the problem the tech decentralization the team blog company history

Welcome to the web you never knew you wanted

(Not yet, launch date tbd)

You own your data

Hidden from the Hoolis™ of the world

You control your identity

Decide what private information is made public

You have the power

With decentralized apps and storage to make the internet the fastest it can be

The Problem

Beneath the flashy homepages of your favorite sites lurk Hooli™ and other evil corporations out to hoard and sell your most personal data.

What was built to be the ultimate platform for the free sharing of knowledge has turned into a money-hungry monster feasting on our privacy and freedom.

But fear not, for Pied Piper has the answer! And it’s simple:

An autonomous peer-to-peer network featuring distributed storage powered by universal compression, accelerated scheduling allocation, and end-to-end encryption.

Put even simpler — it’s the internet, completely decentralized.

(Still not getting it? Click here.)

We’re in this together! All of our computers and phones will join in a network that will make the strongest supercomputer the world has ever seen.

The Tech

Only Pied Piper has the necessary tools to build the internet of the future, today.

P2P Computer Communication Patent

Pied Piper's decentralized internet is built upon a patented foundation of peer-to-peer computer communication. This is the basis of the "internet we deserve."‎

Award-Winning Middle-Out Compression

Our revolutionary middle-out compression was the missing piece preventing Peter and Gavin from pursuing their original patent. After shattering the theoretical limit of compression at TechCrunch Disrupt, we’re now able to transport even the most complex data files across our network within seconds.‎

Distributed Storage

Middle-out reduces the size of your files so we can distribute, store, and reassemble them seamlessly across our network. Not to mention your data is fully encrypted and totally redundant across our storage nodes.‎

The more users that join our network, the more powerful it grows, and the better our world becomes. Don’t miss out!

Join Our Developers

These developers are already experiencing the benefits of Pied Piper's decentralized functionality suite.

We’ve accumulated nearly all of the world’s knowledge online, but we forget how much of that data is personal. Today’s Web is dominated by Hooli and a handful of other tech companies that have built their fortunes tracking massive amounts of our data — photos, status updates, location check-ins, web cookies, and more.

So the question becomes: What do these tech companies do with all of this personal information? So as not to violate several NDAs I was forced to sign upon my exit from Hooli, I can only speak generally: It’s not pretty. They exploit your online activity and preferences for profit. They sell your data to advertisers. You become the product.

That’s why we at Pied Piper are building a decentralized internet — one which takes power from these megacorporations and gives it back to you, the netizens.

Find The Complete Guide Here

The Team

Meet the Pipers

Richard Hendricks
Founder & CEO

Jared “Donald” Dunn
Chief Operating Officer

Dinesh Chugtai
Senior Programmer

Bertram Gilfoyle
Chief Systems Architect

Nelson “Big Head” Bighetti
Majority Investor

piedpiper_505_blog

I’ve gone by many names throughout my life: Donald, Jared, Child #61728. But this week I earned myself a new one: the Dorian Gray of Silicon Valley. For I let my vanity make a monster of me.

It all started when I joined Richard for an interview on Bloomberg. I’d only come for moral support, but then Emily Chang started asking me questions, and the interview went live, and all of a sudden I was being asked to do Adrian Grenier’s edutainment web series. I hadn’t even planned to watch the Bloomberg interview, but Dinesh convinced me to review the footage to improve before my next appearance. He said it was for the good of the company! Little did I realize that to watch a YouTube clip of oneself on repeat is the digital equivalent of Narcissus’s unwavering gaze into the water.

Such began my stumble into the depths of shallowness. I’d never considered myself a superficial person before. I put care into my appearance, of course, but only as a gesture toward professionalism. (To show up in anything short of combed hair, pressed khakis, and a lint-free fleece vest is disrespectful.) And sure, I’ve humbly accepted a few comparisons to movie star Anthony Perkins, but I always thought that was more about our shared love of birds than anything else. But now, before I knew it, I was fretting over my nose, demanding lip injections to distract from it. I thought they would have a subtle, bee-stung look, but there was more truth in that syringe than saline. My lips had grown as inflated as my new ego.

Even though the doctor told me the puffiness will subside after twenty-four hours, I think the effects on the computer education students at Paul Revere Middle School may last longer than that. How must they feel, knowing I chose Grenier over them? That I chased a shiny piece of Turkish delight instead of the home cooked meal of their company? Those kids depend on me to teach them about life in tech, to share stories of my past bullying, no matter how tangentially related to the day’s lesson. At least they got to meet Richard. The photos I’d shown them in class could only do him so much justice.

Well, readers, it’s time to repair the damage our network suffered this week, ice my lips again, and look inward. Until next time!

From Our Blog

Jared, Thy Name Is Vanity

I’ve gone by many names throughout my life: Donald, Jared, Child #61728. But this week I earned myself a new one: the Dorian Gray of Silicon Valley. For I let my vanity make a monster of me. It all started when I joined Richard for an interview on Bloomberg. I’d only come for moral support,…

Read More

Company History

Pied Piper is Born

A Lawsuit Scares Suitors

The Platform

A New Internet

Before Pied Piper envisioned a new internet, it was a simple app to detect infringement of music copyrights – a side project of lowly Hooli employee Richard Hendricks. But buried within this consumer-facing service was something much more valuable: a world-beating compression algorithm.
Once others caught wind of the promise of his algorithm, Richard found himself in the middle of a bidding war between two of the Valley’s major players. Hooli CEO Gavin Belson pounced with a ten million dollar acquisition offer, while VC Peter Gregory offered a $200,000 seed round to start a new company. The stress of the decision took a physical toll on Richard, but in the end he picked Gregory and the power to see his tech through to its fullest potential.
With the backing of Gregory’s fund Raviga, Hendricks assembled his team: Dinesh Chugtai, Bertram Gilfoyle, and Jared Dunn, all working together out of Erlich Bachman’s incubator. The company’s first great test came at TechCrunch Disrupt. After a challenge from Hooli’s compression competitor Nucleus, Richard pulled an all-nighter to invent a new approach to compression: middle-out. In the finals of the competition, Richard’s middle-out algorithm surpassed the theoretical limit and achieved the highest Weissman score ever recorded. Pied Piper took first place at Disrupt.

Pied Piper’s moment of triumph didn’t last long. Their champion Peter Gregory passed away and Gavin Belson slapped the team with a massive lawsuit, rendering them damaged goods to all potential investors. Fortunately, Richard came across Russ Hanneman, the one man in the Valley who didn’t wince at impending litigation.
After a string of failed deals with energy drink Homicide and adult content producer Intersite, a condor egg live stream changed everything. The feed of the egg went viral when a camera technician fell forty feet into a ravine, and Pied Piper’s durability under the traffic proved the strength of the tech. The good news seemed to continue from there: Pied Piper defeated Gavin’s frivolous lawsuit, and Raviga’s new head VC Laurie Bream bought Hanneman out of Pied Piper.

But the celebration didn’t last long – Bream swiftly used her power to remove Richard from his position as CEO. Richard was repositioned to CTO, and was replaced by exec-for-hire “Action” Jack Barker. After an unsuccessful attempt to pivot Pied Piper to building data storage boxes, Barker too fell victim to Laurie’s axe, and Richard was restored to the CEO chair.

Under Richard’s leadership, the team launched the beta of their much-anticipated platform. However, the public response was one of confusion – they were ahead of their time. Bream fire-sold the company to Bachmanity, Erlich Bachman and Nelson Bighetti Jr.’s venture fund. And while the platform had floundered, the compression algorithm found a successful new home in a video chat app hacked by Dinesh.

Despite being in full control of Pied Piper for the first time since its inception, Richard found himself uninspired by what he was building. To Richard, PiperChat was a trivial application of his revolutionary middle-out compression algorithm. So Richard left Pied Piper to tackle a brave new venture: launching a decentralized internet.
PiperChat dissolved soon after and the rest of the team joined Richard’s new project. The next obstacle: securing the patent to the peer-to-peer network Richard dreamed of, which, unfortunately, belonged to Gavin Belson. Gavin and Richard embarked on an unlikely partnership, but it didn’t last long – Belson went to Tibet to find himself, and gave Richard full ownership of the patent.
With Gavin off in Tibet, Richard turned to customers for funding. Pied Piper landed a data storage deal with Fiduciated General Insurance and launched Space Saver, an app to maximize mobile storage that would help build out the Pied Piper network of devices. Space Saver made it onto the Hooli App Store’s Top 500 (utilities, sub-group mobile, sub-group storage), and FGI’s data was stored on a sufficient number of “devices.” This feat proved the viability of Richard’s new internet and earned Pied Piper funding from Bream-Hall to start building.
The journey to create a decentralized internet has just begun. Keep an eye on Jared Dunn’s blog for updates on the team’s groundbreaking project.

Pied Piper is Born

Before Pied Piper envisioned a new internet, it was a simple app to detect infringement of music copyrights – a side project of lowly Hooli employee Richard Hendricks. But buried within this consumer-facing service was something much more valuable: a world-beating compression algorithm.
Once others caught wind of the promise of his algorithm, Richard found himself in the middle of a bidding war between two of the Valley’s major players. Hooli CEO Gavin Belson pounced with a ten million dollar acquisition offer, while VC Peter Gregory offered a $200,000 seed round to start a new company. The stress of the decision took a physical toll on Richard, but in the end he picked Gregory and the power to see his tech through to its fullest potential.

Pied Piper is Born

With the backing of Gregory’s fund Raviga, Hendricks assembled his team: Dinesh Chugtai, Bertram Gilfoyle, and Jared Dunn, all working together out of Erlich Bachman’s incubator. The company’s first great test came at TechCrunch Disrupt. After a challenge from Hooli’s compression competitor Nucleus,Richard pulled an all-nighter to invent a new approach to compression: middle-out. In the finals of the competition, Richard’s middle-out algorithm surpassed the theoretical limit and achieved the highest Weissman score ever recorded. Pied Piper took first place at Disrupt.

A Lawsuit Scares Suitors

Pied Piper’s moment of triumph didn’t last long. Their champion Peter Gregory passed away and Gavin Belson slapped the team with a massive lawsuit, rendering them damaged goods to all potential investors. Fortunately, Richard came across Russ Hanneman, the one man in the Valley who didn’t wince at impending litigation.
After a string of failed deals with energy drink Homicide and adult content producer Intersite, a condor egg live stream changed everything. The feed of the egg went viral when a camera technician fell forty feet into a ravine, and Pied Piper’s durability under the traffic proved the strength of the strength of the tech. The good news seemed to continue from there: Pied Piper defeated Gavin’s frivolous lawsuit, and Raviga’s new head VC Laurie Bream bought Hanneman out of Pied Piper.

The Platform

But the celebration didn’t last long – Bream swiftly used her power to remove Richard from his position as CEO. Richard was repositioned to CTO, and was replaced by exec-for-hire “Action” Jack Barker. After an unsuccessful attempt to pivot Pied Piper to building data storage boxes, Barker too fell to Laurie’s axe, and Richard was restored to the CEO chair.
Under Richard’s leadership, the team launched the beta of their much-anticipated platform. However, the public response was one of confusion – they were ahead of their time. Bream fire-sold the company to Bachmanity, Erlich Bachman and Nelson Bighetti Jr.’s venture fund. And while the platform had floundered, the compression algorithm found a successful new home in a video chat app hacked by Dinesh.

A New Internet

Despite being in full control of Pied Piper for the first time since its inception, Richard found himself uninspired by what he was building. To Richard, PiperChat was a trivial application of his revolutionary middle-out compression algorithm. So Richard left Pied Piper to tackle a brave new venture: launching a decentralized internet.
PiperChat dissolved soon after and the rest of the team joined Richard’s new project. The next obstacle: securing the patent to the peer-to-peer network Richard dreamed of, which, unfortunately, belonged to Gavin Belson. Gavin and Richard embarked on an unlikely partnership, but it didn’t last long – Belson went to Tibet to find himself, and gave Richard full ownership of the patent.

A New Internet

With Gavin off in Tibet, Richard turned to customers for funding. Pied Piper landed a data storage deal with Fiduciated General Insurance and launched Space Saver, an app to maximize mobile storage that would help build out the Pied Piper network of devices. Space Saver made it onto the Hooli App Store’s Top 500 (utilities, sub-group mobile, sub-group storage), and FGI’s data was stored on a sufficient number of “devices.” This feat proved the viability of Richard’s new internet and earned Pied Piper funding from Bream-Hall to start building.
The journey to create a decentralized internet has just begun. Keep an eye on Jared Dunn’s blog for updates on the team’s groundbreaking project.

by Jared Dunn

We’ve accumulated nearly all of the world’s knowledge online, but we forget how much of that data is personal. Today’s Web is dominated by Hooli and a handful of other tech companies that have built their fortunes tracking massive amounts of our data — photos, status updates, location check-ins, web cookies, and more.

So the question becomes: What do these tech companies do with all of this personal information? So as not to violate several NDAs I was forced to sign upon my exit from Hooli, I can only speak generally: It’s not pretty. They exploit your online activity and preferences for profit. They sell your data to advertisers. You become the product.

That’s why we at Pied Piper are building a decentralized internet — one which takes power from these megacorporations and gives it back to you, the netizens.

Like any great revolution in history, the decentralized internet deserves a thundering manifesto that declaws the powers that be. However, my CEO Richard Hendricks observed that a lighter primer on the benefits of our network might be a better course of action. Ever so wise, Richard! So I reached into my literary toolbox and pulled out my third favorite figure of speech: the metaphor!

A Decentralized Library

Let’s pretend we’re in a town, and the local library is the Internet: a centralized repository of information. At first glance, it may seem an adequate institution, but there are still perils and flaws. Lost books, tracked lending patterns, a narrow view of the Young Adult genre’s broader appeal. It’s time for a change.

What if our town had a completely decentralized library system? That’s Pipernet! Let’s walk through how our game-changing decentralized network would solve each of the internet’s key problems and make the world a far better place.

Problem 1

Problem 2

Problem 3

To Summarize...

Our decentralized internet would allow users to anonymously store and exchange information without any intermediary. It would enable a safer, faster, more private, and completely autonomous online experience. Wondrous, isn’t it?

Coming Soon To A Device Near You!

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations are in order! At last you can rest easy knowing soon our new internet will launch for all to use. Until then, watch for weekly updates on my company blog.

Problem 1:

Single Points of Failure

Libraries are vulnerable to losing their collection because all of their books are contained at a single location. Say, for instance, that there was a fire, or a flood, or a vandal defaced John James Audubon’s masterpiece Birds of America by giving all the Warblers human genitalia. Even worse, if the vandal recruited bird haters from other neighborhoods and got ahold of all the copies of the book in existence, it could be lost crude doodles forever. It would be a tragedy on par with the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.

The Problem

Because Birds of America is centralized in one public location, it’s susceptible to permanent deletion. The same goes for content on the Internet — storing all your family photos on a single account in a cloud service? They could all be wiped away if someone hacked your account or corrupted the host servers.

The Solution

Our solution: In our decentralized library, we would duplicate and distribute multiple copies of Birds of America to your neighbors — if you need a copy, you would just go to your neighbor’s house. As our Pipernet town of mobile devices grows, so do the number of neighbors who might have a copy of your book. And the more potential copies there are available, the more secure the book is.

That’s what our new internet will allow you to do too: spread your personal files on devices across the world, so they’re completely safe from bad actors manipulating or deleting them.

Takeaways

All copies of your files in a well-known, hackable location = RISKY!

Files copied and distributed to multiple locations = SAFE!

Problem 2:

No Privacy

In order to check out books, you must have a library card — an ID that links back to your real world identity. That library card reveals all the books you’ve ever checked out, where you returned them, and whether they were returned on time.

The Problem

The tech titans collect data profiles on us too, and theirs are far more comprehensive. They amass thousands of personal data points by tracking our activities in both the online and physical worlds.

Users don’t own or control their own data, so it can be used against them. Take, for instance, Richard’s lawyer Pete Monahan, who had his probation revoked when the state retrieved his library records. Which was… probably a good idea. But for this metaphor’s purposes: bad that they can access that information!

On the web, our data profile is far more detailed, the laws around privacy even looser, and more freedoms are at stake. For example, what if Hooli sold your search data to an insurance company who then denied you coverage because you’ve HooliSearch-ed “kindest Palo Alto based Cardiologist” a few too many times?

The Solution

Replace library cards with anonymous identification cards which are impossible to connect to your real world identity. Instead of using a library card (linked to your name, address, etc.) to check out books, you would swipe a nondescript card (containing no personal details). Your activity would be tracked to keep the system stable, but your identity would not be siphoned and sold. I, for example, would no longer check out books as "Donald Dunn," but rather the nom de guerre "h3w0vbk37vpm."

That’s what our new internet will allow you to do too: use its apps and services without compromising your privacy.

Takeaways

Trading your identity and data for online services = RISKY!

Using services anonymously so nobody can target you = SAFE!

Problem 3:

Censorship and Manipulation

Because a town’s library is run by a small group of administrators, they could theoretically decide what books are available to its people. They could even decide to ban Birds of America, depriving young birders of Audubon’s elegant illustrations, pored over page by page under a government-issued blanket after lights out, giving you hope that even a slender-framed, shivering boy could grow to be as majestic as a Hooded Merganser.

The Problem

On the internet, multinational corporations can screen content, or even “adapt” their services to fit the local government’s requests. In both libraries and on the Web, we’re susceptible to data being censored or manipulated by intermediaries.

The Solution

A peer-to-peer lending system backed up by a fully public ledger, allowing you to send and receive books freely to anybody in the world without worrying about censorship or interference. Want to add Catcher in the Rye, Fahrenheit 451, or your controversial essay on Audubon’s coloring techniques? No problem, even if the town surrounded you with pitchforks to ban them, these vital texts would be available to share neighbor to neighbor, impossible to delete.

That’s what our new internet will allow you to do too: exchange messages and files directly with their intended receiver, disperse ideas and information free from threats of censorship.

Takeaways

Pushing all transactions through a central authority = OPPRESSIVE!

Establishing a peer to peer exchange system based on an immutable public ledger = FREE!

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