Peter Thiel, a leader in entrepreneurism and investment who made his career in Silicon Valley, has now said that he believes the Valley will no longer be monopolizing the tech industry moving forward.
The billionaire Thiel, who launched PayPal, was an early investor in AirBnB and Facebook, and launched software company Palantir Technologies, spoke at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia last week and shared some of his opinions on the future of the tech world, specifically its future outside the small pocket of California we know as Silicon Valley.
“I have been investing in the technology space — entrepreneur and investor over the past 20 years in Silicon Valley — and within the area of IT, it has for the last 10, 15 years in the US and the world been extremely centered on Silicon Valley,” he said at the event.
“I think there are a lot of reasons for that, but the question is, ‘Where is the growth going to happen the next 10 years?’ And what I would tend to think is that it will be more diversified from just Silicon Valley.”
Thus far, Silicon Valley has dominated the industry due to a large concentration of driven entrepreneurs and the abundance of mentors. Even now, California sees a hugely disproportionate percentage of venture capital deals made, despite rising competition throughout the world.
Per the most recent data coming out of the 2017’s third quarter, provided by the National Venture Capital Association and Pitchbook, show a huge gap between California-based companies and their competition. New York, who had the second highest number of deals made in Q3, with 188, only reached 32 percent of the number of deals closed in California in that same time, who had 580.
Here, it is easy to limit our view to companies based in the United States. Thiel, however, believes that the next wave of technology will be the product of a more global perspective.
“There was something very paradoxical about it all being in Silicon Valley, because after all these Internet companies are global in scope,” Thiel says. “They can be built anywhere. You just need some talented people, some capital, the right governance structures and so it was always this very odd question, why all the companies of this new global technology were built in one specific place.”
He went on to say that he believes China will be a big player in tech because of some up-and-coming companies that are moving into that space and doing creative work. Not only will things grow in China, but Thiel comments, “I don’t think there is a single other place, it is not a specific city or specific country, but I think in general there is much opportunity outside of Silicon Valley.”
Thiel’s opinions certainly strike a chord; it is strange that the tech world has been so focused on one small space in California considering the global scale on which the internet and tech operates. While there is surely competition in Silicon Valley, a broadening of horizons in the tech world will only lead to higher quality and more efficient product being released to the market.
