Bye-Bye Silicon Valley Monopoly
December 14, 2017
Silicon Valley is a technology epicenter and used to be synonymous with modern innovation, but that is no longer the case. CNBC reports that, “Billionaire Investor Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s Monopoly On Big Growth Tech Companies Is Over.” Peter Thiel is a famous Silicon Valley investor. He helped launch PayPal, was an early investor in Facebook and Airbnb, and he also launched Palantir Technologies. As one of the top Silicon Valley insiders, he said that:
‘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,’ Thiel says, speaking at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Thursday. ‘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.’
Thiel continued that technology startups can be built anywhere, you just need the right people, money, and the right governance structures. He was surprised that so many technology businesses popped up in Silicon Valley, but that happened because of the number of mentors and entrepreneurship concentrated in one area. Innovators went where the action was happening. It is similar to how actors go to Hollywood and writers head to New York City.
Thanks to Silicon Valley, technology has changed the world, so the next venture company can be located anywhere. Take a guess about where the next big technology might be or if it will be spread out along the grid.
Whitney Grace, December 14, 2017