pitch unfairly

Pied Piper Pitch Deck: Silicon Valley's TechCrunch Disrupt Pitch

Hooli tied the score, so Richard rewrote it overnight. Demo day pitch deck, 2014, rebuilt as a live deck you can play and steal. More in Templates, pitch decks.

Pied Piper deck, first slide Play the deck
Play full screen Make yours
  • 9 slides
  • Weissman 5.2
  • 132 GB, live
  • Disrupt Cup and $50,000

Steal the Pied Piper pitch deck structure

9 slides, one job each, in this order. Swap in your story and keep the order.

  1. 01
    Manifesto coverOne sentence you believe, plus a glimpse of the product: no logo slide, no tagline.
  2. 02
    The problemThe pain shown in the customer's own interface, not as bullets.
  3. 03
    The insightThe one thing you see that the incumbents don't, drawn as a single picture.
  4. 04
    Live demoThe product working on an input you didn't choose, with the result on screen.
  5. 05
    Proof vs. the incumbentOne metric on one scale: you against the best alternative, and how the metric is defined.
  6. 06
    Why nowWhat just changed in the world, ideally something the incumbent did, that makes this the moment.
  7. 07
    MarketBottoms-up: customers times price with the math visible, then the bigger rings you earn later.
  8. 08
    TeamWhy these people, plus who backed them and what they turned down.
  9. 09
    The askThe amount, what it is for, and the milestones it buys, with dates. It stays up during questions.
What good pitch decks do, and where they fail
  • Investors skim: DocSend measured about 3.7 minutes per deck, and decks that fail are dropped in about 2. The first two slides decide whether the rest gets read.
  • Every headline is a full-sentence claim, and each beat gets one slide, three at most (Y Combinator).
  • Lead with your strongest proof, traction or team, whichever is stronger.
  • Size the market bottoms-up (customers × price), with the math visible.
  • The ask names an amount, the milestone it buys, and when.
  • Topic-label headlines ("Market", "Team")
  • A top-down TAM with no path to it
  • Traction buried after the product tour
  • An ask with no milestone

Every slide of the Pied Piper pitch deck

Each one opens the live deck at that slide.

  1. Pied Piper deck, slide 1: Every file is too big, so we compress it from the middle out. 01Every file is too big, so we compress it from the middle out.
  2. Pied Piper deck, slide 2: Files get bigger every year. The pipes don't. 02Files get bigger every year. The pipes don't.
  3. Pied Piper deck, slide 3: Everyone compresses from the ends in. We go middle-out. 03Everyone compresses from the ends in. We go middle-out.
  4. Pied Piper deck, slide 4: Hand us any file. Watch it shrink live. 04Hand us any file. Watch it shrink live.
  5. Pied Piper deck, slide 5: Hooli's Nucleus tied our old score. Middle-out set the record. 05Hooli's Nucleus tied our old score. Middle-out set the record.
  6. Pied Piper deck, slide 6: Hooli just proved the market. Now the score decides it. 06Hooli just proved the market. Now the score decides it.
  7. Pied Piper deck, slide 7: Video companies pay by the byte. We sell fewer bytes. 07Video companies pay by the byte. We sell fewer bytes.
  8. Pied Piper deck, slide 8: Five people, one algorithm, and a $10M offer we turned down. 08Five people, one algorithm, and a $10M offer we turned down.
  9. Pied Piper deck, slide 9: Raising $5M to put middle-out in production within a year. 09Raising $5M to put middle-out in production within a year.
What really happened, and what the 2026 rebuild changes

What really happened, 2014

  1. Season 1 opens with Richard's music app ignored and its compression engine wanted by everyone
  2. He turns down Hooli's offer, which climbs to $10 million, and takes Peter Gregory's $200,000 for 5%
  3. Pied Piper gets a place in the final round of TechCrunch Disrupt
  4. Gavin Belson launches Hooli Nucleus on the Disrupt stage, matching Pied Piper's Weissman score of 2.89
  5. The team is demoralized; Dinesh and Gilfoyle talk about leaving
  6. A crude whiteboard joke about the judges gives Richard the idea: middle-out
  7. He rewrites the algorithm overnight around the core compression engine
  8. On stage he announces a Weissman score of 3.8
  9. A judge hands him a 132 GB 3D video file; it shrinks to one-fifth and scores a record 5.2
  10. Pied Piper wins the Disrupt Cup and $50,000

Read the real story the episode, via Wikipedia (Silicon Valley, season 1, episode 8, HBO)

What the rebuild changes

  • Toggle middle-out. One file, two approaches: press Ends in and watch it pack from the edges in gray, then Middle-out and watch it pack from the center, tighter, in lime.
  • The demo runs on the judge's file. 132 GB of 3D video shrinks to 26.4 GB in a floating app window while the log scrolls and the Weissman score climbs to 5.2. Run it again as often as you like.
  • A scoreboard that plays. Hooli Nucleus 2.89, Pied Piper before 2.89, middle-out 3.8, the judge's file 5.2: the bars race in order, with the formula for the score beside them.
  • Deal the team. Five cards start in a stack and deal themselves out. Stack them again and flip through, with the $200K seed and the $10M offer they declined pinned above.

Make yours in ChatGPT

Type your site. We'll write the prompt with Pied Piper's structure and your brand.