Inspired by "our friends and the stupid stuff we did in New York," How I Met Your Mother is Bays' and Thomas' idea. The two drew from their friendship in creating the characters, with Ted based loosely on Bays, and Marshall and Lily based loosely on Thomas and his wife. The duo's first concept about "an Enron executive who gets sentenced by the judge to go teach at an inner-city high school" was discarded because neither writer wanted to research the subject.