Mark Cuban
The Silicon Valley characters are inspired are real people. Russ Hanneman is definitely based on Mark Cuban.T.J. Miller, who played Erlich, initially auditioned to play Richard. Mike Judge, the series' creator, claims that Richard is partially based on Mark Zuckerberg. This is made evident in the press conference during the sixth season's premiere episode, a parody of Zuckerberg's "data hacking" conference."The CEO of Hooli is clearly patterned after (Salesforce CEO) Marc Benioff," BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti wrote. They both run enterprise companies while also "bettering the world through charity, destroying the competition, and seeking spiritual council from gurus."
Is Russ Hanneman based on : It's a great caricature of the tech industry without becoming an absurd parody and I love when you can see bits of real tech entrepreneurs in the fictional characters (my favorite is Russ Hanneman based on Mark Cuban).
Who is Gavin Belson based on
Trivia. Gavin is based on two real-life CEOs, Sergei Brin (formerly of Google) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon), as well as Gavin Newsom, the current Governor of California and former Mayor of San Francisco. The role of Gavin Belson was given to Matt Ross after he auditioned for the role of Peter Gregory.
Who is Peter Gregory based on : Peter Thiel
Originally Answered: Are any of the characters in HBO's "Silicon Valley" based off real people Peter Gregory is a mix between Peter Thiel (college dropout encouragement) and Paul Graham (incubator-style investment, and initials). Gavin Belson is a mix between Brin, Page, and Schmidt.