Anyone who watches too many tv series (guilty as charged) and people who are not under a rock would know a little series called “Silicon Valley”. To explain in a single sentence is very simple
“In the high-tech gold rush of modern Silicon Valley, the people most qualified to succeed are the least capable of handling success. A comedy that is inspired by many such people and lessons for the people who want to be such people.”
But that series is a lot more than that for any layman to just watch for it. For people who want to be a startup guru, this series would be a visual bible.
The plot is fairly simple though; a coder who is good at his job wants something more to his profile than being a coder at some company. So he decides to make a code that would change the way the industry works and want to build a company over it and become a “three comma” member (that’s code for a billionaire). But just as you would expect it is not that easy to just start a company.
There will be rival companies and even bigger companies that would simply want to gobble up the idea and make more money than they already have. The story of such people who go through and cross all the hurdles to get to their dream is the premise.
Pretty simple right? Well the hurdles are not. Of course, it is not like walking on D-Day on the coast on Normandy; it could very well be the distant cousin of it.
If we have to talk about the characters well there are so many of them out there already. But just for the sake of the readers,
The protagonist – Richard Hendricks
He could very well be any generic Valley coder out there. But the hoodie and awkward persona could very well be related to Mark zuckerberg and Bill gates (No I don’t mean Bill gates is awkward). Not just about his persona but also about the events that transpired to him or by him.
In the finale of second season, he was thrown out of his own company as CEO. Ring any bells? Not even a ‘JOB’ comes to your mind? Some other such people sent out of their own company are Dick constolo sent out of Twitter, Mike Lazardis was given the boot from RIM. So it is not just about the people but also about the events that make this show great.
The Funding Guy – Eric Bachman
Bachman started the incubator Hacker Hostel, seemingly based on the real hacker hostel. To be in similarity with persona he would totally be Sean parker, the cofounder of Napster and former president of Facebook. But the events that make Eric bachman is not at all like Sean Parker.
In regards to starting an incubator let alone a successful one, he has to be Alexis Ohanian. He is an angel investor being a partner of Y Combinator who seeded one awesome website called Quora over which most of us are gaga over. Even 9GAG is a part of this seeding company.
Related Read: What Makes Silicon Valley Special
To get into fiction again, he would procrastinate to do any real work himself but force anyone around him to do more work so that he can just get the money. He also gives us the lessons of choosing the investors properly, maintaining an actual profession relationship and of course most important of them all not to celebrate too soon.
The actual money guy – Peter Gregory
Peter Gregory is the rich angel investor who takes a risk with Richard’s idea and even goes through with it. For the persona part he could very well be Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Paypal. He is one of the most aggressive investors out there. One of his biggest investments was Facebook, he was even given a part in “The Social Network”.
The Buyer – Gavin Belson
He is the billionaire who cannot accept a little competition and just want to buy out anything that he thinks that could remotely compete with his products. He tried to buy piep piper, stole ideas from piep piper and even sue them finally so that they cannot even come up as a company. For his persona, he would have to be Larry Ellison who co-founded the giant Oracle.
There are characters like Gilfoyle, Dinesh, Bighead and others who are just regular coders who are around the actual Silicon Valley trying to make it big in the scene. There are also a few lessons that this amazing series teaches about startups like being resourceful, not comparing with other companies and just competing, and about the quality of the work.
This article is not a review for the series or an exact study of events of the series that could help a startup in real life. But this is just a seed article from where you can start to understand how the ecosphere of startups is.
Before you decide on a startup better watch the series or watch out for the series of events that may occur to you. Happy startups!!