"I'll rip your dick off, you son of a bitch!" "My eye!" "On behalf of the entire Disrupt conference," "I would like to apologize for what happened out there this afternoon." "This man will never be asked to judge again." "I've just learned he's been fired from Oracle, and apparently his wife left him." "Anyway, I just got a call from your attorney, Mr. LaFlamme, informing me that in his view this incident is... actionable." "And in addition to holding TechCrunch liable for any damages, which may include the loss to Pied Piper of potentially billions in revenue and share value, uh, he be may naming me personally in a lawsuit." "So..." "I would like to propose that we put this incident behind us, legally speaking, by sending Pied Piper directly through to the finals of Start-Up Battlefield, where you will compete for the grand prize." " How does that sound?" " I think that's..." "One question, uh, regarding our hotel accommodations?" "Bam!" "Am I right, guys?" "I was just happy you got punched in the face, Erlich, but now I'm super happy." "I feel like I won twice." "I'm gonna disrupt this bathroom." "I don't think this couch pulls out." "I guess I'll get myself a rollaway bed." "I mean, you're welcome, guys." "I had to fuck a wife and take a punch, but now we get to go into the finals tomorrow without having blown our wad in the prelims." "We're trending up, boys." "We are trending up." "Maybe you're right." "But we should probably get back down there and check out the competition." "Ladies and gentlemen, Gavin Belson." "No matter what you may have heard, size matters." "Welcome, everyone, to a journey into the Nucleus." "I hope this sucks." "Nucleus will provide the most diverse features ever assembled in a cloud-based compression suite." "Massive functionality, inter-connectivity, and the simplicity one has come to expect from the Hooli family." "We're making all your files available for lightning-fast download." "Accessible from any device." "All these features will be seamlessly synced to Hooli-mail," "Hooli-search and the full suite of Hooli computing power." "That's a lot of functionality." "Don't worry, he can't come close to our Weissman score." "Even with all this extra shit, it's like a fancy car with a crappy engine." "And now, for the moment of truth." "As you will now see, our Weissman score is the best in the history of compression." "What the fuck?" "That's exactly the same score as us." "Two-point-eight-nine." "That is not an error." "We are breathing rare air here, operating at the limit for lossless compression in audio, video and data." "Anyone who tells you that their platform is faster than ours better have good lawyers." "I hope you've enjoyed your journey into the Nucleus." "We have the speed." "We have the features." "And we have..." "Shakira!" "Hola, TechCrunch!" "I mean, they just completely reverse- engineered our entire compression engine." "He totally sniped us." " We'll be fine." " What?" "They judge this contest on viability in the marketplace." "I mean, at best, we're a worse version of Nucleus." "I mean, they have 50 modules, and they're all awesome." "We have five that barely work." "I mean, we're still have trouble compressing 3D files." "Who's lining up to buy that?" "Who the fuck cares?" "So the platform can't handle 3D files." "You know what, 3D movies suck anyway." "I could actually argue this Gavin nonsense is a positive." "Please don't." "We just need to really dial it up for the big show tomorrow." "Dial what up?" "He just ruined us." "And until then, we need to do what any animal in nature does when it's cornered, act erratically, and blindly lash out at everything around us." "I'm gonna go get in Gavin's head." "Hey, guys, I just had a thought." "OK, so this is it, right?" "A lot of successful start-ups launched with a different business model, and when they ran into trouble, they pivoted to something new." "Like Instagram." "That was a location-based check-in service when it started." "And then they pivoted." "Or Chat Roulette, OK, that was social media, and then they pivoted to become a playground for the sexually monstrous." "We just need a new idea, something that people want." "Right?" "We can pivot, too." " Dude, you are fucked up right now." " Yeah, you're pinning bad." "Well, I'll admit, I'm sleep-challenged." "I just spent four days trapped in a steel box out on an oil rig full of robot-forklifts." "So, that was hard, but I'm back." "I am recovering and I am focused and we're gonna pivot." "Don't lose faith, guys." "All right, look at me." "Look at me." "Look at me." "We've got a great name." "We've got a great team." "We've got a great logo, and we've got a great name." "Now we just need an idea." "Let's pivot!" "Let's pivot!" "That might be the last time we see him alive." "I think I'm just gonna take a walk and, you know, try and clear my head." "I'll see you guys back at the hotel room and we'll figure out what to do." "We're going to be poor." "Hi!" "I'd like to talk to you about a company called Pied Piper." "What does it do?" "Good question." "Maybe you can help us find an answer." "What if Pied Piper was an app that could attract rodents?" "You know, like the fairy tale?" "For purposes of extermination or to feed your pet snake." "We're not here to tell you what to do with your rats, we're here to get your rats, STAT." "Would you be very interested, somewhat interested or not interested?" "Which one?" "Which one?" "Which one?" "Look at them, all full of hope." "Pricks." "Oh, look, Kwerpy's here recruiting." "They just got 20 million in Series A at a $280 million dollar valuation." " Wow." " That could have been us." "It's too bad we already have jobs, we could easily go work there." "Yeah." "It'd be a real dickhead move to bail on Richard now, right?" "I mean, before we officially go under." " Yeah." "Yeah." "Total dickhead move." " Yeah." "Yeah." "Even though... it is just a matter of days." " And we are so close." " I mean, he is standing right there." " But I'm not a dickhead." " No." "Neither am I." "Yep, just a couple of non-dickheads." "My dick and my head, totally separate." "You've heard the phrase, "Time to pay the piper," right?" "What if there was an app called Pied Piper that could tell you, to a statistical degree of certainty, whether you were going to heaven or hell?" "Very interested, somewhat interested, not interested?" "Which one?" "Which one?" "Which one?" "So you made some really over-the-top promises about Nucleus." " Can you deliver?" " Absolutely." "For me, Kara, goodness, greatness, these are not simply catch phrases, but, in fact, really the intention of Hooli from the beginning." "Gavin, you do not need to dignify any of this with a response!" "I can speak for myself." "Erlich Bachman, Pied Piper." "Was I brutally assaulted?" "Yes." "Did Gavin Belson here have anything to do with it?" "Unclear." "All I know is that the rumor that TechCrunch is all abuzz about is unproven." " Wait, what rumor?" " Thank you." "Why would Gavin have anything to do with this?" "Unless he had some reason to be frightened by Pied Piper and it's superior technology?" "This and all other Gavin Belson rumors are unsubstantiated." "OK, the alcoholism, the sexual impropriety at work, the impending crash of Hooli's stock..." "This is the most ridiculous..." "Exactly." "So why repeat the lascivious details, with which all of us are undoubtedly already familiar?" "Guilty or not, Gavin, I stand with you." "Care to comment?" "Let's keep moving, shall we?" "Yes, let's all keep moving." "Let's move on from this." "I forgive you, Gavin." "No matter how brutally I was assaulted." "Wow, Pied Piper sounds like a great place to work." "Oh, yeah, it is." "Pied Piper is the best, right?" "Oh, my God, everyday feels like I've died and gone to hell." "I'm sorry." " He's a Satanist, so it's good." " Mm-hmm." " Oh, fun." " The point is, we love our company, and I don't have a problem saying that out loud." " You..." " Love it." "We both say it out loud and I think that fact, proves that we're not dickheads." "So what we wanted to ask you was..." "Guys?" "Totally between us, our beta crapped out." "The VC's did a full clawback and our Series A is DOA." "We're going down." "We have enough runway for maybe two, three weeks max." "So... do you guys think you could hire me?" "How much would it be worth to you if I told you I had a GPS app called Pied Piper, tracking the location of your child?" "I can follow your child anywhere, and there is nothing you can do to stop me." "Most missing children are never found." "Interested, very interested, or very interested?" "Richard." "Hi..." " Hey... suitcase." "Yeah." " Yeah." "So you're..." "Peter called." "He saw Erlich's presentation, such as it was." "And Gavin's." "So he wants me to go back to Palo Alto." "There's just a few other things he wants me working on." "Now that we're, you know, dead in the water." "Listen, I'm sorry you walked away from the money like you did." "But I swear I only wanted Peter to seed you because I thought you had a really great company." "It just didn't work out for you this time." "Uh... can I be honest with you?" "I haven't had more than two straight hours of sleep in months." "I've had a cold for, like, a year." "My stomach cramps up so much I feel like I'm menstruating." "Maybe this is for the better." "Look, I gotta go." "I'm really sorry that we're not gonna be working together anymore." "Yeah, me too." "I guess..." "I guess we won't see each other again." "Well, I mean, now that the rules about socializing with co-workers aren't in effect anymore." "Let me know if you want to grab a drink sometime." "What, like a "drink" drink?" "You go on dates with failures?" " Constantly." " OK." " Uh... bye." "OK." " Bye." "You have any weapons or drugs on your person at this time?" "Why, yes." "Yes, I do." "Adderall." "This is a highly controlled substance." "Are these yours?" "No!" "Those belong to an underage kid that I brought to my house." "Yeah, sir, I'm going to have to ask you to come with me." "That's a kind invitation, but I have too much to do." "I'm pivoting!" " Let's go now!" " No." "I'm pivoting!" "I'm pivoting!" "I'm pivoting!" "I mean, what do we even present tomorrow?" "Honestly, anyone?" "Why do we have to present at all?" "What's that supposed to mean?" "If we are going to fail and be humiliated, why do it on stage in front of 1,000 people and a live-streamed audience?" "Are you saying we shouldn't even show up?" "No offense, but it's basically going to be a public execution." "Yes, and public executions are very popular." "It's show business." "We are not quitting, Richard." "Look, Erlich, I want to present, I do, it's just..." "I don't know." "Jesus, are you OK?" "What?" "Yeah, I..." "OK." "Yeah, all good." "They let me go." " Who let you go?" " When was the last time you slept, Jared?" "Absolutely, David." "What are we talking about, gents?" "We're talking about how I didn't get to present in the prelims, because I was too busy getting my face pummeled so that our team could move forward." "That's why we're presenting tomorrow." "And you know what?" "We're going to win." "Yeah, we're gonna win even if I have to go into the auditorium and personally jerk off every guy in the audience." "That's a lot of jerking." "And we only have ten minutes to present." "So..." "So, we're fucked, aren't we?" "Yeah, even if he's jerking two at a time, there are, what, 800 guys in that room?" "So that's 400 times whatever the mean jerk-time is." " The what?" " Mean jerk-time." "I mean, it doesn't matter, but, hypothetically, time is equal to 400 total jerks at a two-dick rate." "Unless Erlich jerks off four guys at a time, and then we can cut that in half." "How would he do four guys...?" "He's got two hands, so that's two dicks at a time, right?" "Look, you have two guys on either side with their dicks, tip to tip, so you're going full-length." "Four, see?" " Oh..." " From the middle out." "That does make sense." " Like two Shake Weights?" " Yeah, so what we're trying to do, hypothetically, is minimize time, which is 800 dudes, multiplied by mean-jerk time, divided by four dicks at a time." "Of course, Erlich would have to pre-sort guys by height, so that their dicks lined up." "Not by height, technically." "The measurement that we're looking for, really, is dick to floor." "Call that D2F." " Huh." " Oh, my God." "You know, if a guy's dick was long enough, it would be able to reach up or down to another guy with a different D2F." "The longer the dick, the greater the D2F bridge, but I would still be able to jerk it off in one smooth motion..." "I'd just have to jerk it on an angle." "So D2F sub-1 needs to equal D2F sub-2, and D2F sub-3 needs to equal D2F sub-4, where length L creates a complimentary shaft angle." "I'm such an idiot." "Middle out!" "Middle out!" "Middle out!" "Oh, my God." "How could I...?" "Uh..." "Guys, does girth-similarity affect Erlich's ability to jerk different dicks simultaneously?" "Shit." "Yeah, I think it would." "Of course, it does." "Time to orgasm, or T2O, has to be the same for each matching pair of dicks otherwise I'm wasting a lot of great strokes on a guy that's already busted." "Unless you can hotswap dicks in and out." "So on a downstroke, you get a new one in." "So when you stroke up you're not wasting any energy." "Even so." "I think this is the most reliable metric for stamina." "Guys?" "Richard's been locked in here for almost two hours." "Do we think he's OK?" "Hmm." "You don't think he'd..." "He did seem pretty bummed out." "All right, guys, let's go." " The finals are starting." " Up!" "Gilfoyle!" "Jesus!" "What happened to the door?" "Don't worry about it, Richard, is the platform up and running?" "I made a few changes, but yeah..." "OK, tell me on the walk." "All right, you dildos, let's go!" "All right, talk to me, Richard." "What were you working on last night?" "Well, uh, I might've made a breakthrough." "Really, so everything is working?" "Uh, technically, no." "Let's face it, ladies, is there anything less sexy than when a user's visualization UX is completely sub-optimal?" "I mean, it's the worst, right?" "So we've gone through all the research and all the steps." "We have a solution for these problems and Zenella is ready to bring it to the marketplace." "Yeah, I get it, Richard." "You changed a lot." "Just give me the basics and I can roll with it." "I need to know what I'm presenting here." "I don't think I have time to explain it all." "What the hell does that mean?" "Richard?" "Is this the right build?" "I can't find the mobile suite here." "Uh, it is nowhere." "I deleted it." " What?" " Here they are." " Pied Piper's here." " Sorry we're late." "Richard, talk to me." "I can't front a band without knowing what we're playing?" "Uh..." "I'm think I'm just going to do the presentation myself." "Wait, what?" "No, no, no, Richard, Richard, Richard, Richard." "Respectfully..." "Respectfully, you're terrible." "You have world class showman standing right in front of you and you're going to pass on that?" "Release me, Richard." "Release the Kraken!" " Pied Piper." "You're on." " This is it!" "I don't know what you did, Richard," " but I hope it works." " Me, too." "All right, let's welcome our final team to the finals of this year's TechCrunch Disrupt Start-Up Battlefield." "Presenting for Pied Piper is Erlich Bachman." "Uh... actually there has been a change of plans." "Presenting for Pied Piper will be Richard Hendricks." "Richard?" "Sorry." "Got a little light-headed there for a second." "I set 'em up for you, now knock 'em down." "I don't understand." "I thought he made the platform better." " He just deleted everything." " Maybe he moved it to the cloud?" "No." "All The Carver's work is gone." "Pied Piper is a cloud based compression." "Without the cloud, nothing's left." "Gentlemen, this is likely the last ten minutes of Pied Piper, so let's enjoy it." " Has he lost his mind?" " He's lost his fucking mind." "Hello..." "Hello." "Hello." "Um..." "I am..." "My name is Richard Hendricks, and I am, along with this guy, him, him... and another guy that has disappeared..." "Uh... um..." "We are Pied Piper." "A compression company." "Well, you know, in your pamphlets it says that we are a cloud based multi-platform solution for user-focused compression." "And we were." "Until yesterday." "But now we are not." "Uh, because you see, Hooli did everything that we were tying to do, better, way better." "Um..." "Nucleus is built on the same engine as ours, like exactly the same, and their Weissman score was 2.89, same as ours." "But the thing is, they built a ton of really great stuff up on top of that." "And we can't compete, so now we have to be something else." "Um... well-played, Hooli." "Uh, OK, so anyway, we all know that the most obvious way to compress files is with Shannon coding, right?" "Top down." "Richard, they can't see that, it's too small." " OK." " Literally, hundreds of people here." "Oh, no, but I need..." "Shit, OK." "Um... right, oh." "Uh, so Shannon coding and then David Huffman came along, and he pioneered bottom up, and Lempel-Ziv with left to right, obviously." "And for decades, we used these codes to compress, you know, JPEGs, MPEGs, MP3s, zips, all that stuff." "But we all know that, so there's no point in talking about it." "But what happened was, last night I was watching my friends here have this argument." "About, you know, manipulating... data..." "And, you know, how many datas could one guy manipulate at once and, uh..." "And I was just..." "I was thinking." "Maybe it could be another way, you know?" "Something that I would call, "middle out"." "It's up and down, back and forth all at the same time going on at once." "OK, well, anyway, I deleted all our modules last night, and I completely rebuilt our engine, from scratch last night." "Um..." "Now, this morning I really only had enough time to do one test, and when I did, we hit a Weissman score of 3.8." "Now, I know the theoretical limit was 2.9," " but as you can see here..." " I'm sorry." "You scored a 3.8?" "Uh..." "Yes, sir." "And this is a universal lossless compression engine?" " Text?" "Audio?" "Video?" " Yes, that is correct." "Well, I'm sorry to interrupt your eloquent presentation, Richard." "But, rather than say anything more, why don't we just give you a file and we'll see whether this thing can do what you say it does." "Because if it can't, then we're done here, right?" "Yeah." "Yeah, that's fair." "So we can give you any kind of file and you can compress it, without degradation, at this standard?" "Three-eight?" "Yes... yep." "All right, give us a minute, please." " What do we got?" " Does anyone have anything?" " Do you have something?" " I've got a file for him." "OK." "Andy Stafford here has a file for you." " OK." " It's a 132 gigabytes un-compressed, and it's a 3D video file." "OK." "Shit..." " A fucking 3D file?" " Yes." " Are you fucking kidding me?" " Goddammit." " Can we handle this?" " I guess we'll find out." "Dammit, I hope this works." "Shit... it's hung." "Oh, no." "Is it stuck?" "There is a time limit, you have two minutes remaining." "Come on, come on, come on..." "It looks like it's done." "Wait, 24 gigs?" "What happened?" "Oh... shit, there's no way." "It didn't compress the whole thing." "It should be twice that size." "I mean, 24 gigs, that's less than a fourth the file size." "That seems dubious, Richard." "Why don't we run a Weissman test for verification, see where we went wrong." "OK, I mean it shouldn't take too long, it only compressed half the fucking file." "I'm sorry." "I shouldn't have rewritten all this code." "I mean, what we had before worked." "I'm sorry, guys." "Gavin won." "We lost." "At least it didn't happen in a public and brutally embarrassing way." " Thanks, Gilfoyle." " Yeah." "Wait a second." "What's happening?" "There's no errors, look!" " Five-point-two?" "How, how...?" " Wait, what?" "Wait, it compressed the whole file?" "That's the whole file." "It's just half the size I thought it would be." "Ladies and gentlemen, obviously we're going to keep looking at this to verify, but with a confirmed score of 5.2, Pied Piper appears to have just doubled the best Weissman score ever measured." "Doubled it!" "Pied Piper, ladies and gentlemen!" "Let's hear it for them!" "Holy shit!" "Hey, I'm at TechCrunch." "This kid Hendricks and Pied Piper just ran a two minute mile." "We should get on this, now." "Suck it, Gavin Belson!" "Hendricks, you beautiful bastard!" "I told you we'd do it!" "Come on!" "We're not going to be poor!" "What happened?" "What happened?" "What happened?" "Uh, we just won the cup!" "And I don't think it comes as any shock that the winner of this year's Disrupt Cup and $50,000, like they're going to need it, is Pied Piper." "So Richard wrote the code?" "Richard wrote the code, yes, but the inspiration was clear." "Let me ask you something." "How fast do you think you could jack off every guy in this room?" "'Cause I know how long it would take me." "And I can prove it." " Nice." " Thank you so much." "I don't fully understand it but I would definitely like to invest." " Oh, great." " Really impressed." "I really want to get you in front of my partners." " Really soon." " Oh wow." "I appreciate that, guys." "Well, hopefully we'll talk to each other soon." " Thanks." " Thanks." " Hey!" " Monica!" "Congratulations!" "You were amazing up there." " Thank you." " I just spoke with Peter." "He watched the live-stream via satellite and said he was "not unpleased"." "Oh, yeah, that's great." "So I guess we're back to working together, huh?" "Yeah." "Yeah, I guess so." "It's gonna get pretty insane for you, Richard." " Yeah." " You're going to have more offers of funding than you're going to know" " what to do with." " Yeah." "You're going to have to grow a business, hire a staff, rent offices, get an assistant." "Peter is going to be a lot more hands on and a lot tougher on you." "People may take credit for your idea and try and sue you." " How awesome is that?" " Uh... yeah, that's awesome." "I mean, if you thought it was crazy getting to this point," " you're not going to believe what it turns into from here." " Right." " I mean pretty soon, you could be managing thousands of employees who are all looking up to you." "Gavin Belson, he's not going away anytime soon." " Mmm." " But it's going to be amazing." "Excuse me a second." "Oh, Jesus."