8. Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency

Desperate to avoid litigation after the brawl, TechCrunch offers Pied Piper a ticket straight to the final Battlefield stage, but the team is despondent after watching Hooli's presentation. Not only is Nucleus' Weissman compression quality score 2.89—the exact same as theirs—but it also has a number of additional features which makes it a much better application than Pied Piper. Jared suggests pivoting the company, which results in him being arrested by the police after an incident involving Adderall. The PP team retreats to their hotel room where they mock up a mathematical model for Erlich to give handjobs to every male in the Battlefield audience instead of doing their presentation.

The discussion gives Richard an epiphany about compression algorithms, and he stays up all night to code. He deletes most of the Pied Piper features and leaves only one – the all-important compression engine, which, using Richard's brand new compression code, achieves a Weissman score of 5.2. Pied Piper wins the Battlefield, embarrassing Belson and Hooli. After learning from Monica, amidst some flirting between the two, that Pied Piper will be fielding business interests and that things will only get harder, Richard has another panic attack and vomits into a dumpster in the alley.