Charlie Saxton, who plays the "Crushing Applicant," played a member of a small startup on "Betas," one of the first Amazon Prime original programs. It was also about a young software company in the San Francisco area. That startup similarly began as a team of four young men, with a woman as the fifth member hired. It was released in 2013, a year before the premiere of Silicon Valley, so the character's "non-crushing" time in 2012 does not appear to be related.