Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency

Written by Alec Berg
Directed by Mike Judge

The head of the Disrupt apologizes to the Pied Piper gang for the attack by Dan Melcher while they were presenting. The guy says that Dan Melcher will never be a judge again and that he was fired from Oracle and his wife left him. To dissuade the guys from taking legal action against TechCrunch, the guy says he'll send Pied Piper straight through to the finals, where they will compete for the grand prize. Erlich gets the boys' hotel accommodations upgraded as well.

Back in the presentation hall, Gavin Belson is presenting Nucleus. Richard assures Dinesh that Nucleus can't come close to Pied Piper's Weissman score, a measure of how well files compress. Gavin Belson reveals that Nucleus' Weissman score is the best in the history of compression: 2.89, which happens to be the same as Pied Piper's. "Anyone who tells you that their platform is faster than ours better have good lawyers," Gavin Belson says. His presentation ends with a performance by Shakira.

Richard is depressed because Hooli reverse-engineered Pied Piper's compression algorithm. "At best, we're a worse version of Nucleus," he tells the guys. Erlich says they're fine and heads off to "get inside" Gavin Belson's head, while Jared suggests all they have to do is pivot Pied Piper into a product that people want. Jared heads out to poll people on the street about what Pied Piper should be, a creepy situation that eventually finds him apprehended by cops.

While walking around among the booths at TechCrunch, Gilfoyle and Dinesh see the company Kwerpy. "That could have been us," Dinesh says of Kwerpy. The pair talk about how it would be a "dickhead move" to leave Richard before Pied Piper even goes under. Just as Dinesh and Gilfoyle are about to ask the Kwerpy founder if he'd hire them, the Kwerpy founder asks them to hire him at Pied Piper -- Kwerpy is about to go under itself.

Richard runs into Monica as she heads out of the conference -- Peter Gregory called her back to Palo Alto after seeing the presentations by Erlich and Gavin Belson. Monica says that she'd like to get a drink with Richard, especially now that they won't be working together anymore.

Richard is fretting about the Pied Piper presentation, but Erlich is still very positive about the whole thing. While listening to Gilfoyle, Dinesh, and Erlich talk about a silly formula for jerking off an entire room of guys, Richard is struck by an epiphany about Pied Piper, which inspires him to rework his product. Richard programs through the night and says the changes are significant enough that he should present. Monica is about to text Richard a good luck message, but then she decides to head to the presentation.

Richard is nervous and seems like he's going to blow the presentation, but then he starts to explain Pied Piper, saying that they used to be cloud-based, user-focused compression. He continues by saying that Hooli did everything they were trying to do, so he changed what Pied Piper is. He rebuilt the algorithm and tells the audience he got a Weissman score of 3.8, far beyond what was formerly the theoretical limit of 2.89, which Hooli achieved. The crowd gasps, and one of the judges asks him to repeat that stat. The judge gives Richard a file to compress without any degradation: a 132 gigabyte uncompressed 3D video. The file compresses, but Richard is sure that something is wrong as the file is only about half the size it should be. He runs a Weissman test, and the score is far better than he expected: 5.2, double the best Weissman score ever. Pied Piper wins the competition's cup and the $50,000 prize.

After the win, Monica shows up to congratulate Richard. Overwhelmed, Richard runs out the back door and, yet again, barfs in a Dumpster.