The characters of HBO’s ‘Silicon Valley’ are inspired by real people in the tech world — here they are

HBO/”Silicon Valley” and Melia Robinson/Business Insider

HBO’s “Silicon Valley” gives a whirlwind tour of the triumphs, debauchery, and epic fails of the real tech world. It’s a show so spot-on, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel once called it “basically a documentary.”

In an interview with INSIDER last month, “Silicon Valley” showrunner Alec Berg said the writers find inspiration for the series’ storylines in real events and people. 

As season four ramps up, we set out to create the definitive, person-to-person mapping of “Silicon Valley” characters to tech-world personalities. Our guide was largely inspired by a blog post from superfan and tech consultant Rex Sorgatz, which you can read here.

Study up before the next episode of “Silicon Valley” on Sunday night.

Richard Hendricks is the classic Silicon Valley wunderkind who codes his way to the top.

The hoodie-wearing, college-dropout protagonist of “Silicon Valley,” Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch) calls to mind the classic Valley Boy stereotype, according to Sorgatz.

His devil-may-care tousled locks and frazzled personality remind us of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, while his story arc mimics the fall and triumph of Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey. The little blue bird ousted Dorsey in 2008, but he reclaimed the CEO title in 2015.

Richard also bears a striking resemblance to the CEO of Quora, Adam D’Angelo, as some contributors on the site have pointed out.

Gavin Belson combines “mercenary business style” tech CEOs Larry Page, Larry Ellison, and Marc Benioff.

Gavin Belson (Matt Ross) fits all the requirements of a Silicon Valley titan — down to the five-finger running shoes inspired by Sergey Brin’s shoe wear aesthetic.

Belson, who was CEO of a Google-like company called Hooli until his ouster this season, wants to make the world a better place, better than anyone else can. He does so by trampling his competition and lawyering up when someone gets in his way, just like Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

“The CEO of Hooli is clearly patterned after (Salesforce CEO) Marc Benioff,” BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti writes. They both run enterprise companies while also “bettering the world through charity, destroying the competition, and seeking spiritual council from gurus.”

The late Peter Gregory embodied Peter Thiel to his core. (The actor who played him, Christopher Evan Welch, died of a heart attack midway through filming season one.)

Eccentric billionaire and angel investor Peter Gregory (Christopher Evan Welch) reminded us of a fellow member of the “three-comma club,” Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal.

Gregory encouraged young genius geeks to drop out of college and start companies, which sounds a lot like the mission of the Thiel Fellowship. “Silicon Valley” showrunner Alex Berg said Gregory was never intended to be a caricature of Thiel, however.

“The honest answer is we didn’t even really know who Peter Thiel was when we did season one, and then people kept saying that the Peter Thiel character, and we started looking at Peter Thiel videos and were like, ‘Oh, I can see why people are saying that,'” Berg told INSIDER.

Laurie Bream keeps the gang in line, like Marissa Mayer at the helm of Yahoo.

Laurie Bream (Suzanne Cryer) is incredibly awkward as managing partner at Raviga Capital. She is cutthroat, speaks very mechanically, and places huge value on metrics. Sound familiar?

Nicholas Carlson, editor-in-chief of INSIDER and author of “Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!” once described Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer as “cold and direct and impersonal. In a one-on-one she can’t hold eye contact,” just like Laurie when she delivers bad news.

The show’s creator Mike Judge said the character was inspired by “these super-intelligent people who think faster than they can talk” and denied any correlation to Mayer. 

Jack Barker draws inspiration from a surprising writing consultant on the show.

Jack Barker (Stephen Tobolowsky) has more than baldness in common with the former Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo. His character usurps the CEO seat at Pied Piper from founder Richard in season two, just like Costolo rose to take Jack Dorsey’s job in real life.

Surprisingly, Costolo became a writing consultant on “Silicon Valley” after he left Twitter in 2015, and he allowed his story to become plot fodder for season three, according to Sorgatz.

Jack also reminds us of former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who Sorgatz calls “the quintessential salesman without product vision.” While Jack steered Pied Piper toward hardware in season three, Ballmer chose to prioritize Windows PCs rather than directly combat the meteoric rise of the iPhone. 

Erlich Bachman wants to be Steve Jobs, but is more like Sean Parker.

Erlich Bachman (TJ Miller) sold his company and bought a mansion in the valley, which he turned into a startup incubator. There, entrepreneurs pay cheap rent to live and work together.

Erlich, a sandal-wearing visionary with a couple of loose screws, resembles party boy Sean Parker. Erlich is often seen smoking from a bong. Coincidentally, Parker contributed $8.5 million to the effort to legalize recreational marijuana in California in 2016.

Sorgatz writes that Erlich may also be inspired by Dave McClure, who runs a startup accelerator called 500 Startups.

Monica Hall is a rising star on the VC landscape, much like real investor Megan Quinn.

Monica Hall (Amanda Crew) makes a splash as the youngest associate partner at Raviga, all while shepherding the firm’s portfolio companies to success.

Some have compared her to Megan Quinn, a general partner at Spark Capital. Her stacked résumé includes partner at the elite venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, director of products at mobile payments company Square, and product manager at Google.

In 2014, the real Quinn tweeted, “So far three people have said there’s a character on HBO’s Silicon Valley [sic] that’s a lot like me. I’m a snowflake, people.”

Russ Hanneman and Mark Cuban are two peas in a pod.

Russ Hanneman (Chris Diamantopoulos) and “Shark Tank” star and investor Mark Cuban both made their first billion dollars selling internet-radio startups to major companies.

It’s been a celebration ever since. Russ launched a liquor brand called Tres Commas Tequila, while Cuban peddles T-shirts emblazoned with three commas on his website, Sorgatz notes.

Read more stories on Business Insider, Malaysian edition of the world’s fastest-growing business and technology news website.

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