Now I'm back in the US I can finally catch up on Silicon Valley.
Pretty much within minutes, I was agreeing with twbennett that it's "Entourage set in Silicon Valley".
I already like the way they've gone for a multi-faceted pastiche where any given person doesn't map directly to a single well-known figure but rather you can see them take a particular characteristic of a real person and put it on someone in the show.
So the minor characters are amalgams. I can only imagine I'm missing some of the references given how subtle some of the ones I do get are.
Some of the stuff is obviously exaggerated, but you expect that in a pastiche.
The only thing I was disappointed by in the first episode was the TED talk. Firstly, it should have been a TEDx talk (minor point, I know) but it also failed to capture the tone that almost all TED or TEDx talks have.
Such a great characterization where Erlich references "Steve" and Richard asks him "Jobs" or "Wozniak".
The Vibram FiveFingers were a great touch.
"We'll call you when we want pleated khakis"
The "guys? what guys?" scene in Episode 2 is frighteningly close to an experience I had when the first round of a previous company was being closed. Unfortunately, I was one of the "guys" and the investor was questioning who the hell I was :-)
Looking up "Business Plan" on Wikipedia. LOL
Jared is definitely the character that reminds me most of people I know in the industry. Pitch perfect performance by Zach Woods.
Shades of "Office Space" when Jared asks Gilfoyle "what do you do?".
I still fondly remember depositing Eldarion's first investor checks. Fortunately Eldarion, Inc. already had an account :-)
Read an interesting comment on Twitter that it feels more like 2008 with its focus on Palo Alto rather than San Francisco.
Episode 4 felt the weakest so far for me.