Toward the end of Season 1 of HBO’s incredible Silicon Valley, there’s an amazing scene that this writer has legit watched on YouTube about a hundred times.

The Pied Piper team is at TechCrunch Disrupt, coming off the high of unveiling their compression algorithm to a veritable whos-who of the tech world. Then, disaster strikes. Mega-corporation Hooli is there, and they’re presenting a technology that is identical to the product Pied Piper is building.

Panic inevitably ensues among the Pied Piper ranks. Then, a notably manic Jared, fresh from the traumatic experience of being kidnapped by a self-driving car, has a brainwave.

What Pied Piper needs to do, he thinks, is pivot.

“A lot of successful startups launched with a different business mo...