During the last episode, Richard and his team were confronted with the dilemma of gathering and producing paperwork for his business partner.

The team at Pied Piper is also faced with another company having the name ‘Pied Piper’ registered with the Secretary of State. This causes Richard to have to use his negotiating skills to acquire the name legally.

Along with the poor choice of Pied Piper for a business name, the team has to deal with trying to possibly rebrand and rename the company. Identify for early startups is hard to establish without proper planning.

Preparation is a key component to running a successful company. With any product, there is a time when a producer must put their product out for sale before seeing and managing a full cycle of feedback. That can be problematic in a lot of ways. The solution is to keep records and collect feedback for test runs if possible.

In Silicon Valley there happens to be another business owner using the name Pied Piper. Richard travels to his place of business to inquire about using the name. They agree on the use for $1,000 cash.

In a side narrative to the show they market Burger King, as well as highlighting the attention to detail investors use with Peter Gregory.

When Richard goes to acquire the name, he fails to inform the business owner of his connections and business plan.

In reality, Pied Piper is a horrible company name for a data compression application. It does a poor job of reflecting the product and brand. This episode goes in detail to show how companies develop business names.

During development on Crescent Vale, I used the method that the Grateful Dead did when creating their name with a dictionary. In a modern era, business names can work better when thinking about search engine optimization.

The team at Pied Piper attempted to create a new name for the company. Erlich Bachman decides to take hallucinogenics and work on a new name. His poor decision snowballs with additional bad choices throughout the episode.

The Pied Piper team ends up working out a deal to acquire the name.

Points I learned from within episode three, season one:

• Register company names with the Secretary of State.
• Send out a press release to news outlets when the company has acquired funding.
• Be stern when negotiating.
• Be open to change the name of the company.