No character in Silicon Valley better embodies our tendency to mistake luck for skill than Nelson Bighetti, Jr., the mediocre coder and Chauncey Gardiner type who continues to breeze through the Valley without a trace of real accomplishment, or even a general awareness of his surroundings. After leading Hooli’s experimental labs and pioneering some sort of potato cannon (a Season 2 sendup of Google’s loony “moonshot” division), then blowing through $20 million and producing nothing as a hobbyist VC, he now passes on wisdom to the next generation as a guest lecturer in Stanford’s computer science department.
The story of how he got to the head of the class is probably the funniest part of Big Head’s arc so far. Under pressure from his father to “get a job or go back to school or something,” he applies to Stanford and is rejected… until the admissions officer realizes that he is the Nelson Bighetti, a famous person who was present near memorable things that have happened in the Valley. “You were on the cover of Wired magazine!” “Yeah,” he says, "and inside, too!” He’s offered what he thinks is a spot in the program as a student - “I asked if there’d be homework and they’re, like, 'if you want’…” -and doesn’t realize he’s the teacher until the first day of class. (HBO’s marketing department absolutely must turn this into a Massive Open Online Course, or, MOOC, by the way.)
Keywords:
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Silicon Valley Season 4 Episode 3
Intellectual Property
Standford
Nelson Bighetti
moonshot
vc
Wired
lecturer
Thank you HBO for this awesome tv series!
HBO site for Silicon Valley - www.hbo.com/silicon-valley
13 май 2017
