Your stock just
made the highest first day gain in stock market history!

What does it feel like
to be $97 Million Men?

♪ That money that'll
make you scream and shout. ♪♪

STEPHAN: I couldn't believe
what, what was happening. I'm euphoric.

KRIZELMAN: Euphoria.

♪ Get that money

♪ You know you like it baby ♪

♪ Give it to me

♪ Money. Get that money

♪

♪ Pop my collar

♪ Hop in my "rarri"

♪ I can feel the fire.

♪ Yeah, it's burning

♪ Got them dollars.

♪ I know they see me
all the ladies holler. ♪

♪ If you only knew what
it feels like to be ballin ♪

♪ Oh

♪ This how we do ♪

♪ Brand new shoes, yeah I'm
lookin real clean. ♪

♪ You know we,
get that money ♪

♪ It'll make you
scream and shout. ♪

♪ Get that money.

♪ Yeah, that's
what it's all about. ♪

♪ Get that money.

♪ Give it to me. Money. ♪

♪ Get that money.

♪ Say, "Get that money"

♪ Get that money.

♪ Get that money.
♪ Get that money.

♪ Say, "Make that money"

♪ Make that money

♪ Make that money,
make that money ♪

♪ Get that money ♪

EGAN: Enjoy it boys.

We're a
billion-dollar company.

For now.

KRIZELMAN: And our initial
reaction in the first few

minutes and hours
even was euphoria.

But pretty quickly
it was anger.

IZZY: They get a ton of money,

but everyone else,
these other people who came onto the scene

like three months ago,

who didn't even
create anything,

get so much more.

KRIZELMAN: You know,
when a deal goes from $9 to $87,

that means the company
just left a lot of money on the table.

IZZY: It's totally not
fair, but once you agree to an offering price,

no matter what,
that's all you get.

KRIZELMAN: And that was
obvious pretty quickly.

[music plays through credits]

Captioned by Cotter
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