The hoodie-wearing, college dropout protagonist of "Silicon Valley," Richard Hendricks (played by 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 last year.
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 (played by Matt Ross) fits all the requirements of a Silicon Valley titan — down to the five-finger running shoes inspired by Sergey Brin's shoewear aesthetic.
Belson, the CEO of a Google-like company called Hooli, 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."
Eccentric billionaire and angel investor Peter Gregory (played by the late actor Christopher Evan Welch) reminds us of a fellow member of the "three comma club," Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal.
Gregory encourages young genius geeks to drop out of college and start companies, which sounds a lot like the mission of the Thiel Fellowship.
The oddball angel investor also has a love-hate relationship with nemesis Gavin Belson. The tension between them is reminiscent of Microsoft cofounder Peter Gregory's rivalry with Bill Gates, Sorgatz points out.
Laurie Bream (played by Suzanne Cryer) is the epitome of awkwardness as managing partner at Raviga Capital. The cutthroat leader speaks very mechanically and places inordinate value on metrics. Sound familiar?
INSIDER's Nicholas Carlson 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 says the character was inspired by "these super-intelligent people who think faster than they can talk" and denies any correlation to Mayer.
Jack Barker has more than baldness in common with the ex-CEO of Twitter, Dick Costolo. His character usurps the CEO seat from Richard in season two, just like Costolo rose to take Jack Dorsey's job.
They both later lost the gigs. Weirdly, Costolo became a writing consultant on "Silicon Valley" after his departure from Twitter, and let his story become plot fodder for season three, according to Sorgatz.
Jack (played by Stephen Tobolowsky) 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, Ballmer shifted focus from the iPhone to enterprise sales.
Erlich Bachman (played by T.J. Miller) sold a startup, Aviato, for enough money to buy a house in the valley and turned it into an entrepreneurial incubator. Budding tech founders pay cheap rent to live and work together.
Erlich, a sandal-wearing visionary with a couple of loose screws, resembles party boy Sean Parker. The two share a love for marijuana, as Parker donated over $1 million in legislation to legalize pot in California.
Sorgatz writes that Erlich may also be inspired by Dave McClure, who runs a startup accelerator called 500 Startups.
Monica Hall (Amanda Crew) makes a splash as the youngest associate partner at Raviga, all while shepherding Pied Piper to success.
Some have compared her to Megan Quinn, a general partner at Spark Capital. Her stacked résumé includes partner at Kleiner Perkins, director of products at 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 (played by Chris Diamantopoulos) and "Shark Tank" star and investor Mark Cuban both made their first billion selling internet-radio startups to major companies.
It's been a celebration ever since. Russ launched a liquor brand called Commas Tequila, while Cuban peddles T-shirts emblazoned with three commas on his website, Sorgatz notes.
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