On last night's episode of Silicon Valley, a mention was made of WIRED doing a profile on Nelson "Big Head" Bighetti. While we'd been keeping it under wraps, it's time to finally publish that profile. Enjoy.
In the moments leading up to being anointed the technorati's newest wunderkind, Nelson Bighetti got one last dose of anonymity.
Gavin Belson was at his podium (though when is he not?), eyes aglint, seeing the future as he so often does. But today, Hooli's Chief Innovation Officer's retinas were reflecting the promise of Hooli [XYZ], a new division of the company focused on using breakthrough technology to achieve radical solutions using breakthrough technology. "Magellan circumnavigating the globe was a moonshot," Belson said, "Alan Turing breaking the Enigma cipher was a moonshot…no idea will be too big for our newest division."
Belson then introduced the division's Head Dreamer, Davis Bannercheck of Somerville Dynamics. But were you sitting in the room, you may have noticed an empty seat in the front row. That void was reserved for the quiet genius who had just walked in, looking so out of place one might think him a lost intern who took a wrong turn. And then Nelson Bighetti—"Big Head" to his friends—heard Gavin Belson call his name.
Well, kind of. "Nelson 'Baghead' Bighetti!" is what Belson actually said. Still, the unflappable Big Head dutifully walked on stage, where Belson named him Hooli [XYZ]'s co-Head Dreamer.
Thus endeth the Pre-Big Head age in Silicon Valley.
Hooli announcements are banner events, drawing the attention of press outlets everywhere, but Bighetti appeared almost blissfully unaware of the bright new chapter unfolding before him. According to his colleagues there and his friends from his early days whiling away in a startup incubator, that's the kind of deer-in-the-headlights exterior that hides the deeply analytical and endlessly surprising mind buried within.
Indeed, that May announcement was the culmination of more than a year of stealth ambition, during which time Bighetti showed a stunning ability to ascend Hooli's famously byzantine org chart---including a stint among the so-called "Roof Crew," that coterie of employees reportedly so brilliant that Hooli hardly knows what to do with them.
In person, Bighetti combines the visionary thinking of an upper-level Silicon Valley executive with the look and relatability of an utterly unemployable programmer. But the horizon wasn’t always so limitless. Mired as a cog in the admittedly plush Hooli machine, Bighetti’s talents were being wasted so thoroughly that he began pouring his efforts into NipAlert, an application nurtured at investor Erlich Bachman’s startup incubator that "gives you the location of a woman with erect nipples." It wasn’t flattering. "I made a perverted, sexist useless thing," says Bighetti now---an unfortunate squandering of talent by Hooli, at least initially.
He worked alongside close friend and fellow Hooli employee Richard Hendrix, even consulting on the initial iterations of Pied Piper, Hendrix's famed (and defamed) compression technology. But when Hendrix focused on small things like a "DCT filter bank" and an intricately complex "DFT spider web," Bighetti was trying to wrap his mind around gargantuan ideas few people even consider. "Richard would try to explain some of this stuff," says Bighetti, "so I’d kind of just nod and smile." A frequent reaction for such advanced minds when dealing with colleagues so obsessed with a narrow frame of reference.
Hendrix describes Bighetti’s role at the fledgling Pied Piper as a "floating utility player, a jack-of-all-trades." And when asked to enumerate his talents, Bighetti cites "programming...I guess I’m pretty good at code. Uh, developing algorithms. ...Oh, and programming." As with so many luminaries, it’s more about what he doesn’t say; his everpresent Double Gulp cup does the talking for him. (Literally. Dude should really learn how to use a straw quietly.)
Belson spotted Bighetti’s untapped potential early, careful to note to anyone within earshot that "he also co-founded Pied Piper right here at Hooli." Belson first encountered Bighetti via holographic teleconference from rural Wyoming, using Hooli’s own new innovative technology. "Everyone else may call him ‘Big Head,’ but I gave it a twist after our first conversation with Nelson," says Belson. "During his creative process, he puts a paper bag over his head to cut out the chaos that bombards our field of vision and prevents us from answering the world’s biggest problems." That trend may catch on among other high-level thinkers. According to Belson, "It’s a whole new way to disrupt creative meditation. I endeavor to spend 15 minutes a day with bag over my head."
Instead of joining Richard Hendrix and the rest of the Pied Piper team as they split from the herd, Bighetti made the tough decision to stay at Hooli to help shepherd along Nucleus, the company's newest game-changer-in-utero. It was a bitter battle to keep him, one that Hooli won by ponying up a three-year contract worth north of $500,000 a year---yet Bighetti’s former housemates have nothing but effusive praise to for him. "We all love Bighead," says Dinesh Chugtai, "but the truth is he’s not as good of a coder as I am, not as good at system architecture as [Bertram] Gilfoyle, not as good at being a prick as [Pied Piper investor Erlich Bachman]---no offense."
"He’s a lightweight at everything," adds Gilfoyle, distilling Bighetti’s natural talent for shifting gears between projects with speed and efficiency.
Nucleus is a project that should satisfy any big thinker---but Bighetti isn’t just any other innovator. Instead of staying with the Nucleus team, Bighetti’s Hooli career took a turn to the open road. His ideas and way of thinking were too chaotic and unpredictable to be contained by even the loosest team structure at Hooli. So Belson relieved Big Head of his Nucleus duties, allowing for a more free-form exploration---jazz, maybe, or long-form improv comedy---of whatever he wanted. That is, until Hooli decided to found an entire division centered around the big questions that appeal to thinkers like Bighetti. "I moved four school age children and [my] elderly mother across the country to run Hooli [XYZ] on [my] own," says Bannercheck. That’s how excited the pioneering robotics professor is to begin work with the co-founder of Pied Piper, one of the most promising young minds working at Hooli today. "I get to do whatever I want," Bighetti says, "But, um…in a much more significant way?"
