#3 - The Technical Advisor for Silicon Valley on HBO - Ed McManus

**Craig Cannon** (0:00)
Hey, this is Craig Cannon, and you're listening to Y Combinator's Podcast. Our guest today is Ed McManus. Ed was a technical advisor for season three of Silicon Valley on HBO.
He came in to talk about what his experience was like working on the show. So we ended up talking about middle out compression, moving Pied Piper to AWS, and how to get into the incredibly niche profession of technical advising. All right, here we go. Okay, so today we have Ed McManus. He was a technical advisor for Silicon Valley on HBO, season three.
So, Ed, what's your background?

**Ed McManus** (0:30)
Okay, so I was a technical co-founder of a Y Combinator startup called Yard Sale, and we launched two products. Both were marketplaces for iPhone.
So similar to Craigslist for iPhone, the first product was called Yard Sale, and the second product was FOBO, and we sold the company in 2015, and yeah, that's that.

**Craig Cannon** (0:56)
And somehow you became a technical advisor for a comedy show.

**Ed McManus** (0:59)
Somehow, yeah.

**Craig Cannon** (1:00)
So, okay, how did that happen?

**Ed McManus** (1:02)
Yeah, I mean, it was so weird. It felt a lot like luck. So the story here is we were cranking hard on our startup for four years, sold it in 2015, and the acquisition, it was kind of mostly just to sort of do right by our investors, return as much as we could. But it was not like, you know, phenomenal outcome for the company. But all of our investors had sort of like been aware that we were sort of like looking for our next thing. And it just happened that randomly someone from HBO reached out to Greylock, who is one of our investors, and asked them the question like, hey, we're trying to put together sort of like this team of superstars from the tech world.
Who would you go after? And both me and my co-founder were on a list of names that Greylock sent back.
And yeah, from there, I think it was just a matter of being available.

**Craig Cannon** (2:12)
It was vaguely unemployed, sort of funny.

**Ed McManus** (2:17)
And it was kind of a crazy story because they sent us an email and I've been a huge fan of the show for a really long time.
And as soon as we got that, it just like, it was apparent to me this is a drop everything and make this happen kind of opportunity. So they flew us in for an interview. It was kind of weird because it actually wasn't really an interview. It was just like our first day at work. Really? But we didn't know this, right?

**Craig Cannon** (2:43)
So you and your co-founder were there.

**Ed McManus** (2:45)
So we actually went on separate days, but we both had a similar kind of experience. I flew in and I grabbed lunch with the, one of the other technical advisors from the show. And he's like, okay, you're all set for your interview. So he drove me over to the studio lot, dropped me off.
And I showed up at the Silicon Valley office, and I told them like, hey, I'm here for the interview. And no one knew what I was talking about.
So I told them who I was and they're like, oh, okay, I think we know where you're supposed to go. And so they lead me into the writer's room and everyone's in there. So like the whole writing team.

**Craig Cannon** (3:24)
Production is on.

**Ed McManus** (3:25)
Yeah, exactly.

**Craig Cannon** (3:26)
Writing is on.

**Ed McManus** (3:26)
Right. I see Mike Judge in the corner, and it's just this like weird, surreal kind of like, I know who you are. You have no idea who I am. Like, you know, anytime you encounter someone that you consider to be a celebrity.
And it turns out that it was just like, no one had told them either that I was showing up to interviews, so it was just like, they just gave me a seat, and I listened for like three and four hours, three or four hours, and just like gave input wherever I could.
And, you know, it turned out that most of the job is actually just sort of like sitting and listening, and it's very rare that you actually have to speak up and sort of like help them course correct. But occasionally, they would ask you questions, sort of like, you know, can you walk us through the fundraising process, given like the companies at like a seed stage? And, you know, I'd provide some color there around that.

**Craig Cannon** (4:18)